Kerrang! Magazine

As part of our coursework we had to create a different form of media other than our music video. For the first part of this i decided to create a magazine article from rock magazine 'Kerrang!' from the point of view of a reporter who went to see our video being shot. The Kerrang! article includes a front cover for the magazine, the main article and a page of pictures that a photographer took at the shoot of the band making the video. Before I started writing the article and producing the layout I researched the conventions of the modern day music magazine, amongst which include Kerrang! and NME. They used a lot of black, white and red; colours of power and dominance, so i decided to stick to these 3 colours myself to make the articles realistic. I decided to go along with the Kerrang! Article style as it is the most likely to publish something involving System of a Down:

The front cover:






















The Article:

As it is too hard to read from this view, below is the text from the article:

Is this the freakiest of System’s videos yet? Three rubber ducks, a piñata head and a “deserted forest”...our survey says yes

Wandering onto a System of a Down video set is like walking into a parallel universe; you never know what to expect. It could be gas mask clad soldiers invading a wedding party; it could be a bizarre child drifting aimlessly through a tent...but in this case, it was even stranger. As I brushed the branches apart, peering onto the set of the highly anticipated video for ‘Question!’ my first reaction was somewhat of a disappointment. That was until I saw System’s front man Serj, deep in conversation with a severed piñata head.
“The video is like looking deep into the bottomless pit that is your own mind” revealed Tankian
“But instead of blocking out all the weirdness, the tribulations of the complexities of life today, we embrace them in this video.”
He pauses to let me soak in this philosophical quotation before continuing.
“This video is all those mad dreams you have rolled into one. The fear of falling, the fear of being alone, the fear of failure. But in questioning these things you have to except them as reality. Question! Is what you want it to be, it’s insanity, its unusual and more importantly...it’s us.”
I left Serj at this point to mooch around the set and in doing so, got lost in the wood. It wasn’t so much a set, as a few guys and a camera in a cold wet forest, but what it signified was System’s return to their roots. Not so much big money, big gigs and huge record deals, but those moments of true brilliant insanity that bought the band to the main stage in the first place.
“It’s calculated stupidity.” Quipped Daron knowingly.
“It’s just one of those videos where we can really get involved and really have fun with it. It doesn’t really make much sense unless you just let yourself go and flow with the strangeness of it all. It’s just a dream world.”
From what I can tell the video has the potential to be the strangest video yet from System. The freaky zombie like makeup of the band, the three omniscient ever present ducks and the oppressive atmosphere of the eerie setting in the forest; make this a true rollercoaster of emotions. From watching it live in production I didn’t know how to feel. Should I have laughed at the strangeness, or should I have felt disturbed at the strangeness? In the end I did both and I think this is what the band has tried to do with this video. It’s as Serj so poetically put it, “its insanity, it’s unusual and most importantly...it’s us” System are back to their best.