In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My front cover is mainly of the five girls of my band. I was going to make it a special edition of it being their first ever interview, however i decided that if i made it a special edition, i would be narrowing my target audience because my target audience were people who liked a variety of music, instead of just one particular type. The images of my band which i used for my front cover, were all from different pictures. This was because i felt that if i used just one photograph of all of them, then not all of the members would have looked equally as good, so i felt that if i took the best image of each of them and then cut them out using photoshop and then merge them together on my front cover, then they would all look really professional and realistic like a real music magazine front cover central image. I also was limited to making this choice, because one of my actors that i used for the photographs, left my sixth form before i had chance to take photographs of her with the rest of my band. I remembered that the brief for this unit of work, was that the front cover had to show four separate images, so i wanted to fulfill this requirement. I decided to use an outer shadow for the edges of the central image, so that it gave the illusion that they were coming off the cover. This would entice the potential reader in, making them want to buy the magazine. I also wanted to add the shadow because it would make the edges appear smoother where i had cut out the images from other photographs. This was important because i didn’t want the front cover to look shappy and rough as it wouldn’t have looked realistic.
I wanted to keep my front cover clear without too many graphic features, because i didn’t want it looking cluttered which might have confused readers. I think one particular aspect i noticed when researching music magazines, was that the front covers of music magazines which were aimed at a younger target audience, had lots of features on the front cover. This was perhaps because younger people have shorter attention spans, so would need to have lots of attractions to keep them interested. Hoever i had decided that my magazine cover would be for a more mature target audience, so i felt that i would’t need to have too many cover lines and slogans.
I added a strapline in the top left corner of my magazine selling an, ‘itunes card worth £200′. I positionedd it there because its the top left corner where we begin to read, so it would capture attention there.
I chose a font for the title of my magazine that was swirly and original, and therefore it would be different from other music magazines. I kept the colour of the font blackso it would suit the rest of my magazine.
I chose a different font for, ‘Red Blush’ because i wanted it to stand out from the rest of the features that are on the magazine cover. i chose a font from http://www.dafont.com/ that was decorative and unusual to suit the vintage/hippie style of my band.
For the font of my other straplines, i used one that was clear and simple to read, as i noticed other real music magazines had done the same.
I also decided to post my front cover of the magazine onto my facebook page and so people could comment on it an i could get some audience feedback, which would help me to make any changes to the front cover where neccessary, and improve it overall.

The photoshoot evaluation

Once i had made decisions about what type of band i was going to have as my central image for my music magazine front cover, i had to have a photo shoot to gather images together for my central image.
I wanted to create a setting that looked both autumnal and and fresh. I wanted to make it look really vintage and unusual, so it fitted in with the genre of my band. I especially loved the look of the leaves when they were strewn on the floor and occasionally floated away with the cold breeze and i found the perfect picturesque location that showed all of these points that i wanted for the shoot.
It was not far from my school, which was fantastic as it was easy to get to. It was a woody area that had a landscape of the fields with horses, and huge oak trees. It had an old wooden gate that i felt would help to make the photographs look especially good, because i could have some of the photogaphs of my band members sitting on the gate looking out at the landscape.
i wanted to chose a day that was sunny, because i wanted to have a natural sunlight that shone through the branches in my photographs. I asked five of my friends to be the five members of “Red Blush”. I asked them to look casual and to wear just jeans and a t-shirt yet with one item/ accessory that looked vintage/hippie to suit the general style of my band. I decided this because although i wanted my band to be of an indie/hippie genre, in the interview with my band, they mentioned that all they cared about was their music. So i felt that if my photoshoot was like some music magazines, with the girls from bands having lots of make-up on and their hair and costumes looking very expensive and fashionable then they wouldn’t have reflected the band which i had created.
I asked my actors to pose very naturally. I wanted a mixture of images, some of them looking out into the distance with serious facial expression yet relaxed postures, and some with them smiling and laughing with each other to make it appear like they are also really good friends as well as being in the same band. I asked they all to start laughing and then i took snap shots quickly. I took photographs with a range of camera angles. This was so that i had a a selection of different images to choose from when it came to putting my front cover, contents page and double page spread together.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the technology that i used whilst creating my music magazines! Whilst i loved using the camera for my photo shoot and experimenting with camera angles, lighting and mode of address, i found using the MACS really difficult at times.
One particular example of technology going wrong, was when i had taken my photographs and i had loaded them onto the MACS,ready to start editing. When i returned to my images a day later to then start converting them onto my front cover, i found a number of them missing. I still don’t really know why some of them went missing, but i realise now that i should have been more careful, and saved them onto a memory stick before leaving them on the computer, because you cannot completely rely on them not being deleted accidentally.
I also had trouble with photo shop because if you make a mistake with a particular tool and you save it, you can never undo the mistake so on many occasions i had to start from scratch when editing photographs.
However photo shop was really useful when allowing me to make my photographs and music magazine front cover look very professional and realistic. Without photo shop i am sure that many of my images would have not have looked half as good as they ended up.

Double page spread evalution

It was my double page spread which i enjoyed creating the most. This was because i love creative writing, and i actually enjoyed creating the introduction and the interview for my band. I felt that i really got to know and understand my band after i had written the interview!
I wrote out my introduction and interview in rough on paper first so that i could keep going back to it and adding new parts that i had thought of. I wanted to write about the bands history in the introduction so that it made it more realistic that the band had been around for a while. I wanted to add quotations from music critics to make the credibility of the band appear more realistic. I also wanted to give a brief description of what each of the members of my band looked like because i think it would appeal to readers who are female and admire the band members because of the way they look and their unique style.
I used the programme ‘pages’ to create my double page spread. I began by copying up my introduction and interview onto the computer. I used sophisticated language, and asked questions which all revolved around the band’s musical talents and about their past and who they had famously performed duets with. I dropped in a few names such as ‘Al Green’ and ‘Mick Jagger’ because they are such huge stars, that to make up that my band had done duets with them would convey how huge, ‘Red Blush’ are.
I used a font which was clear and concise and i made sure that i highlighted the question in bold so that a reader would not get confused with what was a question and what was an answer. I wanted all of the members of the band to talk in the interview because i felt that if the images were of all the band then the interview should be the same.
The layout of my double page spread was kept simple yet clear, with a plain white background surrounded by images of, ‘Red Blush’. I then had selected quotations from the interview which i wrote in a coloured font to capture attention and i also made the font bigger so that it stood out from the rest of the interview.
I decided to keep the layout of my double page simple because i researched other music magazines such as’ ‘Q’ and ‘Kerrang’ and i noticed that often their double page spreads were arranged like this.

Time management evaluation

This is a good opportunity to explain about my dreadful time management!
I have to admit that i left EVERYTHING until last minute! What i should have done is created a weekly plan of tasks which i had to complete, and made sure that by the end of the week i went back to the plan and ticked off all that i had done.
I found that because of my poor time management, i ended up cramming all the tasks in at the end, so i became stressed about the coursework. I actually would have enjoyed the coursework much more if i had had time to create my music magazine and made changes which would have boosted my grades. In addition, i feel that the worst part about having poor time management is that i haven’t been able to achieve to my highest potential, and i feel that in all the work i do, i would like to do my best in it. If i had completed everything when i should have done, then i would have had plenty of time at the end to make finishing touches which could have improved my work overall. However i must turn this into a learning curve, and i must always remember how things go when you don’t manage your time properly and you end up leaving everything until the last minute. I now know that when i ever have deadlines or pieces of coursework to do in the future, i will always keep on top of the work and make sure that i make plans or even lists of what needs to be done and then stick to it.
Obviously if i were to do this coursework again i would have had better time management so that all work was completed when it should have been. I would therefore have time to go back over everything within my folder and make changes where neccessary such as; improved my images that i used for my music magazine. This was because i think i could have thought about the costumes of my band members a little more, because my band were meant to look older and more mature yet they looked like the teenagers that they really were! Perhaps if i had more time i would have made them look older through make-up and costume. I also would have been able to review my school magazine front cover and contents page and make that look more realistic.

questionnaire evaluation

After creating my finished music magazine front cover, i created a questionnaire to get some feedback on it so i could make some improvements. I asked questions which varied from, ‘what type of genre do you think this magazine is?’ to ‘is the font easy to read?’ This was so i could make sure that people were understanding what kind of music magazine i had created, but also to make sure that my magazine was easy to read and that it was clear.
I read through the questionnaire that had been filled out, and noticed that most of them had the same criticism. That the magazine seemed to be aimed at women more than men because, the font of the title/masthead on the front cover was ‘pretty’ and ’swirly’, and also because all the images on the front cover were of women. I could understand this point and if i had had more time then i would have added an image of a man who could be posing as a brand new artist to have come out of the music industry.