Thursday, 2 May 2013

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




The preliminary task compared to my final product looks rather amateur and unprofessional; this could be down to the use of the colours, the models or the pictures used. The pictures used in the preliminary are not particularly well edited and have a few things in the background that come across as unprofessional for a school magazine, such as phones and incorrect uniform. The colour scheme of the preliminary task is rather garish and rather distasteful compared to the colour scheme featured on my final product. The main thing that I learnt from the preliminary task was how not to lay out a page as I realised quickly into the design of the front cover that I have not left enough space in the picture to properly input text and sell lines around the central image. This fact made the entire front cover look poor as text covered most of an image that should be left alone and untouched. Another major thing that I learnt from preliminary to my final product production was the importance of lighting and how much of a difference it made compared to the quality of the images captured. The preliminary task front cover and contents page both had a large amount of whitespace and very large typography which looks unprofessional as it shows that the creator of the product was simply looking to fill the space.

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



Throughout the construction of my product I have used Adobe Photoshop, canon 550D cameras and advanced lighting to create my media product. Before starting this project I already knew a small amount about Photoshop although I had never used many of the advanced features that I have used to create my final product, such as the clone stamp tool to clear up parts of my pictures such as a blemish on one of my models faces or a small tear in a item of clothing. Another advanced feature
that I learnt how to use in Photoshop was changing the brightness/contrast of images to look more appealing to the viewer if there was any small amount of discrepancies here. This helps to make my product look professional as without making these changes the product would look 'childish' and inappropriate for my target audience. By using the camera I have learnt how to take a professional looking photo as is the case with the main image on my double page spread which uses depth of field very subtly to further enhance the artist featured in the image. Another technique that I learnt how to use with the camera was to change the ISO settings in order to create a picture that is darker/lighter. The use of lighting helped bring out different parts of my pictures as is the case of the central image on the front cover where half of the models face is bright casting a shadow over the over side of the face, this helps to add interest to the artist featured as they look quite mysterious.

Evaluation- How did you attract/address your audience?




The use of my colour scheme addresses the male portion of my target audience; the colours featured are red, white and black throughout the entire product, these colours are often associated with males as they are quite masculine colours. The age group of all of my models helps to attract the age group portion of my target audience as they can relate strongly to people their own age more so than an artist who is much older than them. The language throughout my product is age appropriate in the sense that it is quite informal but yet informative that fits in well with the stereotypical male teenager. On my front cover I used a large amount of sell lines to interest readers and to influence them into buying the magazine.

Evaluation- Who would be the audience for your media product?



The target audience for my magazine was predominantly male between the ages of 13 - 18; this is mainly because of the genre of music which my magazine attempts to cover. The genre of music is aimed at mainly lower to lower middle class people and as such would make that be the target audience of my magazine, this in turn means that the price would have to be kept relatively low and as such cannot be a large amount based on the average incomes of this call of people. The price would be around £3.00; this is a lower price as Q meaning that the audience of Q may prefer to change based on the lower price of 'Soundproof'.

Evaluation- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?



The company who publishes NME (IPC media) could potentially be a distributer for my media product; the main reason for this is that Soundproof is quite like Q magazine and could potentially be a competitor to this magazine. IPC media could potentially want a magazine of a similar genre as Q in order to grow both as a company and to be a direct competitor to Q. Kerrang is published by Bauer Media Group, it is more unlikely that Bauer would be inclined to distribute 'Soundproof' as they also distribute Q magazine which is rather similar to 'Soundproof'. This is because there would be little need to distribute two fairly similar magazines that would be in direct competition with each other. For this fact it would be more likely that IPC media would want to distribute 'Soundproof'.


Based on the about us section of IPC media's website (http://www.ipcmedia.com/about) the only music magazine that they publish is NME. It is very possible that IPC could be looking to extend into a wider market of music magazines in order to grow this section of their business. Another reason that my magazine could be a potential fit with this distributer is that they distribute a number of different men and women's magazines but very little aimed at a teenage market which is a potential area that they could wish the break into.