Post-production involves editing and manipulating digital assets like photographs and layouts. For a school magazine, the student edited photographs in Photoshop and used Publisher for layouts. For a music magazine, more advanced Photoshop tools were used to enhance images and convey meaning about the subject. Editing decisions and tool use can transform original work and influence audience understanding. Skills like color correction, image enhancement, and layout design are developed through post-production work.

1. Post Production
What skills did you develop at the
stage of post production?
G325: Section A: Question 1(a
Theoretical Perspectives in Media

2. TASK
• What is post-production? Write a definition

3. TASK
• You have 5 minutes to brainstorm everything
you did for your preliminary student magazine
and for your main product at AS at the stage
of post-production.
• This must be detailed in terms of tools used,
the software pros /cons, your strengths
/weaknesses.

4. Post Production
• Post Production - AS consisted of editing and
manipulating the photographs in photoshop
for the school magazine and music mag and
the layout for the article in Publisher
compared to Word for some of your student
magazines.

5. UNIT G325 SECTION A
• What editing decisions were made?
• How did they inform the production?
• What particular editing tools were used
and to what effect?
• How did the post production process
enhance the overall production?
• Remember that the examiner will
assume you’ll be providing very precise
examples of editing in particular. The
key to all of this is how your original
idea, and then your well crafted
layout/design sheets, even the photos
you ultimately shot, were transformed
or enhanced [evolved] through the
further application of digital
technology.

6. Post-production
How you made decisions about editing and layout
• How much of your text was
‘created’ only in post-
production?
• What technologies did you use
to modify your raw material?
How did this change the
meaning of your work?
• How much of your footage
ended up ‘on the cutting room
floor’ (unused) and why?
• Influence of audience
expectations - Did audience
testing lead you to experiment
with more changes from your
initial plan/concept?

7. Basic Editing vs. Magazine Editing
• Basic Editing consists of simple contrast &
colour correction/enhancement.
• Magazine Style Editing consists of multi-
layered contrast & colour correction/
enhancement, blemish removal, skin-
brightening, teeth & eye whitening along with
vignetting.

9. Terminology Explanation Analysis
Argument
• E.g. “At the stage of post-production during
the main production for the music magazine,
we used more advanced effects from Adobe
Photoshop than for the student magazine. I
used the …tool to connote to the audience…
This represents my singer as….which is a
generic convention of this type of music.
Writing in such a way will allow you to score
high marks for terminology as well as
explanation/ analysis/ argument.

10. “*Women's magazines+ignore
older women or pretend that
they don’t exist; magazines try
to avoid photographs of older
women, and when they
feature celebrities who are
over sixty, ‘retouching artists’
conspire to ‘help’ beautiful
women look more beautiful,
i.e. less than their age...
By now readers have no idea
what a real woman’s 60 year
old face looks like in print
because it’s made to look 45.
Worse, 60 year old readers
look in the mirror and think
they are too old, because
they’re comparing themselves
to some retouched face smiling
back at them from a
magazine.”
Dalma Heyn
Women's Advocate, Cultural Critic, Bestselling Author

11. Post-Production
• Try to think about how you have become
more technically competent in terms of your
use of digital technology to present work
creatively at the stage of post-production.

12. Task
• Write up your skills development of post-
production.
• Complete a document which uses terminology
as well as explanation/ analysis/ argument.
• Up load to your blog.