Evaluation

AS Media Preliminary

TaskEvaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media

products?

Masthead

Cover lines

Main Image

Barcode

Main Cover line

Consistent colours

Price

Puff

In my front cover, I used one medium close up shot, as my main image. Red magazine also uses a medium shot close up for their main image. My main image also shows what the genre of the magazine is – a magazine for college students. The denotation of the main image is a student standing by lockers with a school folder, this mise-en-scene can be associated with a school or college environment, so it can be connoted as a girl in a school environment like 6th form on her way to lesson or maybe getting her folder out of her locker to be prepared for her lesson. For my magazine I personally decided that I wanted to place the mast head across the top of the page. This is following typical code and conventions, as most magazines place their mast head across top of the page, unlike Red whose mast head is placed to the top left of the page. Also my mast head contributes to my colour theme. This is because my magazine front cover only has one colour on it (the rest is black and white), which is in two places- the mast head and the folder. My magazine is similar to Red’s due to the fact that both magazines only use a few colours which creates the colour theme. Another similarity to Red magazine is that my magazine ‘TCM’ has cover lines and a main cover line that lays on one of the, rule of thirds, hotspots. Red follows the typical convention of rule of thirds whereas my magazine doesn’t, not all of my hotspots are filled. I decided not to follow conventions and use rule of thirds as I wanted my image to be centralised. Other magazine such as NME have a similar layout to me where the person on the main image is centralised on the page. One feature I added to my magazine that Red didn’t have is a puff. I added a puff to the bottom right of my front cover just on one of the hotspots to emphasis the extra inside the magazine, which makes my magazine different from everybody else's.

An example of NME magazine using a centralised picture rather than following codes and conventions of rule of thirds.

Contents Title

Editorial

RULE OF THIRDS

RULE OF THIRDS

Selection of Pictures

Page Numbers

Consistent Colours

Page details

Date Line

Sub Titles

For my contents page I decided to use rule of thirds. This follows codes and conventions as most magazines have three column’s for their contents page. I did this as I wanted to have my writing and pictures spaced out across the page. The other contents page which I am comparing my work to also has three columns and uses rule of thirds. However, on my contents page I did an editorial to welcome the new 12’s to the college. I did this to link my first image to the ‘welcome’ that I placed at the top of the page. By having this editorial the reader can understand the purpose of my first image and also see the target audience of the magazine – a magazine for college students at Solihull 6th form college. The niche audience of my magazine would be for the new students at Solihull 6th form college in particular. Another feature on my contents page that follows codes and conventions is having the date the magazine was issued at the top of the page and what issue the magazine is. On my magazine contents page, I used appropriate images that show the genre of the magazine which is a student magazine. The other contents page also uses appropriate images on their contents page. However they link their pictures with certain articles by numbering the picture with the corresponding number for the article. By doing this it helps show what the purpose of that image is. If I did this I feel that my magazine would be better as it would make the contents page easier to understand for the target audience. Another feature the other magazine has but my contents page doesn’t is sub title’s for the page details. I decided against using sub titles as my magazine didn’t have different sections for different articles. I didn’t feel my magazine needed sub titles, as I feel that it is easy to understand without them. The colour theme of my contents page links with my front cover as I use the same colour and font for my contents title as my mast head. By using the same colours for both my front cover and mast head it shows the branding of the magazine as the readers instantly know that the contents page is from TCM.

2. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing

this product?At the start of the process, the first piece of technology I used was my phone to take my selfie, for my blog. I found this easy as I used the camera on my phone all the time, so it didn’t test my skills at all. However in order to get my picture onto my computer I decided to use ‘One Drive’. This was the first time I had used one drive and to start with I found it a challenge to find how I could import a picture from my phones camera roll onto it. I asked for help form another student who had used one drive before and then I found it okay to get around and felt like I knew how to work it fully by myself. This is defiantly a skill I have learnt in the process, being able to use one drive properly. I also learnt how to download the pictures from one drive onto my computer. I found this task a lot easier to do.

After I had done this, I uploaded my image onto blogger. I found this relatively simple to do as I have used blogger before. However I did learn new things that I didn’t know I could do before, like schedule when the blog can be posted.

In order to be able to post some things like my schedule and my props list onto Blogger I had to use ‘Scribd’ to convert documents into JPEG’S. This was a new skill that I had learned as I had never used Scribd before. After being shown how to use it, I found it got easier the more I used it and now I am completely confident with using Scribd. I found this website very useful and used it throughout the whole process.

I then went out with a Panasonic Lumix Camera to take pictures for my front cover and contents page. After I had taken the pictures I imported them onto my computer with a USB. I found this task straight forward as I have done this before.

After I had uploaded my images I used Adobe Photoshop to create my front cover and contents page. I had never used this software before, however I had used paint shop pro before which had a similar layout to the Adobe Photoshop software. I learnt many skills whilst using this software like how to make certain parts of an image Black and white whiles others are in colour. I also learned how to get rid of white bits that I didn’t want that were around the text which I copied from ‘DaFont’.

I used ‘DaFont’ to create a text for my mast head and contents title. I also used it for the text of my cover lines. I found using Dafont very simple after I knew how to copy the text onto Photoshop. The skill I learnt from doing this was using print screen to copy the text over and then using the magic wand tool to get rid of anything I didn’t want when the text was on my front cover.

The final technology I used was power point to create my evaluation. I had used PowerPoint before so I knew how to use it well. The only issue I had was placing a picture onto the PowerPoint as I normally copy and paste images. However I learnt how to upload a picture from my files onto a power point, so this is a good skill to know for the future.