My Final Product

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

 I have learned, looking at my preliminary task cover to my final front cover; when taking photos using a studio with proper lighting and cameras result in professional looking photos as apposed to 'ATTAIN' in which the picture was taken with my iPhone 5 in the outside sunshine.

I have learned how to arrange sell lines and display them more clearly. With 'ATTAIN' the pattern on the props meant that it was difficult to write over it as you couldn't read the text but because the props took up such a large pre portion of the page it left me with hardly any room for text anyways. When creating 'EXPRESS' I chose a prop that was fairly plain to avoid this problem and I made sure it wasn't centre of the page making it look busy.

I have learned how to attract a specific audience depending on the genre of magazine by using the correct props and model.

My skills have developed in terms of creating a magazine that looks realistic. This is due to the correct use of conventions and being very disciplined with my choices such as colour theme, font, font size and arrangement.

With my preliminary task I was quite relaxed and picked any random fonts and images and stuck with them, where as on my final piece in the editing process I played around with different colours, images and mastheads until I was completely satisfied.

If I could change anything I would change the masthead to the same burgundy red colour that is used throughout. I would say this because I have come to realise there is a cluster of white towards the top 1/3 of the page including 'EXPRESS', '12TH OCTOBER 2014 £2.50', 'THE BATTLE' and '1O TUNES YOU NEED TO HEAR'. Although the white does stand out I think that perhaps the red would also do the same, but better.

I thought carrying out the preliminary task was useful because it helped me learn from my mistakes as I progressed into making my final piece. I would occasionally look back and make sure I wasn't making the same mistakes I did with my preliminary and In the end it worked in helping me create, what I believe, a far better product.

I gained a lot of knowledge that was vital when creating my music magazine. I needed to gain independent research skills to inform myself how to attract an audience that is correct for my genre of magazine. I learnt editing skills such as adjusting the colour of my images used and how to fit an arrange everything on a page so it looks appealing to the eye. I had to learn how to export files to the correct format so I could upload them onto my blog (from pages document to a JPEG). Last but not least I had to learn how to write for the correct purpose which was to intrigue and audience and draw them in (this occurred mostly with my sell lines).

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

I chose not to use photoshop when creating my product as I have been working from my personal apple macbook and I do not have that software. I have overcome tricky obstacles through making this decision such as trying to rid of the background on various photos i've used for my front cover, contents page and double page spread. I had to find a way to do it without photoshop, at first I tried using 'instant alpha' on 'pages' but I found this not to be precise enough so I turned to online tools where there are websites similar to photoshop that are accessible 'https://pixlr.com/editor/' being an example of the one I used.

Computer technology:

I used a memory stick to save all of my coursework to so I could easily move work from laptop to computer which was very convenient. I however, experienced some problems with this when I wasn't 'ejecting' it and a lot of my coursework got ruined before I could use it:

To fix this I had to save what I could from draft documents and piece it back together.

I also used an SD card when taking the photos for my magazine so I could transfer them onto my laptop. 

I used prezi once to create my genre research. It was a free way to create a presentation piece and put lots of information into one piece however I found it to be very time consuming and that is why I only used it the once. 

I used iMovie to create several videos, one to show how I edited a photo and one to use to present. It is a piece of soft wear that my laptop has therefore free of use to me and I found it very useful for editing video footage and putting voice overs and background music in videos to present. 

I used quick time to take all my audio recordings and screen recordings for iMovie. It's really useful as you can select how much proportion of the screen you want it to record therefore any other areas you don't want to be seen don't have to be.

I used pages to assemble and create all of my product. I liked this format because I am familiar with it and it is the application I used to create my media magazine at GCSE. It is simple to use and allows you to choose from an array of fonts, unlimited amount of photos and holds many various other qualities. 

I used this to create a small presentation as it had a variety of online templates. It was free of use and great to use as I don't have power point. All that was required was an email to sign up then you simply click to create a new presentation, scroll through the options provided and choose one that you like then start right away, like so: 

Last but not least I used 'POWTOON' to create a presentation also. It was very similar to emaze, there was a sign up recurred. It was slightly more difficult to navigate my way around but this site gave me more options when editing. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I chose to target the Indie scene genre as it connects with my theme and I thought it would be fun to create a magazine a bit unusual in terms of style and music to what is already on the market. In my research I had created a reader profile

I put features on this such as 'other interests' and 'occupation' because I wanted to achieve depth for the target audience in other forms other than just their taste in music. Other research such as my questionnaire, I made on a site called survey nuts, which helped me to understand what the audience expects and is looking for therefore by following their opinion I will be appealing to my target audience and created the most accurate magazine that I can.



Each question I asked was very relevant and helped me make designs for each aspect of my magazine. If it wasn't for one of the answers I received to 'What is your opinion on magazine freebies' stating 'I love a magazine freebie as it make me even more excited to buy the product' I perhaps wouldn't have included one due to my response of 'I wouldn't expect any freebies with the magazine being a fairly average price - in my opinion.' I did though choose to in my final product because it can only ever be a positive aspect and not a negative.

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

How does your media product represent particular social groups?