A2 Media Studies, Skill Development, Evaluation Essay

At the beginning of the year I first completed a task which was to produce a college magazine. This was to prepare us for the next big step which was to produce a music magazine cover, contents page and double page spread. Creating the college magazine was quite difficult as it was my first time using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and a high tech camera. For the college magazine I had to take numerous images and then choose a final image for the front cover. The image of the model had to be a medium close up. The image then had to be edited in Photoshop, this was to make it look refined, clean and sharp. The image was then put onto a plain background and text was added to it to make it look like a real life college magazine. For our actual coursework piece, I had to create a music magazine which consisted of a front cover, contents page and a double page spread. I also had to pick a genre for the magazine, I chose indie rock. Just like the college magazine, I used a high tech camera, to take numerous photographs. I had to choose one main image for the cover, a couple for the contents page and one for the double page spread. In total I used two models, Luke Bolton who was the main image and story and Tom Brown who was the other model, I also used a photograph of myself for the contents page, and this was used for the ‘A WORD FROM THE NEW EDITOR’ section. The preparation for the magazine was very helpful. I researched lots of different magazines, including NME and VIBE, these are two of the most popular music magazines. I did this so that I could get ideas on how a music magazine looks and catches the audiences/readers eye when it’s on the magazine shelf in shops. I also looked at music magazines which were the same genres as what my magazine was going to be (Indie Rock). A number of actual conventions were used for my music magazine such as images, dates, barcode, mast head, skyline, splash graphic and a website link. All of these conventions are used in real media texts.  I also looked up prices of real music magazines and produced a questionnaire. On this questionnaire it asked students what price they would pay for an Indie Rock music magazine. I did this so that I could tally it up and find the average price of what people would be prepared to pay. In result to this I found that people would be prepared to pay a maximum of £2.50. I then used this as the price for my music magazine. All of these conventions are used in real media texts.

Before I started AS Media Studies, I had reasonably good PC and editing skills. However, I didn’t know how to use Adobe Photoshop CS5. At the beginning of the AS year we were given a tutorial from a media technician. He showed us how to use each tool in Photoshop. We were shown how different tools we used and what they were used for. He showed us how to rotate images, make skin appear flawless like in real media texts, he also showed us how to change eye colour, hair colour, brighten the white parts of the eyes, changing the colour of text, how to move text and images and background colour.  This tutorial prepared me for when it came to using Photoshop.

This prepared Photoshop skill tutorial was then used to produce my music magazine. Using my previous taught knowledge on how to use Photoshop the first thing I did was imported my image onto a blank spread page. This was so that I could edit it properly. I used the lasso tool to cut out my model from the background of the photo. This took some time as I had to take extra care making sure that it was a neat and a clean cut. I then used the smudge tool to smooth out the edges. This was so that it looked like a professional photograph to go onto a real life media text. For the main front cover image, I changed the skins appearance so that it looked flawless. I did this by selecting parts of the skin and slightly blurring it, this made it look airbrushed. I also added text onto my front cover and changed the colour of it, this was so that it matched my black, red and white colour scheme.  I added shapes to my front cover. A circle was used to give the effect of a splash graphic, and I also used a thin rectangle, which was placed at the very top of my cover to give the impression of a skyline. The masthead was created on an online text creator. To make my text look bold I created a box to go around the outside of each sub story. This was to make them stand out to the reader. For the contents page I used the same colour scheme to carry on the pattern, this made it looked professional and not messy as it appeared neat and tidy. On the contents page I flipped the top image and used it as another image below it because I thought it looked interesting and imaginative. I also carried on this colour scheme with the double page spread. I found writing the article relatively easy as I enjoy making up stories, this benefited me when coming to do this part of the task. In the  article on the double page spread I used my creativity skills and began the sentences with the initials of the band, this was ‘HARLAND WAY’. I believe this gave me and interesting advantage of the audience’s outlook on my finished text, as it looked cool and interesting.

As the time went on whilst making my music magazine, I became so much more familiar with Photoshop and I also became more confident with what my end text would look like. At the beginning of the year my magazine was looking quite run down and uninteresting, but as I started feeling more confident and putting more effort and time into producing the magazine, it started to look a lot more intriguing. This gave me that little push to know that it would all be worth the effort.

Over the past year a lot of time and effort has been put into producing my AS Foundation Portfolio work. I am very happy with my finished product as it shows all my hard work. If I were to go back in time, the only thing I would change about it would be the position of text on the cover as I feel that it crowds around the models face too much, this may cause readers to lose focus on the main image. Therefore in my next piece of text I will carefully plan it out properly making sure of every little detail before I start to produce anything.