Evaluation of media product

1. Evaluation of media product By Rocharna McNaughton

2. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

3. Skills learnt • Learnt how to create a masthead using professional software and tools on InDesign rather than paint • Learnt how to use a photography studio in order to take professional pictures. • Learnt more conventions about magazines such as offering freebies to grab potential readers attention • For my preliminary exercise I worked individually to produce this product however I learnt how to work in a team in order to produce ideas and audience research. • Learnt how to crop around pictures in Photoshop which wasn’t necessary for my music magazine as it was in a naturalistic setting • Learnt how to use studio equipment such as a tripod and artificial lighting in contrast to my student magazine which was taken outside and therefore only required natural lighting. • Learnt what is meant by representation and how it can appeal to a certain social groups by portraying specific ideas in a certain way • Learnt the conventions of a contents page such placing articles in numerical order or major articles scattered around the contents • I have learnt a great deal about publishers such as IPC, Bauer and Future and was able to notice gaps in the market within the music magazine segment. In my preliminary exercise this wasn’t important as student magazine would probably be produced and distributed in school for free.

4. Skills developed • Developed my skills within the team when coming up with initial ideas, for example, All members of the team pitched ideas on the genre should be about and as a team we came to a compromise and did a cross genre between rock and indie. • Developed my knowledge on conventions of a magazine front cover. Being aware of the rule of thirds I used guidelines on InDesign to maintain this. Also such conventions like having a barcode – This wasn’t necessary for my student magazine because it would be distributed in the school for free. • Developed my knowledge on representation. In my preliminary exercise I was able to represent my model as a student through using an Student ID card and a text book easily because I am a student. However I had to do extensive research into how I was to represent my band. My target audience had to be presented as rebellious and because of this I had to challenge some conventions in order to represent this magazine as being a rebellious one. As a result ii was able to attract my target audience appropriately • Developed the skills to use Photoshop professionally, I was able to most of the tools on this software for example using the crop tool initially I struggled with because it was hard to use the magic want tool my photograph without losing my bands hair but eventually I got the hang not only by explanations from our teachers but also tutorial clips on YouTube. • Developed the idea of manipulation of photos and actors such as make up and clothing in order to gain readership from my target audience. Most of my actors clothing are slightly based on stereotypes and are inaccurate to what indie bands look like in reality

5. Research & Planning • This media product required a lot of time and therefore planning helped to reduce the amount of time wasted. I planned the layout of my magazine according to my target audience, without extensive research appealing to my target audience would be much harder and as a result I may have had to change my layout a number of times. • Viewing possible gaps in the market for the music magazine segment, I looked at the production of GTAR from a business perspective it reduced the risk of my magazine being unsuccessful. • Planning the content of my magazine and doing research into an indie audience allowed my to be more creative when writing an article as I was aware of the typical style of writing but was able to add my own style, making my magazine a unique product however still appealing. • Doing this task in a group required us to take on different roles and responsibilities. Planning allowed us to allocate roles to different members of the group in order to make the best possible product. Members of the group that had more of a creative side went away to discuss ideas while the others collected audience research and our ideas came together in the production. This encouraged us to bring forward our best attributes forward and become more confident.

6. Manipulation • From manipulating representations in my product I have learnt about how to attract my audience using stereotypes such as typical rock colours being mainly black and red. Furthermore all rock fans are portrayed as into dark clothing and accessories with skulls on it • From manipulating photographs that were taking in the studio I was able to portray my band as quite dark with the use of a shattered black background behind them. • From manipulating my studio photoit allowed me to erase any mistakes made during the studio process for example the lighting was too bright however in Photoshop I was able to manipulate the lighting this in tern helped me save time. • This has taught me that the vast majority of photos in the media such as magazines have been manipulated using software such as Photoshop.