Hannah McNeill documents her first week of pre-production for her final major project creating a feminism and mental wellbeing fanzine. She created a plan and spent the first two days writing a pre-proposal and conducting background research on four influencers, including photographer Annie Leibovitz and mental health charity Mind. On the third day, she analyzed existing mental health and photography fanzines to inform her own work. She finished the week by researching feminist activist Jameela Jamil and journalist Gloria Steinem to further her understanding of feminism for the project.

1. Hannah McNeill
Production Diaries
Week 1
28/01/20 For my first week of my Final Major Project I created a short plan containing a
bullet point list of what I needed to successfully complete in the first week; I needed to
complete my proposal and pre-proposal, my aim was also to conduct research on at least 4
influencers that I can use as context and background knowledge related to my project, to give
me a wider understanding of the topics I am including. I spent my first day of my Final Major
Project by creating my pre-proposal. The first proposal I began writing was just a draft
proposal and a way for me to first properly engage with the project, allowing me to put
together my ideas and discover where I wanted to go with my project. Writing and planning
my pre-proposal brought me a lot of clarity because it gave me the opportunity to see my
ideas and to understand why I wanted to create my project and why it was important to me. I
began by briefly explaining my idea in less than 20 words to get a clear idea of what I wanted
to do. Then I explained why I decided to make it and what made the project important to me.
There are multiple different reasons why this project is important to me and by writing them
down and seeing them on paper it gave me the ability to really understand why I wanted to
create a feminism/mental wellbeing fanzine. I spent an hour completing my pre-proposal
explaining the small details and the thought process it took me to get to my final idea. I
included a range of different details because I knew that even if it was a first draft it was still
important because I would use this through my project to shape my final product. Through
my project some of my potential ideas might change and therefore in my evaluation I will be
able to look back and compare my first ideas with my final project and be able to explain
why I changed my mind.
29/01/20 My second day of pre-production was spent researching different influencers to use
as my context/background research. I decided to use my time most efficiently I needed to
plan what influencers I was going to research and how it would help me further on in my
project. I looked at my idea for my end product and after evaluating what skills/topics I
needed to learn about I chose four different influencers. For my research, I planned on
including more influencers but I thought I would start with four. The first person I researched
was a photographer whose work is very established and a personal favourite of mine. I have
always loved her work and found her photographs emotive and moving. Photographer Annie
Leibovitz. I thought it would be extremely useful to research a photographer for my project
because a massive part of the fanzine will feature photography and in order to create effective
photos and conduct efficient photoshoots I need to learn about photography. I research
Leibovitz in detail finding information about her past personal life and also her career. The
information I found was very insightful and has already inspired me with different ways I can
conduct my own photoshoots in the production stages. During researching Leibovitz I made
sure that I created a bibliography of all the websites I used, using Neil’s Toolbox. This means
that if I need to quote my research or I need to find the website I found information from I
can go to the bibliography, saving time.

2. I then decided that for my second influencer I needed to widen my knowledge on mental
health awareness in the media. So, I researched mental health celebrity ambassadors and
discovered the charity Mind. I had already heard of the charity and was aware of the work
that it does, however I didn’t know that it had multiple celebrity ambassadors, such as George
Ezra and Duke McKenzie. I then further researched the charity and the two celebrities.
Successfully furthering my knowledge on mental health which is integral to my project
because I want to include different articles/photoshoots about mental wellbeing. I also kept a
full bibliography addressing all the sources I used throughout the research.
30/01/20 After having researched two main influencers for my project I decided to take a
break from background research and started conducting marketing research. I began by
looking online at the Issuu.com publishing website where I can find thousands of different
magazines/fanzines all with different topics. So, I visited the website and search ‘mental
health fanzines’. I searched this because it is associated with the style that I want to create my
fanzine around. I found a fanzine created by the Art’s Student Union about mental wellbeing,
I flicked through the fanzine and saw that it contained an array of different and interesting
drawings and articles so decided it would be useful for me to analyse. I then planned different
qualities of the fanzine that I would analyse in order to find out as much as possible about the
magazine. I chose to analyse the; colour scheme, main focus, headline, typography, image,
target audience, layout.
After I had analyzed the fanzine in detail I moved onto analyzing another fanzine. This time I
decided to analyze a photography fanzine/magazine. On the Issuu website I discovered a
portfolio/fanzine from a photographer called Imdad Barbhuyan containing a range of
beautiful photography. After looking through her portfolio I decided to analyze her work
because I really admired her photography and thought they I could learn from her
photography skills. I analyzed the photos and then spoke about the colour scheme she applies
to her photos.
31/01/20 For the final day of my first pre-production week I finished off my
background/influencers work. I analyzed a feminist and actress ‘Jameela Jamil’. I researched
Jameela because she is known for her hosting and radio work but is also famous for being a
feminist and activist. I personally find her very inspirational and think she as a character is
very interesting. I researched her through different websites and articles and I also discovered
a book called ‘All feminists wear pink … and other lies’ where she has a short article
published which was extremely interesting to read and useful for my research. After I had
completed my research for Jameela Jamil I started researching a journalist/activist called
Gloria Steinem. I researched her and her journalism career and then also researched her
feminism/activism career in detail in this helped me because researching and writing about
her work inspired me and gave me a wider knowledge about people’s different experiences
and perspectives of feminism.