Evaluation question 7 Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task / continuity editing exercise), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your final production?

Research and planning –

Since my prelim cover I completed closer to the start of the year, my skills have improved massively. As we can see from the print prelim task below, I have learnt many more skills and techniques in creating a good looking magazine.

Through the use of my media lessons I learnt more about the indie scheme of things and made sure I was in line with professional practice as you have a more detailed understanding of the forms and conventions of real media products.

In this task I viewed many magazines that fit in with my genre, I mainly used Kerrang magazines to look over and see what had been used in the past to create a good looking indie style magazine. In the prelim task I used basic fonts, in my recent magazine I used dafont.com to download a good font that fits in with the indie nature of the various magazines that I looked at. I chose the font I did on my recent magazine through research, the font on my prelim is very basic, although I used a stroke effect, there is no drop shadow and the text is very bland.

Time management is a big part of creating a good end product. I had to increase my efforts for being on time for lessons, giving up time to put in more for my media work also. By having more time, it means I didn’t have to rush things so can take more care with the work giving a better end product.

I have worked better to plan my work. By doing a reasonable amount of research beforehand, this enables me to work better with better sources and a better idea in my head of what to do.

Prelim

Evaluation question 7 Construction –

There have been vast improvements from my prelim task to the product I have just completed. One skill improvement we can see is on the mast head of the magazines. On the left is my recent product, we can see the use of stroke, drop shadow and custom fonts; but on the other hand in the first prelim the font is very basic, although stroke is used. The use of drop shadow on the “indy m” magazine makes it look very much more professional and the mast head pops out of the screen.

Layers – we can see how my use of layers has improved over time also. On the left in my prelim the models head is actually behind the text. This does not follow conventional magazine

Photography – We see a clear difference in the quality of the images between both images. In the prelim on the left, the image is actually slightly blurred. This could be due to the limited skills I had operating the camera in this time. Since then, and in the second magazine, my skills with the camera have vastly improved. We can see the introduction of props in the second magazine reflecting the magazine genre with the guitar, also the models clothing reflecting the indie genre.

I learned how to use auto focus also, this means that the image the second time round was much better quality with no blur. I also learnt the various camera angles, allowing me to take the best shot that I thought would benefit my magazine the most.

Real magazine

Real magazine

Prelim