Evaluation Q.7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

I learned and experienced many things in the preliminary task which I was able to develop in order to achieve a success regarding my main task.

Planning and Preparation
I found this first section the most important in relation to being able to attempt a detailed, professional looking magazine cover/contents page/double page spread.

The start of my planning involved research into other magazines. I researched into one magazine that was not of my chosen genre of rock (being R&B) and two that did match my genre (being Kerrang and NME). From the analysis of these magazines, I found that:

• All music magazines have a certain colour scheme which is consistent throughout the magazine.
• The language is informal in all these magazines.
• The photos are often of young men (particularly in from my chosen genre).
• These young men are dressed down (in sneakers, baggy low-waist genes etc).
  
• There is almost always a subscription section on the bottom of all the contents pages.
  

I also researched into independent and mainstream methods of distribution. I concluded that I was to of multiplatform consumption, because my genre is quite mainstream.

In planning, I had to look mainly at the audience's needs and find/work out every little detail about them. As I planned to make a rock magazine, I needed to find details about my audience in regardance to their lifestyle, psychographic/demographic and where they would be on the jicnars scale. I found this out from the research which I carried out on magazines.

Also, I made a collage for my young audience and posted it on Facebook with a set of questions underneath asking what interested them about the pictures/items on there etc, and tagged members of my targeted audience for them to comment on it. The results were a success and it proved that the things which I thought suitable for a young generation, in actual fact, was.

The preparation involved creating a detailed audience profile which I worked out from all my previous research. This shows how essential my research/preparation actually was.

I then drafted out my magazine's cover/contents/double page spread. By drawing it all out before I actually started making the magazine enabled me to make my magazine quicker to make, more efficiently without hardly any faults.

I have learnt how valuable it is to plan, research and prepare, as it kept me on track and made my magazine become a success, by having all of my plans prepared beforehand.

Organisation of Time
In order to produce a magazine that was successfully produced and up to a good standard:

• I knew I needed to keep my deadline firmly in my head.
  
• To keep diciplined and commited to my schedual that I made.
• I realised that making a detailed time plan was a valuble thing, because it kept me organised and on top of my work.
• I do not think that I would have achieved a magazine that matched most of the drafts, without a detailed time plan being made before.

Photography
The Location:
The setting for my photos were in my opinion, the most essential to making my images work. The genre to my magazine was rock, and so therefore I had to make sure that I could connote and express this through location. I used brick walls and fences, as to where my main settings were in the end, because I decided that these places set up the foundations basis for my photoshoot.

The Lighting:
The lighting was one of the key concepts to making the photos effective and catchy. I realised that I liked to play with contrast consisting of the various amount of light which I included in the pictures. When editing, I found that contrast was only proved to be valuble depending on the conditions of the light.

The costume:
I made sure that my models dressed 'down,' and followed the stereotypical concepts of 'rock music followers.' As from my previous research, I realised that this consisted of piercings, low-waisted baggy jeans, sweat band,s beanies etc... Therefore I made my models wear these things, and from my targeted audience reactions, it attracted the right attention from my chosen audience - because they could identify with it.
Also, I involved the use of props, regarding guitars/microphones etc... to help portray the genre which I aimed to get across. For example, electric guitars are symbolic to rock, and denote as that.

The Conventions:
I used conventions of magazine front covers/contents pages/double page spreads to make my resulting media product successful. I decided to follow the convetions that I found in every magazine I researched before I made my own magazine.
These consisted of:

• Tables/columns/grids.
• Bar codes/pricing/mastheads/skylines etc.
• Informal or formal language - and only to stick to one.
• A variety of photos.
  
• An editor's note.
  
• A freebie.

Post-Production Skills:
Photoshop, Quark Express and Lightroom were all needed to accomplish a professional looking magazine - in an attempt. I needed to learn the skills in order to make the best use of these programmes, but seeing as they were rather similar and simple to one another/to use - it did not take too long to produce. The use of these professional programmes showed that even amateurs can use the programmes and create a product with some professional aspects in it.

Awareness of Consideration for the Audience:
The more involved that I became in producing my magazine, made me consequently realise the extent as to which the audience manipulated the decisions which I made when:

• Researching - regarding what specific thing.
  
• Drafting - I gathered what I researched, and found that the most common conventions were because it was what the audience liked.
  
• Planning - I planned my magazine based on the conventions which my target audience liked.
  
• Producing - all the photos/topics/styles were for my target audience.

However, I came to the conclusion that the reason I was making the magazine in the first place was not just because of the genre it consisted of, but because of what the audience liked about that genre. I realised that it was morealess only a younger generation which liked rock, so therefore I tried to design everything around the concept of that. This is because if your targeted audience like your magazine, they will go out and buy it - which is how your magazine becomes successful.

What I Learnt from this Project:
The biggest thing which I learnt from this project is how important it is to plan a project before you actually start producing it. During my drafting and planning stages, I did not think that I actually would look back at it so much when producing my final magazine; however, I was wrong. I constantly looked back at my previous plans to make sure that I was structuring my pages in the right way, and that my pages followed the points which I made during the research stage of what attracts the target audience of mine. I believe that the drafting and planning stage helped me achieve my resulting magazine so efficiently.