Yr 10: 02 MUSIC MAGAZINES

In the 02 MUSIC AND NEWS exam, you will have two questions on music magazines (and other questions on music videos and music radio programmes, about which there will be more later).

In class, we learn how to analyse the 'language' of the front cover, that is, how it looks and what meanings are made by how it looks.

PREP How is media language used on the front cover of MOJO? In each point, compare how differently We Love Pop uses media language.

Copy / paste the title and words below into your blog, then complete the document in your own words:

Comparison of media language in MOJO and We Love Pop

The layout of MOJO is................ which connotes (=has associations of)...........................By contrast, the layout of We Love Pop is....which connotes........

The typography of MOJO is.... which connotes (=has associations of)...........................By contrast, the  typography of We Love Pop is....which connotes.....

The layout of MOJO is................ which connotes (=has associations of)...........................By contrast, the layout of We Love Pop is.... which connotes.....

The colour palette of MOJO is limited to ..........which connotes (=has associations of)...........................By contrast, the colour palette of We Love Pop is........ which makes it seem.....

The language of MOJO emphasises......whereas the language of We Love Pop is .....

(Below, for interest, is an example of how you might express yourself when analysing media language of a front cover. This analysis is about the blue Q cover that we saw at the end of the lesson.)

Q analysis of media language

layout very orderly content with the cover lines mostly aligned, justified to right and to left; one central image; connotes seriousness, authenticity
typography exclusively one sans-serif typeface, creating a serene, streamlined look; no capitalisation used: connotes modernity
colour colour palette limited to mostly white font with red accents; central splash headline reduced opacity to reflect underwater translucence and mimic water, carrying out the underwater theme "in deep with" and "gets the bends"; connotes elegant visual pun
image main image uses dense, highly saturated colour photography, band deep underwater as if drowning on the seabed in a last embrace, arms closely interlinked and group united with eyes cast down or closed; connotes magical realism and powerful high drama of near-death experience
language language emphasises loss, difficulty and danger: '50 worst decisions', 'I miss..', 'In deep with', 'gets the bends', 'this is worse than the dentist'. Connotes serious lives looked at in a wry manner.
portraying reality the media language presents a world that celebrates serious artistic endeavour, a sense of the music world being precarious & dramatic, with loss and danger
generic conventions the front cover is dominated by an image of an important band 'the band of the decade'; the serious style reflects the values of fans of classic rock and pop; the magazine assumes and addresses the audience's fandom on the cover 'Gillespie quizzed by you'.
intertextuality reference to the Coldplay film

02 NEWS Q. 8 & Q. 9

Understand the news questions

Q.8 Write half to two thirds of a page (5 marks)

Q. 9  Write 1 and a half to two pages (15 marks)

Read the green OCR guide: open link to pdf here 

Start at page 5 'Historical print newspapers and social, cultural, political and historical contexts'
Then page 6- 7 'Newspaper industries – ownership and control'

Here are the 3 Observer texts and the OCR link to open them 

Here are sample answers:

02 MUSIC MAGAZINES Q.4 & Q.5

Q. 4 (5 marks, 2 thirds of a page) on MOJO on representation of musicians
Q. 5 (15 marks, 2 pages) comparing MOJO and another music magazine media language
Sample questions:

Here is where you find OCR revision materials on music magazines (open the pdf link on the left):
To be on the safe side, it seems that we must also be prepared to write about music magazine industry and audiences, so we must read the pdf pages 4, 5 and 6.

Then we practise new questions for q. 4 and q.5, which I have created for this revision sessions. There will probably be MOJO in q.4 but we don't know which edition.  Look at page 8 of the guide with me. 

Question 4 is about representation, that is:

• what version of reality is constructed on the cover (reverence for rock musicians as heroic, as striving for excellence? young women as focussed on social media, romance and appearance?)
• are stereotypes or counter-stereotypes used (young white males as rock stars? anti-stereotypical portrayal of older men as rock musicians? stereotypical female teens loving pink?)
• what social groups are not represented or under-represented (male/female; young/old bias)
• what messages and values are conveyed
• the social and cultural contexts, like celebrity culture, attitudes to gender, to sexuality

Let's practise q. 4 on representation using MOJO covers.

September 2018 Paul Weller

October 2018 Paul McCartney

December 2018 Led Zeppelin

To analyse the 3 covers, use OCR's green guide on page 8. I have summarised it just above.
Below each is how MOJO writes about its cover stars:

December 2018 (ignore the covermount CD)

• FIFTY YEARS SINCE their inception, Led Zeppelin’s surviving members relive the highs and lows of reinventing rock. Their extraordinary imperial ’70s, the terrible loss of John Bonham, the O2 triumph and much more
• THE KINKS Step inside one of English pop’s great masterpieces
• Brian May on the controversial new Queen movie
• THE HOUSE OF LOVE They were ’80s indie’s great hopes, until the madness. But there was an upside: “Stadium success would have killed us all.”

October 2018

• PAUL McCARTNEY REVEALS the often-conflicted man behind the Fab Macca mask as his new album, Egypt Station, sees him re-scale the peak of his powers
• fantastic intimate photo portfolio of McCartney At Home by his daughter, Mary McCartney (you HAVE to see his wallpaper!
• 14 classics of Liverpudlian pop and rock
• celebrating The Band’s Music From Big Pink 
• inside Marianne Faithfull’s extraordinary new album
• Primal Scream seek redemption in Memphis

September 2018

• TEN YEARS SINCE 22 Dreams opened a whole new sonic chapter, Paul Weller goes folk without losing a jot of attitude or attack. Revel in our in-depth exclusive
• The Revolution remember Prince, the boss from hell with God-given talent
• The War On Drugs scale the heights
• The Mahavishnu and Miles man John McLaughlin relives the Fusion Wars

Now let's practise q. 5 on media language using one MOJO cover to contrast with one other magazine, Q (December 2018). 

Q which is has a circulation of 44,000+
Below Q is OCR's comparison of MOJO and We Love Pop. Use the green sheet to help you compare the language of MOJO and Q:

Below Q is the publicity blurb about the December 2018 issue.

Don't:

• Write about the masthead being at the top of the page (and so on) as if the question were about ALL magazine conventions. Instead, write about MUSIC magazine conventions: the genre under discussion
• confuse  serif and sans serif fonts
• be dogmatic about the connotations of a media language element (e.g. ‘black connotes evil’), ignoring its meaning within the particular media product 
• confuse representation analysis with how a magazine addresses its audience.

Q analysis of media language

layout very orderly content with the cover lines mostly aligned, justified to right and to left; one central image; connotes seriousness, authenticity
typography exclusively one sans-serif typeface, creating a serene, streamlined look; no capitalisation used: connotes modernity
colour colour palette limited to mostly white font with red accents; central splash headline reduced opacity to reflect underwater translucence and mimic water, carrying out the underwater theme "in deep with" and "gets the bends"; connotes elegant visual pun
image main image uses dense, highly saturated colour photography, band deep underwater as if drowning on the seabed in a last embrace, arms closely interlinked and group united with eyes cast down or closed; connotes magical realism and powerful high drama of near-death experience
language language emphasises loss, difficulty and danger: '50 worst decisions', 'I miss..', 'In deep with', 'gets the bends', 'this is worse than the dentist'. Connotes serious lives looked at in a wry manner.
portraying reality the media language presents a world that celebrates serious artistic endeavour, a sense of the music world being precarious & dramatic, with loss and danger
generic conventions the front cover is dominated by an image of an important band 'the band of the decade'; the serious style reflects the values of fans of classic rock and pop; the magazine assumes and addresses the audience's fandom on the cover 'Gillespie quizzed by you'.
intertextuality reference to the Coldplay film

PREP Q. 2 worth 4 marks
Revise our 2 music videos by reading the summary below and watching the videos again.
Wheatus Teenage Dirtbag

Avril Lavigne Sk8ter Boi

Year 10 FILMING & EDITING

We divide into 3 groups to shoot a short sequence:

• Tracking shot over objects arranged to 'tell a story'
• Live action shots to develop the story
• Voice over to anchor the meaning (scripts below)
• Edit in Final Cut or iMovie
• Mute ambient sound and add music for soundtrack
• Record voiceover
• Enjoy your Green Slip for good work!

SCRIPTS FOR VOICEOVER

1 RUN FOR HOPE

Today is the annual Charity fun run, raising money for Cancer Research.

It’s a special day, with some very special runners.

One in particular did not think that (s)he would be here today.

Let me tell you her (his) story…..

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2 THE HEIST

This evening we bring you the story behind the daring local bank heist

A teenage thief, a foreign dollar account, a whiff of international crime.

It looks like an open-and-shut robbery case

But it isn’t.

Let us explain the extraordinary student prank that led to an international man hunt.

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3 SECRETS AND LIES

Paris. 1945. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

War had just ended.

My grandmother had a job with the Paris Philharmonic.

But it turned out that being a violinist wasn’t her only job…

Year 10 THE AVENGERS

Our second text for the work on television is The Avengers: The Town of No Return which forms a contrast in terms of historical and social perspectives.

We will look at the OCR background material on UK television at the time and start to discuss issues that this programme raises, such as the way in which war-time casts a shadow over it, how the genders (men and women) are represented differently and how there is no representation of ethnic diversity.

PREP You have watched the opening of the episode The Town of No Return. It is available on our Clickview to watch at home, too. 

Write on your blog what you have noticed about the relationship between Steed and Mrs Peel. 
Secondly, explain the ways in which the audience is made to feel suspicious about Little Bazeley and its inhabitants.

Year 10 CUFFS

In class, we look at a practical filming task that we will tackle next week.

Back to Cuffs as it is a major part of the first exam with three exam questions on its film language, its representations and how it makes meanings for audiences.

Year 10 CUFFS

We first go over Blumler and Katz's model of audience behaviour: the Uses and Gratifications model which constructs audiences as making active choices about media. That is, they use media to gratify needs.

We then turn to Cuffs to continue developing our understanding both of media language and of what meanings audiences take from the extract.

For instance, we note editing:

• cross -cutting
• slow mo 

and camera movement, angles and shot types:

• panning which comes to rest on a new character
• framing where a significant character is seen in the background
• bird's eye view 

PREP Please watch the following extract of Cuffs on Clickview at home then answer these questions on your blog.
1. How is the audience made to realise that the police are ordinary people just like the rest of us? 
2. What makes the criminals come across in a very negative way?
3. At which points in the scene is the audience made to feel sympathy for the police? 

IN POINT: THE DIGGER IS DRIVEN AT HIGH SPEED

OUT POINT: POLICE WOMAN CALLS FOR HELP