Preliminary Task

 

 

Prelim Task Evaluation

What did you find difficult about producing your school magazine? What did you find easy?
I found it difficult to make to make the cover look like an actual magazine, putting it all together so that it all tied in proved much harder than I thought it would. The production took a lot longer than I thought it would as every little part of magazine has to be thought through, chosen and altered accordingly and this took a long time to do. The easiest part, for me, was choosing individual factors such as background colours and the masthead font as there were only a few options to choose from that would actually work.

How would your task have been easier if you had researched into school magazines?
If I had done some research into school magazines then I would know more about how/where to take the photos for the cover/contents page. I also would've known a lot more about how to structure my magazine which would've made the task easier as without knowing I had to do a lot of guessing 

What tactics did you use to attract your audience? 
Due to it being a school magazine, of course my target audience was school pupils. Being a pupil myself I knew that most people tend to find school magazines boring and don't have any interest in reading it and so I tried to make it so that it would actually interest 16-18 year olds. I chose to make my magazine specific to the sixth form at my own school, and because of being a student there I had some idea of what a pupil might want. I made it bright and colourful so that it wasn't boring. I also didn't put too much writing on the front as I knew it would put people off. Using pictures of people from my sixth form also would've appealed to the audience as if it is someone they know on the cover they are more likely to want to read. Also I made sure that the stories on the front were ones the students could relate to, as this would lead them to wanting to know more and read further. 

What have you learnt about photoshop/other software used in the production of your preliminary task?
In terms of Photoshop and fireworks I have much more confidence and ability when it comes to using them than I did when I started, I had to spend a lot of time on both of the software and it lead to me gaining a lot of knowledge about both. I hadn't used either of them a lot beforehand and I was mostly clueless, now however I have a much better understanding of both. 

What lessons have you learnt here that will enable you to excel in the production of your main task-the music magazine?
I have learnt a lot time management wise. I didn't manage my time well at all for this task so I think this has taught me that for the main task I need to keep to a time plan. I also have learnt a lot when it comes to photographs, for example that the picture needs to be good quality, well thought out and the front cover will fit around the photo rather than the other way around. I learnt that making a magazine is a lot harder than I thought and I will need to think everything through thoroughly. 

Original Photoshoot

For my magazine cover I decided that I would like to have the pictures I used relating to Idsall Sixth Form. I asked some of my fellow students if I could photograph them working, on both computers and in a class room.

                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                          

For this picture I used an 'over the shoulder' shot. This shows the student working on the computer, which I thought was effective for a school magazine.



For the above photos, I took some shots from different angles. These show pupils interacting and working together, which I liked because  it shows the friendly atmosphere of the Sixth Form.

Magazine Layout

After researching magazine layouts I have created a layout that I think will be suited for my school magazine cover.



As I continue to put my cover together I think there will be a lot of trial and error involved with placing and making the layout look right.

 

Mood Board

For my school magazine I have chosen, rather than the traditional green colour, to go for a yellow and black colour scheme. This is because the Idsall school website's colours are yellow and black and I decided that I preffered these colours to the green.





I have created the following mood board to show my inspiration for colours and different image ideas

 

Audience Theories

The term 'audience' is probably one of the most often used terms in media. We don't tend to analyse an audience apart from at a distance, we make generalisations about it and we never seem to think of ourselves as a part of one.

 

When we actually start analysing the idea of 'it', we see that is in fact not an 'it' but, depending on where we are standing and why we look it is a collection of different things. Media texts are constructed with an audience in mind- they are made specifically for us (the audience). In certain cases they try to construct the audience, particularly in the case of propaganda.

 

My own opinion is that an audience is a group of people, or an individual, that consume a media text and interpret it in their own way depending on many different factors (e.g. Age, Gender).

 















Photo Editing

 

 

In the media, photo editing is used a lot to perfect or alter images. To get some inspiration for my magazine I tried out some editing techniques using Adobe photoshop.

 

Magazines are known to airbrush models to make them 'perfect'. For example make them slimmer or remove unwanted imperfections. Using this knowledge I decided to use a picture of a scar and see how easy (or hard) it would be to remove them, and therefore alter this person's image. Using the 'spot healing brush tool' I experimented for a while and found that it was difficult to make it look natural and not obviously blurred.

After some practice I found it easier to blur away the impefection with the tool, because I realised you had to be a lot more precise than I had first thought. In the end I managed to create an image that looked a lot better than my first attempt, however it still looks quite obviously tampered with. Through this I have found that a lot more effort goes into making models look 'perfect' and 'airbrushed' than I had previously thought.





 





Original photo, taken from google.

My edited photo.