1. Question 7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it to your full product?

2. Research FOR MY RESEARCH AND PLANNING IN MY PRELIMINARY TASK – IT WAS VERY LIMITED AND ONLY ‘MAGAZINE RESEARCH’ AS IT WAS ‘TIME CONSUMING’. WHILST PRODUCING MY FULL PRODUCT, I CARRIED OUT; AUDIENCE, MAGAZINE, FONT, ARTICLE AND PHOTOGRAPHY RESEARCH – TO ENSURE MY MAGAZINE CONSTRUCTED REPRESENTATIONS AND FITTED THE GENRE OF MUSIC I AIMED FOR. I used the internet to collect secondary data about my audience – what their interests are, how other media producers produce music magazines and what the genre of music represents. The researching was time consuming but it was a crucial part into creating a product which easily fell into the ‘rock pop genre of music’ and conformed to certain stereotypes and social groups along with conforming to conventions of a real media product.

3. PLANNING My preliminary production and planning schedule was a lot smaller and a quicker process, as such: magazine research – finding fonts – photo shoot – construction of magazine WHILST PLANNING FOR MY FULL PRODUCT – IT WAS CARRIED OUT OVER A NUMBER OF WEEKS AND INCLUDED A LOT OF IMPORTANT ASPECTS TO ENSURE I KEPT TO A PRODUCTION SCHEDULE AND MET DEADLINES. tHE PROCCESS OF PLANNING WENT AS SO: Constructing flat plans - Photography test shots – flat plan pitch & feedback – model costume and make up research assessments – location recce – photo shoot plans – article research – article drafting – photo shoots – construction begins of product. and planning – model release forms – model call sheets – location hazard and risk The skills I have learnt and progressed over the production process of my full product have allowed me to produce a product which looks professional and fits the rock/pop genre of music, thus constructing and conforming to stereotypes of it’s target audience.

4. Time management For my full product – we produced a production schedule so time management was essential whilst keeping to it. It allowed me to follow the production process the way a professional media producer would and ensured my product met deadlines. For this, I booked models and photo shoots, planned location shot days for my recce and dps photography. In my preliminary task – I was given around 3 weeks to construct a front cover and a contents page. Considering I hadn’t constructed a product like this before, managing my time wasn’t one of my strongest factors – finding myself having to work out of lesson hours to make sure my product was completed. During the task – I hadn’t created a production schedule which would of clearly guided me through the production and planning process, which would of benefited me a lot. The collection of sketches below show some production process I went through whilst producing my final full product

5. Construction From the images, you can tell that I have put in a lot of new skills, techniques and effort into the production of my full product, in comparison to my preliminary product. Regarding the photography – my full product uses photographs that constructs representations and portray messages – for example how my lead female is positioned within the photograph; to render her as a dominant, active female although conforming to pre-feminist representations of being objectified as a sexual icon to a young male audience. The use of different fonts and texts on my product effects the way my product looks along with portraying different meanings and makes it look like certain genres. For example in my full product I used block bold text as from my research I found this connotates angst, loud and writing that stands out to an audience. In my preliminary task I used little time into researching what fonts and texts would be used for a college magazine – my font just a plain bold text in block colours without a set colour pallet or theme. Where as for my full product, I found that professional media products often follow a house style or colour palette that is used in each issue of the product. For mine, I have used mainly black red and white which creates a binary opposition whilst the red connotates angst and passion for the music genre. My full product during production process

6. The layout of my prelim product is badly organised – as text overlaps the image and the colours easily contrast. On my full product – I used Photoshop and in design to create columns and guides which allowed me to align my text accurately so that my product looked professional. I have learnt that is important to have a text to image ratio – the background is usually a main dominating image and a ratio of 2:2 with text over the top., in order for it to look appealing but contain information to an audience. Comparing the sky line and mast head of my two products. Developing my Photoshop sills, I was able to create a more professional looking sky line that fitted the genre of music, along with a sky line that also stood out to my target audience and related to the genre of music. The brightness, contrast and overall quality of my photographs has been improved dramatically, as I have developed skills on photo shop that have allowed me to create images that relay messages more to an audience. The mise-en-scene of my photograph was also paid much more detail when it came to my full product, as I aimed to represent the ‘scene kid’ genre – which from my research I found tend to wear; bright colored printed t shirts, chequered shirts, blacks, reds and blue’s. In my prelim, my mise-en-scene wasn’t paid much attention as my audience was generalized to just a young female audience. In my full product I have used a range of photo shop elements that managed to make my product look more interesting, artistic and professional. This includes; a range of brushes, downloaded fonts for a given effect, image layers, the eraser tool – so the image appears in front of the text. In my prelim, I was unaware some of these techniques would develop my product into looking professional and was unsure how to use photo shop effectively to create this effect.