The document discusses what the author learned from their preliminary task to their final product. They realized they should have experimented more with Photoshop functions in the preliminary task. The preliminary task also helped them understand conventions like changing models' outfits between pages and understanding the different target audiences and styles of a school magazine versus an indie music magazine. It improved their InDesign and Photoshop skills. Overall, their photography and organization skills improved, which will benefit future work.

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

4. This shows that I didn’t experiment as much as I should of when I did the
preliminary task, I avoided a lot of functions that Photoshop enables like
the ones previously mentioned, however, in my second and final
production I managed to incorporate these giving my magazine an
overall professional look. The preliminary task made me feel a lot more
confident when using Photoshop and it has enabled a greater
understanding of the software which will be beneficial for future use but I
feel as though I should of experimented more which could of made my
media product even better.

5. The models I used were wearing different clothes throughout my final
product if they featured more than once which I think gives my
magazine a more professional feel as magazines do not have their
models wearing the same clothes the whole way through They are
also linked to the genre of magazine, for example I would not have
Phoebe in school uniform on the front of my indie magazine because
the connotations are completely different. The preliminary task
helped me figure this out as I looked into the conventions of a school
magazine; these are completely different to the conventions of an
indie music magazine. This actually helped when looking and
understanding conventions that do or do not link in showing that
they may or may not complement each other.

6. At the start of the preliminary task I had minimal knowledge on
Photoshop and no knowledge on InDesign which was
apparent in the first draft of my actual product which lead me
to designing my dps on Photoshop also, this is where the
preliminary task came in very beneficial. It made me
remember what I had done before, like using the magic wand
tool meaning that I could easily delete backgrounds. After
more extensive research after the preliminary I realized the
importance of setting up the lights and producing better
quality photos and using the correct background, these will
lead to much more professional looking images in the future.
However I did change some image editing such as changing
the opacity and saturation etc. I do think my photography
could be much better than it was in the final product but
especially in the preliminary.

7. Through target audience I have found out that surprisingly the
age audience overlaps. The target audience for the school
magazine would be 11-18 and my magazine’s target audience
is 15-23. This is down to the maturity of these teenagers which
continues into their early twenties. This shows that my target
audience is correct.
The school magazine would use house colours that represent the
school colours, this would not conventionally be black colours
which an indie magazine does. Because of the school magazine
only targeting their audience at students and may be teachers
and parents which means that the use of web 2.0 is unnecessary
but is beneficial in the indie genre.

8. My front cover did not have the same quality as my music
magazine which shows that I have improved my skills through
placement and images etc, I think this is mainly down to the use
of drop shadows and inner shadows and so on. When
comparing my preliminary to existing magazines I saw that I used
blue and yellow equally, whereas others have a dominant
colour and another that is less obvious. This dominance of colour
is a lot more effective meaning that my preliminary has failed as
an effective magazine.

9. On the whole I feel as if my photography and
photography skills have developed a lot which may
come in extremely handy in the future. My
organizational skills have also increased a lot, I have
had a lot of problems with this in the past and I feel
that these have improved a bit.