Evaluation

Working with existing forms and conventions


My magazine related to music magazines in various ways. Firstly simple things like the mode of address. For example I would say things like "exclusive" or "breaking news" and even "the new kid on the block", in order to entice people into reading my magazine. In addition to this I made my mode of address slightly informal this was because my ideal reader was between 16-18 years old, and if i made my mode of address overly formal it would of alienated them. Also the design was conventional. For instance on my front cover the title of my magazine was the biggest size of writing. It stood out and was easily identifiable. Another thing that was conventional in terms of design was the use of things like bar codes to make it clear to my reader that this magazine was official. And also on my front cover I included things like the price, which all types of magazines regardless of whether its a music. In terms of my use of imagery, this was also conventional because the types of pictures that I took were typical of the R&B genre that I was trying to represent. For example on my front cover my artist is porting at my reader, this appropriately displays the attitude that the majority of \R&B singers posses.


Working in media production contexts



I approached both tasks in varying ways. For example in my preliminary task I did a lot of research with my peers because the magazine was aimed at them in particular seeing as it was a school magazine. Therefore I had to regularly do surveys in order to get information on what they wanted.


For the main I approached it differently, I mainly looked at examples of magazines like "clash" and "classic rock" in order to see how there magazines looked at how best I could implement some of there ideas into my own work.


During the course of the work I had to make some creative problem solving decisions. For example the editing of my images. Like in my preliminary task I took a picture of some of my friends outside of the sixth common room on a very sunny day. However I didn't realise how much a problem the sunlight would be. So I have to use a burn tool to darken the images, in order to make it more presentable.  Another problem was that when I had printed my preliminary task it came out extremely pix elated, therefore I made sure this didn't happen again, so on my main task I learned how to print off without it being very blurred.  

I organised my human resources simply by asking some people in my sixth form whether they would be able to participate in the making of my magazine. Some said yes, and some said no. For example I asked my Friend to be my artist, and we organised a date to have the photo shoot so that I could use the images for my magazine. The locations were easy to find because out school had a specialised room to take photos.  In terms of costumes and props I just asked my friends to bring in clothing that would be appropriate for a R&B mag. Other locations were hard to come by due to time constraints.  For my photo shoots I managed my time in class by doing 30 minute photo shoots, and then 30 minutes in class in order to edit photo's and to think of ideas about how I wanted my magazine to look.

Using technology

The use of technology was a key factor in enabling my ideas to come into fruition.  At first my creative ideas were
impeded by my lack of photoshop skills. This meant that I couldn't implement ideas that I wanted to for example on my prilimanry task I wanted to change to font of my title but I couldnt becuase i just did't know how to do this meant my lack of DTP technology understanding meant some of the idea I had floating in my head couldn't be done.  But by the time I needed to my main task I had managed to have a better understanding on how to use photopshop, and that meant I could use websites to change fonts etc.

Phottoshop was one of the main tools that I neeeded. It helped me edit my photto's like adjusting lighting. It helped me create a good front cover for my main task.

Thinking about audience
During the process of making my work I was making decisions based from ideas I was developing from my reader. Some of these ideas came from surveys. For example When I was choosing the name of my school magazine in the prilimnary task I had a range of names some boring and typical like "BD magazine" and some more exiciting like "Jimba" and "BD heat". When "BD heat" got the most votes I realised that my target audience wanted things to be more fun and funky, aswell as a little bit serious, this was good to find out because I could then use this information, and later applied it to my main task.

My audience also influenced the composistion of my shots because my target audiences attention neeeded to be caught, so I decided to take a picture for my main task of my artist pointing at the reader. They also influenced my micro detail becuase although my target audiecne wanted my magazine to be fun, they also wanted it to be intrested and informative. So I decided to frame my picture in black and white, which changed the complexion of my double page spread. So although my article was exciting, the pictures in constrast were reflectiive.

Representing
My ideas approached specific representations of school life because in the prilimanry task I took a photto of students together smilling and having fun. Which have a positive refelction of school live, and therefore it helped to include everyone because both females and males were being reprented well.

Contrastingly in my main task, although I wanted my magazine to appeal to both boys and girls, the choice of my front cover excluded the girls. This is becuase some of the colours I used were more manly and this would not attract a female audience. As well as this my mode of address excluded the much older audience, for example my magazine is R&B, consequently people from a middle class background, are highly unlikely to want to read . Where as those from a working class background would.