Case Studies: Front Cover

From these two music magazines covers, we can identify a range of differences form the magazines, Billboard and the Rolling Stones are both globalised and international receiving a lot of recognition and consumers purchasing see them. 

Billboard 

Mise -en-scene : Billboard cover shows Rap sensation, Eminem in a black background with a black, big hooded coat with a black top with the colour grey showing on the collar. The connotation of the colour black shows the use of the colour to infer to him being very dark, mysterious and dangerous. As a rapper, he is stereotypically being recognised because of his appearance, on top of that, he is also shown to be very mischievous and 'cool-looking' because he is not smiling in the front cover but he is giving a stern look towards the camera which gives us an audience that he is trying to make himself look intimidating and catch us off guard. This is a very typical pose for a rapper, he wants to embrace his masculinity amongst his fans/consumers. The lighting also emphasises on how intimidating he look because their darkness appearing on one side of his face and then there is 'normal' light appearing on the other side of his face.  This infers that he has a dark side to him but people perceive as to being 'shone to the light', this shows versatility on how he has the best of both worlds. The hand on his chest can be identified to be that he is protecting his heart or that he is swearing upon an oath. This could be seen to be a spiritual gesture or just a 'cool rapper' gesture. The colour scheme is neutral with the colour scheme of white and green.

Rolling Stones 

Mise-en-scene: Rolling Stones covers Pop sensation, Rihanna. Rihanna is known to be a female that is very confident in embracing her skin. There is no surprise in her wearing a white string vest with a necklace, diamond studs and her hair covering one side of her face. Her facial expression is the highlight of this cover because she looks pleasantly sexual and not lazy looking. She, again isn't smiling, this is a contrast because as her being a pop star you would expect to see her smiling and jumping around with full colour effect. However, the lighting is very bright making her makeup look flawless. The choice of pink for her lip wear relates to her pop antics. Her body language is slantly to the side and neck bent back, this is presented to reveal her skin so that she can the male sex attention. This is effective because it wouldn't just make her primary audience, females to purchase but along with her secondary audience, males would also want to purchase it too. She is grasping a diverse audience. The colour is very neutral with the choice of Black and white.