T3 vs. Heat: The Battle of the Fonts

Font is a crucial element to any publication ever produced. More so to a magazine, a business that survives on sales to keep producing. The companies have to create covers that make you pick up their magazine from the sea of other mags that are on offer in your generic magazine selling establishment. I am going to look at two magazines that I consider to be popular in the magazine market; T3 and Heat.

T3 is a monthly technology magazine, aimed at primarily for men around 18 and above. Every cover of T3 consists of a female model in provocative clothing, the obvious indicator of the market for the magazine. This magazine isn't a Nuts or Zoo type of magazine with lots of pictures of the ladies for the lads. T3 use the attractive female to draw the male's eyes to their magazine and to continue reading what the magazine has to offer. There are two types of font on this magazine cover, we have the T3 logo font and the rest is this blocky serif font. Font colours used: gold, red, white and black. The red is for the main feature, in the largest font, gold for the logo - not too important but still stands out, white and black - don't stand out and just used for smaller captioned areas.

Heat is a weekly celebrity gossip magazine were primarily female readership. The first thing I noticed, bizarrely is how the title 'heat' is the only word that is in lower case, the rest of the font is in a striking upper case giving the sense of importance the text. Again like T3, Heat uses a large red font for the main feature. However, they also use the same red colour for the logo text. I feel this shows the popularity of the magazine, they know people will be looking for their magazine so put the title font in a stand out bright colour so the public can locate it easily. In other parts of the cover the use of text highlighting it used for words 'World exclusive' and 'Exclusive'. The 'sub stories' have uppercase white text with yellow text to emphasise certain stand out words like 'ROW' and 'HEARTBREAK', cheery. Also the notable use of a handwritten like font at the bottom of magazine in yellow saying 'TAKE THAT!'. I feel this is used to add a personal touch to the story which the demographic readers will relate too.

The Archers & Ferrington's Soundscape

In 1950, Godfrey Baseley created the audiobook of Emmerdale Farm. I joke of course, 1950 saw the pilot season of The Archers on the BBC Light Programme. Emmerdale Farm actually manifested on our tiny 576i television screens 22 years later in 1972. The Archers has been broadcasted ever since seeing life on the previous mentioned BBC Light Programme and the BBC Home Service, now known as BBC Radio 4. The long-running British audio soap averages an audience of five million listeners each episode making it the most listened to non-news item on the radio station, the programme also fetches over a million ‘Listen-Again-ers’ on the BBC iPlayer.

            Now, why would a 19 year old student be blogging about a show aimed at 40+ year olds? Well one, I have to as part of my summer project and two I… have to. We have been given a link to an exhilarating online article written by Alan Beck. In said exhilarating article Beck talks about Gary Ferrington’s (1994) three aspects of a radio play soundscape; Foreground, Contextual Sounds and Background. I know I shouldn’t be one to pick but surely Contextual Sounds should be Mid sounds? But hey, if I knew what I was talking about tutors would be sending students to my blog to research (HA). Beck illustrates his concept through the use of a fire scene, I will make my own, to try to keep this sinking ship of a blog post, fresh. So, right now I’m sitting on the sofa, the television (which I’m most definitely not watching more than writing this, a whole other blog post would be about the lack of decent TV on at 7AM on a Saturday morning) is the foreground, the sound of my fingers typing away would be contextual (mid) sounds and the Isle of Man rain pouring outside would be the background sound.

            Good (old) Alan then goes on to discuss foreground signposting, radio’s Establishing Shot. This is where foreground sound effects are used at the beginning of a scene to establish location or a certain action. Do we need an example of this or do we understand it? You get it, alright then I’ll continue. Next, we look at Ferrington’s second category, which Beck’s called ‘Contextual Sounds Taking Place in the Vicinity of the Foreground Sound’, slips right of the tongue, right? Contextual sounds, put simply, are sound effects we hear through a radio play like a phone ringing or someone turning off a laptop after reading a boring blog post… Or as Beck puts they “are little peaks or intrusions from the background which serve to push the tension up a notch which a director can use to punctuate the rhythm of a scene.” The background sounds are often known as atmos sounds, a recording of a setting or location which helps complete the image of the scene in the listeners minds eye.

            I have just arrived on The Archers website and navigated myself to an online episode list, I will now listen to an episode and see if Ferrington’s concept is present in the production of the radio play. Lets be honest, this blog has been a waste of time if it doesn’t, but yes let’s persevere. The episode I have chosen to watch has a description of “Kathy has a nerve-racking wait. Meanwhile Tom is determined to make a sale.” I’m intrigued.

            Yes. I can safely say The Archers demonstrates the use of a three aspect soundscape. I’ll take the scene where the so called Kathy is outside talking to a friend. The scene starts with the foreground sound of a car passing, then there is dialogue, behind the dialogue is an atmos track of trees blowing in the wind. Oh and it turns out Kathy’s nerve-racking wait was as her son was getting his GCSE results. Nice. I also noticed the use of distancing away from the microphone to maximise the use of stereo transmitting. The voices aren’t in a mono format, where the same audio comes out of each channel at the same level. I had Kathy’s friend’s voice coming more from the left speaker and Kathy herself more from the right. This creates a 3D-like surround sound, giving the listener a more spatial awareness to the action happening.

            I feel I have learnt more about the complexity of audio production, in particular radio plays, and the hierarchy of the sounds you use. I can’t say I’ve been drawn into The Archers and will most probably never finish listening to the episode I began, but who knows in 31 years when I’m in their demographic audience I may see the attraction.

River Monsters: Hidden Predators

Recently, I extended my television viewing horizons from E4’s American Comedies like The Big Bang Theory and Friends, to programs with a little more beef. If you are held hostage by a certain digital television provider, check if you have the Discovery channel. I never knew we did, but we do and I love it. I love it even more in shiny HD. A year ago I thought the Discovery channel was full of boring documentaries on World War 2 and government, it is far from that, there is a reason it is the leading documentary channel provider. You can catch documentaries of a wide variety, to name a few of my favourites, Whale Wars, Why Planes Crash and Catastrophe.

I’ve also watched River Monsters this morning on Discovery (and HD). This series follows extreme angler Jeremy Wade as he travels around the world uncovering the largest and most dangerous fish that exist on our planet. In this episode, Jeremy was in South Africa where aggressive and unpredictable bull sharks have been found in rivers. Each episode lasts 1 hour, however without the irritating commercial breaks we get about 40 minutes of content. Just enough to keep us simpletons engaged and entertained enough to follow the pretty pictures and colours.

We are led through the program by Jeremy Wade, as he provides a visual and audio tour through the episode. He is presenting the program on his own and is the focal point for a lot of camera shots as he address us, the audience, through his links. Following on from the information provided in the video links, Jeremy then gives additional information and direction through a very scripted studio voiceover that includes such dialogue gems as “bitten off more that I can chew” and “I’m not off the hook”.

Icon Films Limited, the shows Production Company used music from ‘Musictopia’ and ‘Audio Network’ for the series original music. The music is used to add high tension to the scenes where Jeremy Wade is leant over a small fishing boat fiercely winding his fishing rod attempting to pull a shark over board. I heard a lot of percussive and string music, which is commonly found in your typical ‘epic’ movie. In addition to adding to the mood and atmosphere of the program, the music was used to emphasise a scene change, just to make sure we were totally aware we are looking at a computer generated map now, and those aren’t real life.

It is clear to me that additional atmos and foley sounds have been captured for this program. Calming sounds of waves lapping on the beach, and the sound of a fishing rod clicking as it is wound are some of many sounds that I heard during the program. Jeremy didn’t wear a visible microphone so his voice will have been caught by a boom mic operated by member of crew who has the ability to hold a mic high up and balance on a fishing boat. I’m writing as if that is a hard thing to do, even though I’ve never held a boom mic high, or tried balancing on a fishing boat. I’ll just assume till I know otherwise.

The camera work on the program can sometimes be a little unstable as the camera man rushing to the edge of the boat to sea the monster that inhabits the river. The camera would tend to have Jeremy in the left of the shot and the edge of the boat to the right. We would then have a quick slight zoom into the fishing rod. This gives an unprofessional essence to the shot in technical hindsight, but I feel it just adds to the excitement and tension with quick jumpy cuts. We also have lots of close ups of the sharks and extreme close ups of their teeth and other parts. When Jeremy was pulling a fish closer to the ship, it would cut to an underwater and one can only assume point of view shot of the fish as it is pulled closer. This is obviously a production element that the creators have filmed separately and incorporated to the documentary to add more depth, excitement and visual stimulation. I would have expected a little more interviews in the program, perhaps a man missing a limb after wrestling a shark, or a family who’s pedalo was bitten through by Jaws, but there was only one ‘proper’ interview in this episode. When I say proper, as in an interview where it’s clearly evident it has been set up. In this interview, Jeremy talks to Copas Veid about his fishing tales. They sit at a nice wooden table with a flat landscape and blue sky behind. The interview is mostly presented in a mid shot, with cut aways of close ups of Jeremy’s hands, or an underwater shot.

I would definitely recommend this program, as it’s easily accessible and a great time filler for the times when you have that spare hour for intellectual feeding. Give it a try, you never know it might qualify for a Series Link status?