AS Level Media: 2014

Friday, 11 April 2014

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

College magazine preliminary task Music magazine final product

Preliminary task

In September I was given my preliminary task which was to create the front cover of a college magazine. The task was a way to practice and prepare for my main AS Media project and it allowed me to get a good idea of what to expect and to help plan ahead. The terminology used when making a magazine was all very new to me, such as the conventions like the mast head and plugs, so the preliminary task helped me learn these terms and improve my knowledge. I also learnt a lot more about the research process as I was unaware of how many different forms of research can be collected. The research I did for this task included a mood board, creating drafts and also reviewing existing products.

Music magazine task

When it came to starting my actual project I was a able to widen the amount of research methods I used. I completed a genre research for my music magazine so that i had a basic idea of what my chosen genre was about. I also looked at the conventions of existing product so I could get an idea of the general layout used, and I researched what songs were currently in the charts so that i could relate to them in my product. I believe that my research was successfully done so i could create my product for my selected target audience, one of the reasons is because of the survey results I received when my product was complete.

Feedback on my final product

I created a survey on Fluidsurveys.com and sent it to everyone in my class asking if they would complete it. The aim of the survey was to see if my product meets the areas I intended it to. I asked questions such as "What age range do you think my magazine is aimed towards?" so i could test whether I have met my target audience which was teenage girls aged 12-16. I have also combined some of the answers to the open questions for my survey, the feedback all seems to state that my pages are conventional and what areas are most noticeable.

Comparison of my products
I have used a much wider range of convention on my music magazine as oppose to my college magazine. My preliminary task only had the following conventions:

Masthead
Plug
Barcode
Features

My music magazine however has a much better range of conventions:

Masthead
Plug
Barcode
Features
Main feature
Skyline
Footer
Drop quote

Overall I think i have made many improvments from when i made my preliminary task at the start of the year compared to my final music magazine product. I learnt a lot more about what a conventioanl magazine looks like and also how to make my own look as professional as possible. I developed many skills on photoshop which was one of the key aspects when creating the magazine. it was also very interesting to make a contents and article page as well, considering this was not part of the preliminary task. The research I did was a huge improvment compared to what I did for my college magazine, and analysing existing products of the same genre that i selected was a huge help when it came to developing my final product.

Thursday, 10 April 2014

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Photoshop

Through the process of constructing my final products I improved a lot in different technological areas. The main improvements I made where in Photoshop, before the project i had experience using it but I mainly used a different photo manipulation program. The project therfore allowed me to learn more on photoshop and improve upon my product over the time. I used the different tools within photoshop to male all of the chnages needed on my porduct. I used the majority of these tools at some point, some of the most common were move, magic wand, lasso tool and the text tool.

Other forms of technology

I also learned that there were many different ways to share and present my media work on my blog. I made accounts for websites such as Slideshare and Prezi which helped me present my work in much more interesting and unique ways, these programs also have a professional look to them. I managed to figure out how to use these programs very easily so I could get straight to completing my work within them.

Another form of technology that i have now improved my knowledge on is photograophy. At college we have a green screen room where students can take photos, I knew little about photography before starting the porject so I managed to learn a lot throught the process. The images used in my magazine have all been taken on a Digital SLR camera so they are of great quality. The room also has professional lighting that I used for the photoshoot.

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience?

During the research period of my project I looked at many existing pop music magazines to get a general idea of what i was aiming for. My audience is teenage girls so I immedietly concentrated more on other magazine aimed for this audience as well. The magazines "We love pop" and "Top of the pops" are existing products that fit this description. I looked at their use of colours and saw a lot of bright and vibrant ones used such as blue, pink, yellow, green and orange, this helped assist me when choosing my own colour scheme.

I also adressed my audience when it came to deciding on a price for my magazine. It came to my attention that most teenage girls will nto have much of their own money to spare and most people purchasing ym magazine will be middle clas or lower on the social table, so I decided on the price of £1.99 for my magazine as I beleived this would be affordable to those.

Survey
Some of the questions that I included on my survey where to determine whether I had sucessfully given the appearence to attract and address my target audience.In total 12 people completed my survey and I created some pie charts to present the information. The results show that 100% of the people who took the survey got my chosen target audience correct from simply looking at my product, this means it would hopefully attract the audience themselves if they saw it in a shop. 90% also got the age range of my target audience correct which means overall my product correctly represents and attracts my audience.

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My finished front cover, contents page and double page spread all include different forms of conventions that are featured in existing media products. I understood the conventions of a music magazine from my research process which is what assisted my decision of the colour scheme. I decided to use three different colours on all of my pages as a way to show continuity, black, pink and yellow were my choices as I believe these work well together and give the impression of a pop music magazine.