Message for Examiner

In my blog you will find the research and planning, production and evaluation for my music magazine, I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

On the left are images of my final music magazine cover and my college magazine cover which I created at the start of the year. I feel that my media skills have progressed a lot since then by looking at these two pieces. The first reason for this is that, from looking at my college magazine, I can see that I used a simple font and did no photo editing at all in the making of the magazine; also, there is a large amount of blank space on my college magazine while the sticker and bar code take up too much. I can see that even on my college magazine I used a three colour scheme however there is much missing from that magazine which I have implemented into my music magazine. From the beginning of the year to now, I have learnt about what makes a magazine and all of the stuff which needs to be on there and I have learnt a lot about how to edit images using photoshop which is extremely helpful in the media. When I first came into media at the start of the year, I had no experience of creating a magazine so my original magazine was very basic. After researching many different magazines I found out that much more was needed. The cover lines on my college magazine

colour clash with the photo and are hard to read and they also cover up some of the photo and are poorly positioned. Many features of the college magazine were very simple such as the fonts used; especially for the title. The font for my music magazine is typical of a rock magazine. Although my college magazine font is much more simple, using a font similar to the font used on my rock magazine would not suit it therefore maybe a simple font was more appropriate. The background on my college magazine is a simple black background whereas I have used a gradient on my newer magazine. Also, my model photo on my rock music magazine has been edited so that the background is visible whereas on my college magazine; because the photo has not been edited, there is unnecessary space being taken up by the photo.

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This is a DSLR which I used to take all of the pictures of my models, after using it many times I have  learnt about the different settings and which ones are best for which picture I am taking. The reason this is necessary is because different settings work better for different camera shots and give them a higher resolution and better quality. I was already familiar with how to use a camera however this is much more advanced and had to learn what all the settings do.

I have used Photoshop for all my Image creating and editing and have used it to fully create my music magazine including my cover page, contents page and double page spread. Photoshop has many photo editing tools which speed up the production of my magazine such as the Magic wand tool which I can use to quickly separate a section of image which I want to keep and remove the unwanted part of the image.

I have used iPhoto to import all pictures taken on the DLSR camera and put it onto the mac. Using this, I can quickly transfer photos of which I have just taken onto the mac immediately. It also saves my last photos which I have imported incase I lose them.

I have used a mac for all of my media work throughout the year and, all applications used in creating my magazine were used on a mac. It has all the applications I have needed for the production of my magazine. I have used a mac before so I was familiar with how to use it however there is some software which is completely new to me which is pre-installed on the mac.

I have used Microsoft Powerpoint to create all of my simple slideshows which needed creating. It is not very professional however it is simple and easy to use.

I have used Blogger to post all post all of my media coursework onto the internet where it can be examined. I have never made a blog before however it was easy to get the hang of.

I have used Prezi to create a presentation about my target audience, I have never used it before however I got the hang of it quite quickly. It is more professional than Microsoft Powerpoint in my opinion.

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? Why?

My target audience is illustrated to the left. My target audience is rock music fans who would be interested in reading articles about their favourite bands. My typical target audience would wear casual clothing with maybe a t-shirt with a band logo or instrument. The drawing on the left shows a man with long hair which is stereotypical of fans of rock music however this is unnecessary. My target audience is also people who play instruments like the guitar as there is a section in my magazine for instruments. Many rock music fans play some kind of instrument therefore I hope most people who buy this magazine for the music will play some kind of instrument so that they can read that section of the magazine and hopefully the instrument section will attract more readers to buy the magazine.

Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Please click on the Picture to go to my flickr where I have written about the distribution of my magazine.

Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Above is an image of both mine and a professional music magazine cover, I will use these to compare how the models represent the rock music genre.

Both models have the same blank facial expression however while my model is looking towards the camera, the model on the 'Kerrang' magazine is looking away. They use a blank facial expression to express the meaning which is supposed to be expressed in their songs.

A mid shot has been used for both of these magazines which shows that both models are holding a guitar. Both models look as if they are confident with what they are doing. This is fairly common is rock music magazines.

In both of the magazines, the models are wearing dark clothing which is typical of rock music magazines as it is the usual trend for rockstars. In the Kerrang! magazine, the model is wearing smart clothing whereas in the Impact magazine the model is wearing a band t-shirt which is more casual however none of these are more typical than the other.

Overall, there are many similar features used on these magazines which the models portray, this is because they are both from the same style so they both use the same trends.