Music magazine (sidestage) with front page, contents page and double page spread
Video evaluation of AS work
Regional magazine (boutique) with front page, contents page, double page spread, website and billboard
Video evaluation of A2 work
Digital Technology
I used digital technology in many forms including using an Apple iMac computer, a canon DSLR to take photos and film videos, Photoshop to create all my magazine pages and to edit photos, Dreamweaver to create my website, iMovie to edit any videos I recorded, the internet to research, blog on blogger.com and create surveys on survey monkey.com. I also used a memory stick to save and transport my work from one computer to another and a SD card for the camera so that it saved my photos and so that it was easy to transport my photos from the camera to the computer.
During the construction of my A2 portfolio I used a range of different media technologies. This includes:
- My whole coursework including planning and research being in the form of an Internet blog on blogger.com, which can be accessed by anyone so is useful for gaining feedback from my target audience and it meant I could include other media products in it such as images and videos. By using blogger I learnt how to create and keep a real blog which gave me skills that I will be able to use in the future to create a blog for other purposes. I used vimeo.com to watch examples of other evaluations in order for me to gain ideas of what to talk about in mine.
- Using the Internet to research similar products in order to analyse them to find out the common conventions of the products in order to challenge or support them when creating my product
- Using Word to write my evaluation and article for my double page feature spread.
- Filming my evaluation and taking the images for my magazine, website and billboard on a 600D Canon DSLR camera. This meant that I learnt how to set it up and take high quality images.
- Editing my evaluation in iMovie which meant I learnt how to use it and gained skills that I will be able to use in the future, using it meant I used tools such as bluescreening and cropping certain parts of film out to make it seem tidier and professional by selecting the parts I wanted to get rid of and using the ‘trim selection’ tool.
- Creating my website on Dreamweaver, this was useful as it meant I could learn how real websites were made and I could learn how to make them. In order to change certain parts of my website such as the background and colours of the fonts I accessed the properties of each feature which allowed me to change things about them. I also added hyperlinks which sent the reader onto another page of my website.
- I used InDesign to create the text side of my double page spread. This meant I could use the margins and columns tool to make the columns of text, which meant they would be the same size and width apart. A limitation of InDesign is that it does not let you add images so I had to do that part of my double page spread on Photoshop.
- Creating my front cover, contents page, double page spread and billboard and editing images on Photoshop using various tools such as the text tool to add text to my products, adjustments to the images such as brightness, contrast, spot healing to get rid of any imperfections, the blur tool to blur out the background more and other various tools all to make my magazine pages seem more professional and appealing to the reader.
As well as this I used a wide range of websites in my planning and research including SurveyMonkey.Com to create my online survey, Blogger.Com for my blog, Pinterest.com for images used on my blog and also Vogue.Com and VisitCornwall.Com, which are the websites that I analysed.
I achieved all of this on an Apple iMac computer.
Research and Planning
I gained research in many different ways including:
- An online survey on surveymonkey.com which was useful because it meant I could get a lot of opinions quickly and easily.
- Verbal feedback from peers which meant they could give me honest and unique opinions unlike surveymonkey.com where there are already set out questions and answers which people click on. This means it is not personal at all.
- The main way I gained research into similar products was by analysing magazines, websites and billboards in order to find out the common conventions of real life products that I was planning on creating. This meant I had to analyse school, music, fashion and regional magazines including the front cover, contents page and a double page spread. For my A2 research and planning I had to analyse all of these as well as a website of a regional and fashion genre and 3 billboards.
- In order to find most products to analyse, I had to google them and find suitable ones
- I planned my products before creating them on the computer by sketching out flat plans of them.
- However even though I planned my products before creating them I still had to change some things about my products because I discovered that they did not work as effectively as I thought they would. Also I changed things because of the audience feedback I got on them.
- Throughout my media AS and A2 coursework I had choices to make which determined what I would create. The biggest of these choices I made was which brief to follow for my A2 practical coursework in which I chose to create a regional magazine, billboard and website instead of creating a music video or a video game or a short film.
- In order to plan my evaluation I carried out several steps. The first step I did was to watch other evaluations in order to get an idea what to talk about it mine. I used Vimeo to do this. The next step I took was to type my evaluation up. I used Word to do this and I typed it in an essay style. I put each section in to small paragraphs in order for it to be easier for me to read when I recorded my evaluation. Also in this word document I wrote where I would put each image in my background.
looked at peers work and bloggers
little chunks
background how did i choose
Creativity
In order to create every part of my AS and A2 coursework I had to be creative so I could come up with effective ideas. I also chose my ideas based on feedback I got on products I had already created as gaining criticism steered my to the right path and caused me to gain better ideas. In order to create a new idea that is unique and has not been done before, I challenged the generic conventions of existing products in order to come up with a new concept. I also tried combining conventions from different products in order to create a new product (this is shown by my A2 practical portfolio magazine being fashion and regional). Another way I gained ideas was by researching the history of magazines (as seen in the timeline on my A2 coursework blog). This helped because it allowed me to see how magazines have changed over the years and allowed me take on ideas that were used a number of years ago that have not been used for a while so it would be interesting to bring them back into use. I could also take old ideas on and adapt/update them so that they are modern and conventions that will be appreciated and enjoyed now. One of the main ways I gained ideas was by analysing the most popular magazines of the same genre I was creating. This meant I had to analyse my school's own magazine, popular music magazines such as NME and Kerrang! and popular fashion magazines such as Vogue and Cosmo. By analysing their generic conventions I learnt what the public is likely to be interested in and what they want to see in a magazine. This also gave me ideas on what conventions I could challenge so I could create something that was the 'opposite' of popular to create a completely different product. The limitations of this idea are that there is likely to be a reason that they are the opposite of popular and it's because no one likes these conventions. When creating my flat plans for all my products I tried to come up with a completely new design that is unique and interesting so that it will excite the reader even before they have picked up the magazine to read what it is inside it.
discuss with others/research
Use of conventions from real media texts
I deliberately chose conventions that I had seen on existing media products because this made my products look more professional. Real media texts that I used were magazines such as College, NME, Rocksound, Cornwall Life, myCornwall, Vogue, Marie Claire and various others. This was for both my AS and A2 coursework. Also for my A2 coursework I analysed websites including Vogue and Visit Cornwall and I also had to analyse existing billboards which was not beneficial to creating my own because most of the billboards I could find were stunt/unusual and this style would not suit my genre of a fashion/regional magazine. In order to make my magazine, website and billboard as professional as I could I made sure to use the same computer programs as real media products are made on. These include Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign and iMovie.
In order to do this I made
sure that all my media products followed the generic conventions of real,
existing media products of the same style, for example for my front cover I
made sure I followed conventions found on a real magazine front cover as this
would not only make my magazine look more professional, but it would make my
magazine look as if it was a real magazine on a shop shelf with other real
magazines.
As I put a genre slant of
fashion on my products, I made sure I followed conventions of a real fashion
magazine as well as a real regional magazine. One of the ways I achieved this
was when choosing the font for my masthead, I made sure it was similar to fonts
found on Vogue magazine (fashion) and Cornwall Life (regional), but also
original so that I could make sure it did not look like it was copying an
existing magazine.
Another convention of my
masthead was the colour of it as this has to be a colour that will capture the
attention of my target audience when on a shop shelf. I achieved this by making
the masthead white as when placed against the main image of my magazine, gave a
bold and clear effect. In order to add my own look to the masthead, I turned
the opacity to 60% so that it blended in with the background image slightly,
but not enough so that it is unnoticeable. I chose the name of my magazine,
Boutique, by researching products that are similar to mine such as other
fashion magazines and websites like Vogue, Marie Claire and Elle and taking
into account what their names were.
Other options I considered
were the Cornish word for fashion ‘Shapya’ and ‘Ribbon’ because this is
something that is associated with making clothes and accessories. I settled
with Boutique as I thought that it got straight to the point of what my
magazine was based on (Cornish fashion which would generally be found in
Cornish boutiques).
Another common convention
that I portrayed on my front cover was the main image. I chose to feature a
female as my model in my main image as this is a very common convention seen on
fashion magazines. In order to make my image look as professional as a main
image that would be found on a high-end fashion magazine, such as Vogue and
Marie Claire, I edited it slightly using the spot healing tool on Photoshop to
get rid of any flaws my model may have had and to make her seem more desirable
so that women would look at her in my magazine and aspire to be like her
therefore buying the magazine in hopes that they would find out how to become
her. This follows conventions of real media products because “airbrushing” is
something that the majority of magazines do to the models that feature in their
magazines. Another reason I used Photoshop to edit my main image is to make the
colours brighter so that they stand out more when on a shelf and to make the
background slightly more blurred so that my model stood out more.
When selecting the model I
would use for my main image I made sure I chose someone who has similar looks
to what my target audience would generally look like and who the audience would
aspire to look like, this includes the models clothing, hair styles and make up
choices. When choosing my model I took into account Laura Mulvey’s theory of The
Male Gaze, which essentially describes the way the audience look at women in
the media and how they are portrayed. There are 3 ways this can be done: 1) How
the female looks at herself 2) How women look at other women and 3) How men
look at females. I felt I needed to challenge this theory and make my image
with the thought in mind that it will be viewed by women, and not create it so
that it will appeal to men because they are not my target audience. This meant
that stereotypically I did not need to sexualise my model (this could be done
by the clothes she wears, the poses she does or the location she is in) as this
is typically not what women want to see.
This leads me on to the
mise-en-scene used in my image. As my magazine has a strong fashion slant on
it, I needed to make sure that the clothes my model is wearing were reasonably
fashionable and stylish. This meant that I had to choose clothes that are
popular, made my model look good and also looked fairly expensive as this is a
generic convention of a high-end fashion magazine. In the main image my model
is wearing a scarf that resembles the flag of America which was a risky idea
because my magazine is a Cornish magazine so ideally I would’ve used a Cornish
flag but I felt it was acceptable as this is what is fashionable at the moment
and my target audience will understand this. As my magazine is also a regional
magazine, I made sure there was a slight part of landscape or countryside in
the background, which is portrayed as woodland in this image.
With my target audience in
mind I made the price of my magazine fairly low at £2. This is because students
are known for not having a lot of money and therefore are not likely spend
money on luxuries such as magazines.
My colour scheme of black and
white with the occasional colour such as purple was chosen by researching
similar products as I noticed black and white were the 2 colours that Vogue
stuck to whether it be in a feature spread, contents page or their website.
After I noticed this I went on to research other high end fashion magazines
such as Elle which also used a colour scheme of black and white. This gives a
classy and sophisticated look as it is plain and not over the top.
Another thing I noticed when
researching similar products was that not only is the colour scheme white but
there is a lot of plain white space on the page such as the background and
borders around images. This is something I took into account when creating my
contents and double page feature spread pages. I feel by doing this it gives my
magazine a modern feel to it and this is something that will appeal to my
target audience of young students aged 16 – 24 and is also something that I did
not see when researching and analysing magazines that had a target audience age
of around 50 such as Cornwall Today, a regional magazine based on Cornwall.
On my contents page I added 1
image that took up about a quarter of the page and left the rest of the
background plain white. I decided to do this as I felt it was an original look
and it was a look that was inspired by real magazines such as Cosmo. This goes
against Stanley Hall’s theory that youth must have excitement in their lives at
all times as if this was the case I would make sure that I added lots of images
and colours to keep my target audience excited but after researching products
with a target audience of the same age as mine I know that I do not need to do
this to keep them entertained. I noticed that a common convention of a contents
page in a fashion magazine was to have the name of the magazine in the same
style as it is on the front cover. This was something I took in to account and
made sure I did on mine.
Even though I feel my double
page feature spread appeals to my target audience in terms of layout and the
main image, I do not feel that the text in the article appeals to them as it
talks about a topic that would stereotypically only appeal to an older
generation. I attempted changing this article to something my target audience
would relate to and find more interesting but it did not fit in with the layout
of the page so I decided to make this article a feature on my website instead. I
edited my main image in my double page feature spread in a way that I feel will
appeal to my target audience as they will find it interesting and unique. I did
this by putting an overlay over my image and turning the opacity down on it so
that it was seen just slightly over my main image. I also continued my lay out
theme of having a lot of white on the page by my image not taking up the whole
of the page and the background of the text being white.
I found that creating my
billboard was harder than creating my front cover, contents page and double
page spread. However when I found billboards that related to my product such as
ones created by fashion magazines including Glamour and Elle I analysed their
common conventions and then challenged or used these in my billboard making it
slightly easier to come up with ideas. One of the reasons I found creating a
billboard harder to create than my magazine is because I found it difficult to
carry on my black and white colour scheme because this looked extremely plain
and as if I had made it in 2 minutes. This is where I decided to carry on my
use of purple (I used this on my double page spread and later on my website) as
I felt this was a better background colour than plain white. A feature that I
did carry on with was the simplistic style, which is seen through the minimal
text on the billboard and the lack of images.
The 2 images that are on the
billboard are a small image of my magazine front cover to show the audience
what it looks like so they can go and buy it and the other image I used was the
main image on my magazine front cover but without the text around it. I feel
this was a good idea because this means I would get more use out of my advert
because I would be able to leave it up for longer as if I had just used the
whole front cover as the main image, people would still be looking for that
issue even when the new issue is out. The mise-en-scene of my main image has an
Autumn tone to it which hints to the release date of the magazine.
Another task I had to
complete was to create a website with one home page and 2 linked pages. I did
this by using Dreamweaver. When creating my website I had to take in to account
a lot of conventions that are used on other fashion websites because there are
conventions on websites that are different to ones found in magazines. These
include layout, language and font, images and linked pages. In order to
understand what to put on my website I analysed 2 existing websites, Vogue and
Visit Cornwall. When analysing these web pages I found that all websites have a
header, a body and a footer and all include a large number of images which is
something I made sure I included in mine, I also found that the most effective
way to link each page together is to use the same layout, colour scheme and fonts
on each page. This was found on the Vogue website as Visit Cornwall did not
stick
to this convention because they changed the colour of the font and menu
bars on each page.
Post-Production
Post-production of my products was in the form of editing images on iPhoto and Photoshop, adding text to my front cover, contents page and double page spread on Photoshop and InDesign and editing videos on iMovie.
- In iPhoto I edited images using the edit tool and then using various other tools such as the brightness tool, the contrast tool and the sharpness tool and the definition tool.
- In Photoshop I used more in-depth tools to edit my photos. These tools include the spot healing tool to cover up and get rid of any blemishes there may be on my images, the blur tool to blur the background because this is a convention that is common in real media texts and the opacity tool to create an original effect on the main image of my double page spread as well as various other parts of my magazine and billboard such as the masthead.
- I used InDesign to type up my article. I used this program because it allowed me to change the margin and column sizes and made it look more professional than if I had just typed the article up on Photoshop as this could have meant that the sentences may not be in line with each other making it obvious that it was not a real magazine.
- I edited my video evaluation on iMovie after recording in order to cut out any bits that did not fit in with the overall video such as bits where I accidentally said the wrong word etc and order so I could blue screen the background in order to add images to the background behind me.
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