Seventh Evaluation Question

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the process of making the full product?

When I look back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a great deal more about magazine conventions, giving me a much greater depth of knowledge on the subject. As I analysed three front covers, three contents pages and three double page spreads of existing magazines. Which was a big contributing factor into what I have learnt in the process of making the full product. I learnt about the way the conventions of a magazine are so important in targeting your specified audience.

(Left: Preliminary Work Front Cover/Right: Final Product Front Cover)

When I compare my preliminary work to my final media product I can personally see a huge change in ability and knowledge towards the work. This is present in the way I have learnt a lot about the way Photoshop works and how to use each of the tools on Photoshop in order to maximize my capabilities during the construction of my media product. I believe this can be seen when you compare my preliminary work and final media product together. On my final media product I have used a lot of colour changing techniques, as well as showing abilities in cutting out difficult images. None of these complex features were present on my preliminary work, as I did not have the knowledge on how to do them. This made my preliminary work very bland, boring and unappealing to the eye. The production stages have vastly increased my knowledge, which in return has helped me create a much more complex media product, of which I’m very pleased with.

In the making of the full product I also I learnt a lot about the ways a magazine has to be laid out and the resulting colour schemes that work and don’t work. An example of this is on my preliminary work where the font colour blended in with certain areas of the background colour. By the process of this production task, I learnt that you have to choose a more neutral colour that will make the font stand out and contrast from the background, or place a backing object behind it. Thus making it more visible, clearer and easier to read for the audience reading it. This is present in my final media product where I have placed torn paper behind the text, which features on all three parts I created. This was a very useful and important convention to learn as I was using a red font colour, on a greyscale background. These two contrast well, but too well making the writing ineligible to read.

Finally, during the process of making the full product I have learnt a lot about the images used in magazines. Ranging from the actual taking of the photographs, to the layout and colours of them in the Photoshop Document. In my preliminary task the photos were of a similar colour, not showing much variation. Which made the task seem boring and repetitive. So during the production process I learnt that you have to use a range of images that show a variety of different colours, poses and dimensions. I put this into effect on my contents page, as the images needed to jump out of the page in order to gain the readers attention. The pose was the main concern for the front cover and double page spread, as they needed to show emotion and body language. This is were learning about the different types of shots came into effect, as I needed to take a photograph that would suit the needs of my front cover and double page spread. This resulted in me using a medium close-up shot for the front cover, as this enabled me to show a pose and emotions in the facial expressions. For the double page spread I used a close-up shot to focus the attention on emotions and facial expressions.