Question 7Research and Planning

InfluenceMy genre, primary and secondary research influenced my work and made me want to strive to be as professional as possible with my own product.

Through this I also gained a lot more knowledge of the forms and conventions of a magazine. Developing my skills benefitted my work by allowing me to work to the best of my ability; a professional standard. By learning about the forms and conventions of my genre, it allows my product to be more in line with real media products.

Organisation

During my production I tried to keep track of all my work, making foldering for specific things and saving things with names that make sense when I go back to them so i wouldn’t lose files.

I also made my self check-lists and to-do lists for every take and set myself a deadline to have certain tasks completed on time to improve my work methods from the Prelim task.

Question 7Construction

Photography CompositionI was able to develop my skills within this area using a better camera and the studio within college.

The lights that were available in the studio enable me to create a bright photo without a lot of shadows which is what i was aiming for. I learned how to use a light meter and set the aperture and shutter speed setting on the camera in order to ensure that my photograph wasn’t over or underexposed. This is clearly evident in my final production as compared to my prelim task as the models don’t have a slightly yellow tint on them, unlike in my prelim task.

Page LayoutAs i develop my skills in Photoshop and InDesign i was able to place guides on my work to be able to align my sell lines to the left or right hand side of the magazine. This gave it a clean cut look leading it to being more professional looking.

I could use tools on the toolbar to cure and lead my sell lines white allowed me to group certain words as a topic on the page. On Photoshop, I could also use the ‘Stroke’ effect to allow words to stand out against the background so that they are easily visible.

Fonts

Instead of using the default fonts that come with Photoshop and InDesign, as i did in the Prelim task, I searched, myself to find the exact fonts I wanted to use for each component of my magazine.

I used Dafont.com to find the perfect fonts I was looking for, downloaded them from the website and installed them into the software.

Use of Models + Mise en Scene

For my prelim task, finding models was only about availability, hence why my prelim didn’t have a clear genre. However for my final product, I needed the models to suit the genre that i had chosen ‘Indie Rock’.Because of this, I used models that fit to the description of the ‘Indie Rock’ persona (long, raggy hair etc). This is different to my Prelim as there wasn’t a need behind the project to actually sell my magazine to an audience.

Content

Instead of the content being generalised and just quick ideas, the contents for the main product was though through to be able to catch the target audiences attention. for example, it needed to have musicians advertised in the magazine that were of the ‘Indie Rock’ genre, to colour used needed to be fit in with the rest of the page and look professional, the offers/deals needed to be suitable for the younger generation, hence free posters and information on upcoming gigs/albums.