In my AS coursework I was required to complete a preliminary
task of creating a college magazine front cover and a main task of creating a
music magazine front cover, contents page and a double page spread. Throughout
the preliminary task I learnt the conventions of a magazine that helped me
create both my college magazine and my final product in my main task of a music
magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. For example some
conventions of a music magazine would be a masthead, a plug, a skyline, and
feature stories. During the preliminary task I also learnt about target
audiences, who the magazine is aimed at, for example a college magazine would
be aimed at students 16-19 years old therefore all of the content will be
relevant to them. As the magazine’s target audience is students the magazine
will be relatively cheap as students typically do not have much money to spend
on things like magazines. This task also allowed us to gain skills in photoshop
such as resizing objects, adding text, changing colours and creating objects
such as shapes, these skills can then be transferred in to my main task as I
will be using photoshop to create my music magazine.
For my main task I created a music magazine front page, contents
page and double page spread. The images and text on my magazine must be
original (minimum of 4 images) therefore had to learn how to use a camera
correctly and how to frame the images. Learning this skill was essential to the
creation of my product as the images must entice and engage the reader as well
as tell them the genre of the magazine all at the same time. I decided to
create a metal music magazine therefore had to look at existing products such
as metal hammer and Kerrang! Magazines, this helped me learn the codes and
conventions of that genre.
At the beginning of the AS course we learnt the basics of
photoshop in our preliminary task but it was necessary to increase my knowledge
of the software as it is essential for me to be able to make my magazine look
professional by manipulating the images such as airbrushing the image to make
the artist look flawless just as they would in a real magazine. Before AS media
studies I had never used photoshop so did not know what to do therefore I
watched youtube tutorials to help me gain the skills I needed. I now know how
to edit my pictures to a slightly professional standard as I learnt how to use
tools such as the healing brush, magic wand and blur. I can use the tools such
as the healing brush to removes spots or blemishes off of the artist’s skin in
the image that came in very useful when I started my magazine.
Not knowing how to use photoshop was unnerving at first but
the preliminary task really helped me gain confidence as I learnt the basics of
the software and was able to experiment with the images. When I started editing
my images the first tool I really learnt about was the spot healing brush, this
allowed me to remove any blemishes on my models skin and make it look professional.
The next tool I learnt about was the quick select tool, this allowed me to cut
out parts of the image and move them around or delete them. The tool was tricky
to get to grips with but managed to master it with practice and patience.
Another skill I gained was how to use blogger, I had never
used blogger before but as all our work is submitted to a blog I had to learn
how to set up and manage a blog with all my work on, I learnt how to change the
dates of my posts so that they can go in order and how to change the layout to
make it efficient.
After experimenting with the tools in the preliminary task I
created my college magazine. I then felt
confident enough to start my preparation and start drafting my main task. I
used the knowledge I gained in creating my college magazine to create my music
magazine to an even better standard than my college magazine. The photoshop
skills I learnt had been perfected to make my final product look professional
and the images I had taken had been improved from practise (doing more than one
photo shoot) all this work finally paid off at the end of the year as I created
a professional looking product that looked a lot better than my college
magazine as at the time of creating my college magazine I was unaware of the tools
or did not have the experience and knowledge that I gained in the past year.
Overall since I started media studies I have gained
knowledge and confidence in using software such as photoshop to create a higher
standard magazine. During this past year I have learnt a lot and realised that
research is just as important as the final product, such as audience feedback
to find out what the audience want withing the magazine content, genre research
that can help me construct my final product and product research that allows me
to look at existing products in the market that may be similar to my magazine,
looking in to existing products to help me create a salable but unique
product. The skills I have learnt over the past year has helped me produce a
good
magazine that appeals to my target audience as it fits in
with the codes and conventions of that genre and has interesting feature
stories. The skills learnt this year are also transferable and will be very
useful in my A2 media coursework as I will have to use photoshop for my
ancillary texts and I learnt the importance of researching products similar to
mine before I started creating my final product which I will also have to do at
a2 with my music video.
