Clothing/Model Research

Obviously I cannot just put any old person on my front cover. The results would be disastrous! I needed to discover just what type of person fitted in with the Dubstep genre (clothing, appearance, attitude) and then find a model (term used loosely for fear of the 'model's' ego getting any bigger!) which would fit this criteria. After looking at various images of Dubstep artists in photo shoots & at gigs, some clear similarities started to show:

Headphones

 A repeated find amongst all of the pictures was the appearance of headphones. Due to the frequent appearance of headphones, it is clear that they are associated with the Dubstep genre. This aided me in coming to a conclusion that I should try and use headphones in my pictures for the front page, contents, and double pages spread. Seen above to the right, Skrillex is pictured with the popular Dre Beats Studio headphones. With such a well known figure in Dubstep wearing them, it would be sensibly assume these headphones could be used.






Clothing

To find out what sort of clothing my model would wear, I started to look deeper into image searches as the majority of results at the top were either irrelevant or album covers. After once again looking through the typical artists (Skrillex, Chase & Status, Magnetic Man, Nero) I soon discovered that although there were various different images with different shirts and jackets, a continuous pattern emerged. 

This was that there was at least one picture within the first 2/3 pages of results where the artists were wearing leather/material jackets. This is shown above to the left with Skrillex, directly left with Nero and directly to the right with Chase & Status. As I continued researching clothing, I kept seeing a leather style jacket appearing, bringing me to the assumption that I will try and get my model to wear a leather jacket or at least some type of clothing resembling this.




Stance/Attitude

This is perhaps the most important part it determining how my magazine will ultimately come together. The stance and attitude of the person featuring in the magazine must look realistic and suitable for what I'm using them for which in this case, is Dubstep. It is therefore key I get a good understanding of how the various artists within the genre act and how they look when they appear to the public. 

This was perhaps the most influential picture in me deciding on the stance my model would be trying to imitate. When you ask people about Dubstep, whether in a good opinion or bad, Skrillex is almost always mentioned. I wanted my model to capture the Skrillex mannerism and this was fairly easy to discover. This picture shows Skrillex in front of a wall (I'm so good at this analysis stuff!). He has his legs close together with his hands in his pockets. This would usually be considered as an insecurity or just bad posing however for this genre it does appear more frequently than you would think. Along with this picture, the image of Skrillex above under clothing shows him with his left hand in his pocket, indicating this pose perhaps would work on a front cover or on a double page spread.

In terms of a pose for the contents or perhaps even being used within the double page spread story, I liked the way a publicity shot of the upcoming artist Gemini was taken. It showed him sitting down with his arms laying on his legs, looking like he is in deep thought. I personally thought that this not only looked extremely effective, but could also be imitated quite easily. It would also allow me to reference my decisions associated with picture choice to my research and show the reasoning behind picking certain stances. 






Props
Due to my decision of picking Dubstep as my genre (much to my teachers disgust) I felt props were not needed as much as if I were to pick Indie music, Hip-Hop or Rock. This is due to the fact no real instruments are used in the creation of a Dubstep track and the majority of the work is done by computers. Nevertheless I looked into various images and noticed something which I knew I could use in at least one of my pictures. Vinyl records kept appearing on the results pages when I was searching Dubstep Artists. I quickly decided I wanted to try and use a vinyl record as a prop in my pictures as it would give a clear indication of the genre based magazine.


I shall shortly be putting my collection of photos on this blog, allowing you to draw comparisons between my attempts of recreating and altering some of these techniques.