Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Time managament & Organisation skills:

Looking back at my preliminary task I can see that both my time managment and organisation skills wernt great. I remember trying to complete my front cover of my 6th from magazine on the day of the deadline. Luckily I learnt from this and when starting on this project I created myself a plan to help me manage my time better. Personly I think that my time managemnt & organsisation skills have imporved massively as I have kept up to date with the work throught out this project. I made sure I was keeping up to date with my work by refuing back to my "media plan", working hard in lessions and allowing time in frees to do media. At times I felt my self falling behind as it was diffiucut balencing media with my other subjects, but if this was the case I stayed behind at school to catch up. Overall I feel like I was able to complete my work to a good startederd.

Software:

When doing my preliminary task I was only able to use powerpoint to create my front cover. This was due to lack of knowlodge I had with better softwares like Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. Looking back & comparing both my magazine covers, I can see a sufficient differience in quality. My music magazine is deffenitly much better value. This is because I was able to use much better softwares to create it. I used Adobe InDesign wich alowed  me to do so much more cool stuff when producing my music mag. Using InDesign also allowed my magazine to be better quaility.

 I deffentily feel like I have learnt alot since my prelimianly task. Before I didnt understand the importance of font, colour, and image when creating a magazine and now I feel i do. As you can see above, ^ the layout of both my magazine covers are quite similar. Similar in the fact that there is no specfic background colour. However the diffence in quality is substantial. The picture taken for my prelimianry task is of very poor quaily, the lighting and camera angeling is bad. The background for my music magazine on the otherhand is much more visualy appealing.

The difference in layout:

When undertaking my preliminary task i didnt despplay my  work in a very nice way. My work consisted of big blocks of writing and no photographs, collages or screan grabs. 

 

 ^ This photo above is a screan grab of my evaluation for  my preliminary task. As you can see, there are no photogrpahs, no scean grabs JUST TEXT! I personaly think that during the couse of prodicing my music magazine I have desplayed and presented my work on in a much more appealing way.

^ This screan grab above is demostrating what i am trying to say. When planning my target readership I created a mood board of pictures, to show people in a galance what sort of individul would real my magazine.

^ Above is a screan grab of an annotated Q magazine. I have added this to show the depth and volume needed when reaseaching different magazines. When annotating magazines for my preliminary task didnt ever go into enough detail. Persoanly annotating exisiting magaszines was one of the hardest things for me as I found it difficult comming up with things to write.  

Photography Skills:

Photograhy for my preliminary task:

^As you can see from the photographs I took for my preliminary task the quality is poor. The pictures don’t look at all professional, this is due to the fact I used and i-phone to take them and the lighting is poor. When doing my preliminary task I had very limited knowledge on photography. I didn’t understand what made a good shot and what didn’t.  However because I wasn't particularly happy with these photos it made me want to lean more about photography so that I knew my photography would improve for the production of magazine.

 

^Looking at my photographs I can see significant difference in the quality of them. When taking photographs for my preliminary task I didn’t take in account the importance of camera angling and lighting, I just took the photos and hoped for the best. When taking my photos for my music magazine I used a different camera and made sure I understood the basics of taking a good photograph. Before capturing my shots I took into account my positioning between myself and the model, the angle of light and framing - this enabled me to take the best pictures possible. I also took this opportunity to experiment which made me realise that there are really no specific rules in photography. Being brave and creative  are important to produce work that is unique to you.

How does your media product represent particualr social groups?

My music magazine represents young music fans in the UK. This audience would choose this magazine as it contains various gig/festival information which tends to excite and attract my target audience (17-23). I believe that this age rage is addressed well through my magazine content, which includes articles on new/upcoming artists that will be of interest to young music fans who want to know more about the future of music.

 

 

Having Delilah Dell  featured on the front cover and in the  feature article is a good representation of young music fans as she is noticeably of similar description. Furthermore the clothing that I chose for both my models to wear reflects an edgy style and what is fashionable amongst my target audience of young woman, and inspiring them with the images they see. The interview on the double page spread askes questions which where chosen to reveal information and aspirations form the interviewee. This represents social groups because they will be interested to know how and why upcoming stars have managed to achieve where they are within the industry.

Unfortunately the pages I created don’t contain a variety of ethnic backgrounds; this is because the number of people available to be  featured in my pages where limited. However in future issues of BEAT I can assure you that a variety of nationalities will be presented. I will have individuals from different ethnic backgrounds featured on my double page spread, on the front cover and on the contents page. This will appeal to all young music fans not just those from a specific ethnic background.

My current pages are female dominated as my target audience is females between the ages of 17-23. Again the only reason males haven’t been featured in this issue is because the availability of people featured in my pages are limited.  However in future issues I will use both male and female artists to make sure there aren’t any gender conflicts or bias.

In what what way does your media product use, develop or challange forms & conventions of real media products?

Front cover alalysis:

Contents page alalysis:

  Feature artical alalysis:

 

I am pleased with my front cover of BEAT that I produced. I was able to includude 9 magazine conventions all of which will attract my target audience.

I included:

• Mast head
• Price
• Barcode
• Pull quotes
• Website
• differenet quotes
• central images 
•  cover lines
• colour scheme

 

Front Cover Analysis - Looking at existing front covers

Contents Page Analysis - Looking at existing contents page

 

Feature Article Page Analysis - Looking at existing feature article page:

 

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout this process of creating my music magazine I have learnt many new skills which I probably would have never of learnt if I hasn’t  studied media. As I’m not the best at using technology doing this task helped me expand my knowledge and get a general grasp on how to use new programs, edit and enhance images . I feel I have produced R&B magazine which is professional & conventional.

 

 Programs:

 

Whilst creating my magazine I had to learn and understand different programs. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop Cs and Adobe InDesign helped me produce my magazine in the most professional way possible, even if it was a challenge!

Blogger: 

I have also been introduced to different websites “Blogger” being one of them. Using Blogger was a new experience for me, it allowed me to express my work through blogging. I loved this way of portraying my work as everybody’s blog was personal to themselves and different to everyone else’s. Blogger allowed me to make posts, which could either contain photographs, videos or just text. I wish I took more time  to make my blog more personal .Uploading and downloading material onto my blog was  another new experience for me but I actually found it really easy. I learned how to screen grab images that I wanted on my blog and then save them as a J.peg and finally upload them onto blogger. This was pretty much all I used on blogger as I worked better producing my work on PowerPoint and then saving it as a image and then uploading it.

 

 

 

 

Adobe Photoshop:

Adobe Photoshop helped me alter, enhance and remove background from photographs using the "magicwond" tool,  making them look more like real existing magazines. I found Adobe Photoshop a bit of a hassle to use if im honest, soemtimes the tools wouldnt do what they are ment to do which caused me fustration.

 

Adobe InDesign:

 

Adobe InDesign helped me build up my magazine and produce a final response. This program was much harder to use than all the other programs becasue there where so many aspects to it. However after a while of using i was slowly able to uderstand the basics. I learnt how to creat text boxes, how to import/place pictures and change fonts. All of these things enabled me to produce my music magazine in the most professional way possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

^ This screan grab above shows my feature artical as a finished product. I produced my feature artical frist so was still new to Abobe Indesign when creating it. I had to so some reseach on what all the tools did, so i had a better understadning. Luckily I found this website " http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/toolbox.html ".  This website explained what every tool did in enough detail for me to understand.

^ Here is a screan grab of some of the stuff this website taught me.


 

 

Powerpoint:

Powerpoint was the only program that I had used before. Having used PowerPoint in previous schools i thought i pretty much knew everythig, I was wrong! Powerpoint allowed me save my work as a J.PEG, which I could then save and then upload on my blog. Saving my work this way enhanced the quality of it. I am sure I will continue to use PowerPoint in this way, as it was very useful.

 

 Photography:

Myphotography skillls have also improved since my preliminalry task. When taking photots for my preliminary task I just used my iphone. I didnt even think about using a better camera.
Having the opportunity to use a high quality camera for my music magazine photos was a privilege. I hadn’t really used one before so didn’t know how much versatile it could be ,so even this was a big learning curve. I learnt things such as high key and low key lighting and how the use of different camera angles can change the perspective of a shot. Using this camera allowed me to take impressive shots with a click of a button. When capturing my shots I changed the settings to see what difference it made , which was fascinating. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract/adress my audeice I made sure my contents page, feature atrical & front cover all looked professional and where visualy appealing to my targte audiece.

 

How my front cover would appeal to my audiece:

I personally feel that my front cover really reflect my target audience of 17-23 year old females. The front cover is extremely vibrant. The overall layout is simplistic which contrasts well with the tie dye background which is colourful. However, the artist contrasts further by her clothing and body language. Although, my front cover seems quite busy, the main focal  point is clearly the artist. Her arms and legs seem to stand out from the background pattern and her clothing.  From my previous research I have learnt that the clothing worn by the artist portrays the R&B genre. I looked up the sort of things R&B artists such as Beyoncé , Nicki Minaj and Rihanna  wear to help me decide what my front cover artist should wear. The media today, reflect a certain image. I felt that this was important to include on the front of my magazines, as many young females between the ages of 17-23 aspire to be like them. Delilah Dell fits within this media ideal, as she is slim and attractive.

How my Contents Page appeals to my audience:

My contents page on the other hand has a much more simplistic colour scheme of back, grey & white. This monochrome palette allows the image to stand out. The lay out is fairly similar to my front cover as the cover lines are all on the left had side of the page, this layout is effect as the text is limited allowing readers to focus mainly on the image. The image itself replicates the R&B genre, this is due to her body language and clothing. The body language  imitates how real life R&B artists act attracting my target audience.

 The captions are in bigger and bolder font which enables the reader to see the content just by a glace. I feel that my audience  would be attracted to this as they are more likely to be interested in the feature artists rather than the article itself.

 

 How my Feature Article appeals to my audience: 
 

        My feature article looks professional and attractive to the readers. The article itself doesn’t look too overwhelming due to use of columns not paragraphs. The colours used break up the text, making it look legible. Again, the focal point of the page is the artist. Her body language is illustrating several emotions. This forms a bond between the target audience and artist. I feel this artist appeals to my target audience because of her unidentified emotions. Her body language could come across in many different ways as it doesn’t show an immediate emotion. I think this would lead to people wanting to read the article as they are inquisitive to find out what emotion she is portraying.