Evaluation Activity 7 – Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt

in the progression from to its final product?When looking back at my preliminary and the progression I have made from there to my final draft I can see I have improved a lot in terms of areas like mise-en-scene. The way that I styled my model has improved a lot as I have been better at gaining an understanding of my audience and the style/appearance that would appeal to them. For my preliminary, I had my model wearing a coat. This is fairly neutral in terms of style, which makes it difficult to appeal and target an audience. On my final cover, my model was styled in a houndstooth skirt and a jumper. I think this helped make it clearer who the audience for my magazine was. The patterns and outfit choice represent the 60s while still being popular outfit choices now. This extra consideration that I took when styling my model highlights the improvements I have made in terms of mise-en-scene. I can see that I have improved in terms of camerawork. I have taken more time to test out different shots to see which shots work for certain looks and certain pages within the magazine. Between doing my preliminary and my final draft, I have experimented with different lighting options to see which ones work the best. With my preliminary the lighting was fairly basic and didn’t have the same professional look that my final draft did. During the process I realised the importance of lighting and found different lighting set ups that worked for my pictures and with my model to achieve a lighting effect that was flattering as well.

In terms of directing, I have also had the chance to improve and develop an understanding of what I wanted for my magazine. In my preliminary the positioning of the model looked awkward and basic as I didn’t give much input into how she should stand. Whereas with my final draft, I had ideas for the positioning of my model, which meant that I was a bit more experimental with the positions that I got my model to be in. I also had a book covering the majority of her face, which then acted as an obstacle. When creating my final draft, I was able to identify the mistake that I made as this blocked the cover image that should really be the centre of visual interest. I also did more research into magazines within my genre to look at the positions that these models were stood and took inspiration from this for my own magazine. Another part of this process involved looking at photoshoots from the 60s to see the positions that models were in then. This was key in my photos of my cover artist on my contents page when she was moving from taking the sunglasses off of her head to putting them on her eyes. During this process, I developed my knowledge about photography and gained an understanding of how important the photos are on/in a magazine.

When looking back at my preliminary, I feel that I have improved a lot in terms of which fonts to use for certain areas within a magazine and which fonts will work and which fonts won’t. I realised the importance of text and font and how it can make or break the appearance of the magazine as it can either make it look professional and slick or it can break it and make it look cheap and like it’s been thrown together. In my preliminary I kept my font the same for all of the text which looking back I realise wasn’t effective as It doesn’t create any variety. It also isn’t realistic as there aren’t any magazines that use the same font throughout. Even though the font I used isn’t like a font used on any other magazine that I’ve seen, I felt that it fit my genre well. There weren’t any fonts on Photoshop that I found appropriate for my magazine and because I was sure of what I wanted, I downloaded a font from Dafont. From this I feel that I have appreciated the impact a font can have on the overall look of the magazine. I also took a lot more note on sizing of the text and how crucial this is, as my text in my preliminary was way too big. For my final draft, I reduced the size of the text down a lot while still keeping the amount of text minimal. In my preliminary, I also didn’t take much note on the positioning of my text and didn’t try to fill any negative space. Then when it came to doing my final draft, I understood the importance of this a lot more after doing my research into other music magazines.

When comparing my preliminary cover and contents page to my final cover, contents page and draft as a dull product, I can see a huge improvement over a series of different conventions. For my final magazine it is evident that I explored and developed smaller details. An example of this is the page numbers in the magazine, in my preliminary I didn’t really pay attention to this and the number of pages was very limited whereas my final draft had a lot more pages and I took the time to consider how many pages each article/interview would take up. Another detail here is knowing that the contents page is usually quite a few pages in to a magazine because of the series of adverts that are placed at the beginning. I can see that my layout is a lot cleaner on my final draft as well and shows more consideration. I also did research throughout the process of different tools to use on Photoshop in order to achieve the best results I could and to create the effect that I wanted.