Ms Robertson

Using Conventions from real media texts

1) Which were the most influential conventions for you. How did your study of them affect your decisions and outcomes?

The most influential conventions I believe was mainly the layout of the front cover. The placing of barcodes, prices, titles and stories within the magazine were extremely important. Being able to study and analyse many other music magazines helped to locate where on magazines these conventions are usually found to allow it to be recognised as an actual music magazine. This affected how we displayed these conventions on our cover and we stuck to the predictable placing so it was easily recognised as a magazine. Out of these conventions the Brand identity was an extremely influential convention. From many magazine analyses we realised that brand identities where always placed at the top as it was the first thing the reader would see. Even though some brand names may have been covered partially by the photo, because of its repetitive placing at the top, readers would be able to recognise what magazine it is. We stuck to this as we wanted our brand identity to stand out and be the first thing that catches the reader’s eye. Also following the usual convention of where the brand identity was placed was key in allowing the audience that followed our magazine to know our style and recognise the magazine. Another influential convention was the magazine font. Upon researching the specific fonts magazines used I found that magazines mainly use serif fonts as the human eye finds it easier to read. We stuck to this convention to allow the magazine to be attractive to the eye and be accessible and easy to read. Sans serif fonts are used for headings as there harder to read but catch attention. This influence us into using sans serif fonts for our headings for our main stories or sub stories which allowed them to be short yet stand out and are recognised as the stories inside the magazine. The typical conventions of rock would be its colours. Red, white and black are connotated as typical rock colour which are recognised by all rock fans. We decided to use these colours as our main colours and theme throughout the magazine. I think this worked effectively as it allowed readers to immediately understand what genre of magazine we are just from a g glimpse of the colours on the magazine. This makes our colour choice effective and grab our target audience straight way.

2) Did you subvert any conventions that you studied in music magazines?

Our prelim task challenged and subverted from forms and conventions as its presentation and contents was more suited to our audience and appealing to students. It spoke to the students from a student’s voice so it was less patronizing and made them feel comfortable. However it did use regular conventions such as the masthead, barcode, issue number and price. In our main task I believe we mostly used typical conventions but we tried to adapt them and change them to fit in with our magazine. Out layout of the front cover used traditional conventions such as the brand identity, price, barcode, pictures and stories. These allowed our magazine to be recognized as a music magazine and is able to join the market.

However we did challenge many forms of real media products as it was a totally new type of magazine that focused on unknown and unsigned local bands. From doing music magazine research we found no magazine that based their necessities on unknown people. We further subverted from typical conventions as out genre was rock/indie which hasn’t been done before. Our main colour choice of green also subverts from typical conventions as it’s not a general choice of colour however we wanted to appeal to both genres as our audience felt green was a neutral colour which was suitable for both genders. We used this to subvert from typical conventions as it wasn’t a common colour and would make our magazine stand out. Originally our first double page spread was extremely different and subverted from what real media products would do and challenged conventions in many different ways. When putting it together we decided of a table cloth background, sticking to the colour of red which was a typical connotation however this was ineffective and weakened our magazine. After recreating the double page spread and contents page the layout didn’t subvert from typical conventions, it just developed on from real media products but using out house style and made the magazine a lot more successful.

Music magazines tend to have pictures of either bands or artists on the front. However we challenged this convention and although we had a picture of a band we only had one member on each of the front covers rather than the whole band together. This helped place the main focus on an individual and what they were doing. This didn’t work as effectively as we thought it would as it made them look like an individual artist even though they were part of a band. It would have worked better if we’d of stuck to the original conventions and placed them all together as a united band rather than separate them to allow the audience to know who they are.

Ms Robertson

Digital Technology

1) What were the good and bad things about the software and hardware you used at AS in terms of skills development

The first piece of hardware encountered was the apple macs. The controls and programming was different from a desktop Pc so it took a slight getting used to but I soon quickly adapted. The software we had to use to store all our work was blogger. Again this was new to me and it was hard to navigate around the site. However the software came in extremely useful as it was a useful site to store all the work electronically without having to mess around with keeping note of where you’ve put your work and having a load of different sheets with all your information and work on. For our preliminary task we had to use Microsoft publisher. For our main task we used Pages. We also used Photoshop elements to do all our editing for photos. I had difficulty in using the programme as id never come across it before. However after a basic tutorial from a teacher I used trial and error to test out different tools. I also bought the programme to use at home so I was able to practice my skills and become more familiar with the software.

2) What are the good things and bad things about software and hardware at A2 in terms of Skills development?

From using the software in our preliminary and main task I was able to transfer my skills over to use in A2. This improved my ability to work efficiently as I was familiar with using the software needed. There was a new programme video editing software we used; imovie. The good thing about the software was that it was relatively easy to use. The use of software furthermore was good because it didn’t need any training to learn to use it. It was easy to navigate around and learn and teach yourself how to use texts across your media, use filters and transitions and it also allowed editing of sound. Other software we used was the video camera. It was easy to use and so was helpful as it gave us relative ease in achieving a variety of camera angle and shots.

3) 3) How did you use your AS filming/shooting and editing skills to aid the construction of your main task at A2?

From AS we were able to get to grips with the camera. We experimented with angles, shots, framing and what suited and went best in terms of what we wanted to show. From being able to practice I learnt different techniques in which we could manipulate pictures and edit them to completely recreate a picture. This aided me in the construction of our music video at A2 as we were able to use different angles shots throughout our filming. Understanding how to frame people in a certain way allowed us to carry this on into our A2 production and helped to show people in different ways for example doing a low shot of the police interviewer helped to show his authority and dominance. Also in other scenes with our main guy we did a lot of shots where he would be in the first 3^rd of the picture to allow the audience to understand where he is via the surroundings beside him and behind him. Knowing editing skills also aided us in A2 as we could change lighting and transitions to how we actually wanted to portray it. From previously using the editing software, we were aware of what we could do and what we could achieve which allowed us to edit in a organised way and complete the editing promptly.

Ms Robertson

Creativity

1) Do you think you were creative or not throughout your coursework?

(AS) I believe creativity was definitely used throughout all the coursework. With each piece we did we created a completely new and original idea that we hadn’t previously seen. In our student magazine we were very creative in terms of coming up with ideas to draw the audience in which worked especially well with our title and style. We used an acronym but also a word that everyone knows and uses “SPAM”. We created a style of using popular recognised computer associated items such as an action box, mouse, email options ect.

I don’t think we were as creative with our photos as we could have been as most of them we just shot them without thinking much about surroundings, mise en scene and angles. We hardly did much editing to them and so most pictures remained as the original. We were extremely creative in the way that we stuck to the typical convention of having a editors letter on the contents page, however we presented it in a different way and carried on our computer recognised items by using a start up screen command prompt and wrote our editor letter inside it with computer type font. These ideas were creative because we wanted to be able to present a more modern style of magazine that could apply to both genders and computers are very modern and used by nearly all teens. Our brand name was furthermore creative as it was funny and appealing to teenagers yet cleverly had more significance to it.

In our music magazine we used rock style fonts to fit in with our rock/indie magazine. We were creative in terms of what the magazine represented as we came up with a brand new original idea of a magazine that was for unsigned unknown bands which has never previously been done. We were creative in our music magazine as the language we used was very modern and we also used slang to make the audience and readers feel comfortable and as if there talking to someone like them. We were extremely creative in terms of contents and appealing to a social group. We selected carefully what to place in our magazine so that it attracted the right people.

2) Did technology enhance your creativity or not?

(AS)Yes technology did enhance our creativity as we wouldn’t have been able to achieve many things we wanted to.

Web 2.0 allowed us to look at existing magazines to gain an insight into what attracts people and what people look for in a magazine. It allowed us to start thinking of ideas for ours whilst taking inspiration from them. From the web I was also able to use facebook to ask friends opinions on ideas and any suggestions to help improve them so it made our ideas more creative and better. The web also allowed us to go on many font sights to find the right fonts that we needed to suit our house style. In our Preliminary task, the technology was extremely important as the technology available gave us the ability to translate paper ideas to real images. The tools on the macs allowed us to be more creative in terms of what we wanted to do and create. We were able to further our ideas and make them more stylistic such as on our contents page with the buttons and section titles, we were able to make them 3d and look more professional. The technology of a graphics tablet also came in useful as were able to use it to create images or fine tune and edit photos in great detail and allowed us to be more creative by getting deeper into pictures. Photoshop allowed us to be very creative as I could use many different tools to create different effects or allow me to achieve things that wouldn’t have been possible without the technology. For instance our original picture on one of the covers had a guy in the back (who wasn’t meant to be there) I could use the rubber tool to get rid of him and then use the clone tool to replicate the tree and barrier that was behind to retouch and make the picture have a full background. The magnetic lasso also helped me to be creative as I could cut out parts of pictures easily and quickly and place them with other pictures. The tool allowed me to remove and take parts of pictures with it still looking the same and not having to roughly cut around it. Having this technology allowed us to be creative as we could manipulate photos. In our main task Photoshop allowed us to be extremely creative with our contents page as we could layer images and items and change opacity and create something completely different that we wouldn’t have been able to achieve if we didn’t have these options and ability to manipulate the pictures. Technology also allowed us to use cameras and phones to film our photo shoot and take photos for the magazine. Portable lights allowed us to get lighting effects in areas to emphasise the people’s features and be creative in how we portrayed them. Technology allowed us to be creative as we originally had our wire on our music magazine flat. But being able to use a graphics tablet allowed us to add extra defining detail and turn the flat wire into a 3d wire. Pages allowed us to put our entire final piece together and create our actual magazine.

(A2) Technology definitely enhanced our creativity in our A2 product. Being able to use iMovie allowed us to edit scenes and take parts from certain footage and parts from others. It also allowed us to add in the music track and also take music from YouTube and place strip the noise and add this to one of our scenes. We were able to crop the footage to specific lengths and be creative as we could mess around with the scenes and change and adapt them to get them how we wanted. iMovie also gave us the ability to be even more creative as one of our scenes was an interview scene which we shot from a high angle in a corner as if it was a security camera. iMovie allowed us to place a filter in to make it partially grainy as if a real camera and add text in the bottom corner like security cameras do with the date and time. This was creative as it gave the illusion of a security camera just from a filter and text added to an original basic shot scene.

3) What ideas did you communicate and what stylistic techniques did you use? How did it relate to your interests/self identity?

4) Was your product influenced by your environment?

Our student magazine at AS was influenced by our environment but it was a positive influence. Because we were at sixth form this gave us an advantage to take photos in a natural surrounding and actually get feedback on contents of a student magazine as we could ask actual students what they’d like to read about. Being at school helped influence colours and pictures and allowed us to gain a realistic insight into school life and what to put in the magazine. When we moved onto our main task at A2 it was definitely influence by the environment. We originally wanted it to be quite summer but as it was winter we had grey skies and freezing cold weather. Although this influence our product it actually made it more effective as it gave it an authentic look whilst the main guy was singing as you could see the breath in the air and the grey dull skies gave the portrayal of sadness and glumness which added to the narrative that the guy had to steal to survive and wasn’t what he wants to do but it helps him survive, so the environment added to atmosphere which helps play on the audiences feelings. Furthermore the environment further influenced our product as we could only mostly shoot after school by which it got extremely dark quickly. We had to work fast when shooting our scenes. I think if we had more time without it getting dark so quickly we would have been able to have more footage to select and edit and a wider choice. Also the lip synching could have been improved if we had more time to take more shots.

5) Was it original or did you add something extra to an original media text?

6) Would you take any creative skills into future projects of have you been influenced to engage these skills in any other projects?

Ms Robertson

Research and Planning

1) Detail how your understanding of the importance of good research and planning skills developed throughout the pre production of your As and A2 coursework?

(AS) In the progression from our preliminary task to the main task I learnt how important our organisation was and that it had to be precise and efficient in order to make an immaculate magazine. In the preliminary task we distributed the work amongst ourselves and did the work by ourselves and then came together at the final stages and put all the bits together. This may have been the reason for our magazine suffering as it was quite simple and basic. Our planning skills developed as we went into our main task. We still did some parts separately but we also spend a lot of free periods and lunches bringing it all together, making adjustments and raising any issues. In order to plan our time successfully we created out own checklist that helped us asses what we had and hadn’t done. This allowed us to check our progression and set targets for the week so we could achieve certain things in a set time and keep up to date with deadlines. I have understood that organisation and distributing all our tasks evenly between our group allowed us to get all the work done and also fairly. My understanding of the importance of research has developed as I’ve learnt that making something like this in the media, it is important to plan and research. Without researching past covers it’s extremely hard to create a new one. Researching and asking questions helps to cut down and decide on exactly what needs to be done and what is needed. Four our main task we had to do a photo shoot. We had to add this extra part into our organisation. I personally learnt setting specific dates to meet targets helped to keep everything efficient. For example we booked an exact date for the photo shoot. Also the people we had used we had thoroughly briefed them about clothes and props as we had researched about the connotation of colours and had purposefully considered the colours and style of clothes unlike in the prelim task where we never considered these factors. We learnt from this and it developed my understanding of research. I have developed good researching throughout the process as in the prelim task I hadn’t considered much but in the main task I researched everything in great depth. One way in which I did careful research was when I emailed 3 music magazines to ask them about their niche audiences and how to appeal to them, what style and age they aimed at and some further questions. This allowed me to gain more information on how institutions use house style and layouts to attract their audiences and allowed me to further understand what appeals to the audience for certain music genres.

(A2)

2 How did your knowledge of digital technology aid your research and planning skills throughout your pre production of As and A2 coursework?