Production schedule

Friday 27th September
11:30 - 12:40         1:00 - 2:50
Ellie Walker, Alex Cheeseman, Danny East, Holly Pepper, Jake Kenington
singer, extra, extra, director, camera operator and extra
Ellie singing in a car and next to it

Monday 1st October
9:00 - 10:10          2:50 - 4:00
close ups of Ellie and toilet signs


Tuesday 2nd October
2:50 - 4:00

Deconstruction and Reconstruction of a Media Text

The roles of our group are as follows:

Director - Holly Pepper
Cast - Ellie Walker, Holly Pepper, Danny East, Jake Kenington and Alex Cheeseman
Camera - Holly Pepper and Jake Kenington
Editor - Ellie Walker, Holly Pepper, Danny East, Jake Kenington and Alex Cheeseman

The song will will be re-creating is:

No Dought - Just A Girl

Skills Development

For my foundation portfolio in AS Media I produced a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. My music and target audience genre was Indie Rock, using bands such as ‘The Kooks’ and ‘The Strokes’ to attract the audience as these are well know bands within the genre. This therefore laid a foundation of which I could build on with aspects such as lighting, costume and colour scheme etc.

Before I started the AS media course I had no previous experience with the digital technology that we had used in the course such as Photoshop, the use of cameras and editing pictures etc. This meant that I had no platform from which to start from, as I had no skills in this area this meant that my ability was relatively poor, which indicated that I had to first, learn the basics of the different pieces of technology such as how to crop photos, use the different tools on Photoshop such as the blur tool etc. secondly, I had to learn basic photography skills in order to take effective pictures. The reason I had no evidence of these skills is because I had never attempted anything like this before either at school or out.

Once I had learned the basics of these pieces of digital technology I had to then apply these to my music magazine, as I started on my foundation portfolio my photography skills such as lighting and positioning was hard to achieve, but once I had the pictures and put them onto Photoshop for editing I used tools such as the blur tool around the edges of the pictures to remove the rough edges of the pictures which made them look really unbelievable, another feature I applied was a red background colour onto the front page of my magazine as this would be part of my colour scheme of red and black which are conventional colours to the Indie Rock genre. One of the major tools that I found most effective was the magic wand tool which allowed me to remove the background of the pictures that I had taken and apply them to my portfolio piece in different layers, this at first was hard for me as I did not fully understand how to organise and layout the layers of my work. All of these basic aspects were present once I had completed a draft of each piece as the layout of my products were very plain and blank for example, in my contents page I had block colours of red, black and white with nothing more than a headline, subheadings, non-chronological page numbers and a few pictures. Within my draft front page I had a blank red background with a small headline which was not very appealing to the audience and would not have caught the attention of many potential customers. My double page spread had a very short article which would not have been good for the magazine as the audience would have not had much value for money, it also had a banner that ran across the mid-section of the main artists image and the image of the artist was too large and was not very adaptable for much of the article to fit on clearly.

Once I had completed the drafts of each piece I then had to try and improve these pieces with new techniques and tools that I had learned about. This involved looking at what aspects of my current work was either too bland or not conventional to the magazine.  For my front cover I used the quick selection tool to cut my main image of its original background and placed it onto the new background which was originally red, but then I decided that just a plain red background made the magazine look ‘tacky’ so I decided to change the background to a white-to-red background. Once I had the image I used the blur tool to make the image have smoother edges so it looked more realistic and more natural within the magazine, I also used the transform scale tool to enlarge my picture to fit into a conventional place on my front cover as she is in the middle, under the masthead. I used the text tool to add all of the writing (except the masthead) onto my front cover, I then changed the main headline on my front cover as I wanted it to be bigger to catch the audience’s attention and so it didn’t cover up as much of the front image as it did on my first draft. For the splash I took a picture of a record and then cropped the picture onto my front page. I also moved the cover lines down a little as a believed this to be more conventional for a magazine cover.

For my contents page I decided to put a border on my original draft as I wanted the page to seem compact with a noticeable resemblance of the colour scheme I have used throughout my magazine, I then decided that my contents page does not need this and is not conventional to a magazine so I got rid of the border and put my features and news sections etc. down the right hand side which is conventional to a magazine and looks far better. The reason I decided to move and make my images smaller is so I could fit more writing on the page, I did this by using the transform scale tool which allowed me to manipulate the images to where I wanted them.

I made the main headline ‘contents’ and the date ‘12/11’ cross my using transform scale and by changing the opacity of the text so they can have a transparent appearance. I used another self-taken image of another record for my splash on this page, I then cropped the picture using the quick selection tool then used transform scale to change the size of the image to fit into the position I wanted it to. The reason I change the number order and position is because in my draft it is not conventional as the numbers are not in order and there were not enough pages which I felt was not good enough for the audience and did not want a poor audience review.

For my double page spread I fist used the wrong type of page layout, I needed to use international A3 paper, so I needed to change that first of all. I then had to adjust my image to the page layout which involved my having to use transform scale and moving the image around to find the correct positioning for my image without going over where the crease of the page is as this is not conventional to a magazine. I used the inner and outer glow tool on the smaller heading on the final piece at the top to give a eye-catching effect to it. I also moved the main headline across the bottom of the page as this is more conventional to a magazine and doesn’t intervene with the crease of the page. I also added drop caps and a pull quote onto my work as this is also more conventional to a music magazine and grabs the audience’s attention, I did all of the text in publisher as this was the simplest way to add drop caps and a pull quote and fit the text into the page.

Overall, I believe that my development in digital technology has vastly increased since the start of my foundation portfolio; one of the main keys to my development is learning from the errors I made and trying to improve on some areas that make the magazine look unconventional.

Key Audience Terms

Qualitative Data -This is data that will provide a more in depth response on the question being asked. This data will also provide psychographic data which will show the values and attributes of the audience.

Quantitative Data - This data is numerical and statistical which is generalised so it does not show and personal details and are usually used for closed questions.

Psychographic Data - This data is retrieved from surveys and statistics based upon the different characteristics that people have, this includes lifestyle, value system, attitude, behaviour and experience.

Demographic Data -  This social data commonly includes, gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and location.

Song Genre

Pop rock is a music genre which mixes a catchy pop style and light lyrics in its (typically) guitar-based rock songs. There are varying definitions of the term, ranging from a slower and mellower form of rock music to a subgenre of pop music. Scholars have noted that pop and rock are usually depicted as opposites, the detractors of pop often deride it as a slick, commercial product, less authentic than rock music.

Pop rock has been described as an "upbeat variety of rock music represented by artists such as Elton John, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Chicago, and Peter Frampton."In contrast, music reviewer George Starostin defines it as a subgenre of pop music that uses catchy pop songs that are mostly guitar-based. Starostin argues that most of what is traditionally called 'power pop' falls into the pop rock subgenre. He claims that the lyrical content of pop rock is "normally secondary to the music."

Here are some examples of some artists that fall under the genre of 'Pop Rock':

Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved:



The Fray - Cable Car



Jason Mraz - I'm Yours

chosen song and artist/band details

My chosen song for my music promo video is 'cops and robbers' by the band 'The Hoosiers'.

The Hoosiers are an English pop/rock band, there are three members to the band who are:
 - Irwin Sparkes (lead vocals and lead guitar)
 - Martin Skarendahl (bass guitar and rythem guitar)
 - Alan Sharland (drums and percussion)

Their first single 'Worried About Ray' reached number 5 in the UK singles chart in July 2007. in the following October they released their debut album called 'The Trick to Life' which reached number 1 in the album charts. The band then went on to release another album on the 16th August 2010 which also came within the top ten album releases, this album was preceded by the lead single 'Choices' which was released not long before the album which was on the 1st August.

According to the bands self wrote biographies (which can be found on various websites and in the album sleeves) Sharland and Sparkes spent time in the USA which was encourages by their chemistry teacher 'Grant Serpell', who was part of the band 'Sailor' during their spell of fame in the 70's, this time was to broaden their horizons. The two of them won scholorships in football for the University of Indianapolis, despite the claim of being 'allergic to running', a claim which is backed up by Irwin sparkes' asthma.

Their time in Indiana inspired the name of the band 'The Hoosiers' as a citizen of Indiana is colloqially called a Hoosier. After Sparkes and Sharland compiled enough material together for an album they headed back to London where they met the Swiss keyboard player and sound engineer 'Duri Darms' and 'Martin Skarendahl', Martin was an Swedish ex-fireman who was working with Darms as a recording studio engineer and studying at the London music school. The original group did include two other members (Tony Byrne and Tom Easey) who had left the band by this point leaving only Sparkes and Sharland to replace them with the Swiss Martin Skarendahl.

The new trio then signed to RCA Records (part of Sony Music Entertainment) which they then went on to release their first album 'The Trick to Life' on 22nd October 2007. In February 2008 the band was labelled the 'Worst Band' at the annual NME awards. the band is produced by ex-member of 'Jamiroquai' Toby Smith and managed by Steve Morton.

The band's second single, 'Goodbye Mr A', appeared in the footbal video game FIFA 08, and the game can also be seen in the "Goodbye Mr A" music video. Lead singer Irwin Sparkes, who is from Reading, is playing on the game as Reading against Manchester UnitedThe song also appears in a trailer for the 2007 film 'Juno' Following the release of 'Worst Case Scenario', the next release from The Trick to Life was 'Cops and Robbers', as confirmed in a live webchat with The Hoosiers on GMTV. The video was broadcast on Channel 4 at 12:10pm on 22 March 2008.

In February 2011, the band announced via their official website that "Bumpy Ride" was to be their new single and would be released at the end of March. Their new deluxe album, also titled 'Bumpy Ride', was out in the April of the same year. The music video for 'Bumpy Ride' tells a story of how The Hoosiers travelled around the United States of America by various means of transport, and was possibly inspired by their earlier travels.

It was announced on April 1, 2011 that the band had departed from their record label Sony after a dispute over the promotion of their latest album The Illusion of Safety. Sparkes told Daily Record, "I don't think many people knew that the second album had been released, so we're having to reissue it to bring it to people's awareness."

At an intimate gig for Real Radio in Sheffield, the band announced that they were repackaging and re-releasing the album with a new title, Bumpy Ride, on April 11, 2011. The rerelease comes with 4 new album tracks, and a deluxe version comes with a DVD of live performances.

Coursework brief

For my A2 media coursework i have chosen to do: brief 1, which is:

A promotion package for the the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
1. A website homepage for the band
2. A cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
3. A magazine advertisment for the digipak (CD/DVD package)
I have chosen options 2 and 3 alongside the promo video.