Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation

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

To begin my answer to this question, I have made a slideshow on Microsoft Office PowerPoint, to demonstrate the development of my product throughout the process, and uploaded it using my account on SlideShare. The slideshow can be found here: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The progress I have made from my preliminary product, the College Magazine, to my final piece, the Music Magazine, is huge. I have improved my abilities when using certain software and learnt new skills to apply to my media coursework as a whole. I will break the long process of my media product down in to four sections: research, planning, production and evaluation.

Research

For my preliminary product, absolutely no research was carried out. I did not know anything about the conventions of similar media products. Mise-en-scene was something I had little knowledge regarding. I also had no clues as to what a media institution was and what publishers existed. To sum up, I made my preliminary product based solely on my own ideas and it was far from an informed production. For my final piece, the research was meticulous. I researched the covers, contents and double page spreads of other media products from magazines such as 'NME', 'Q!' and 'Rolling Stone', gaining extremely valuable knowledge about the conventions of similar products. I learnt what props, models and locations I should use for the mise-en-scene of my final piece. I looked in to media institutions such as Bauer Media and IPC Media, picking up quantitative and qualitative information on the industry, other music magazines and their publishers. I found out a lot of statistics from the NRS (National Readership Survey) and also the college media packs, more quantitative data. I then used a filmed interview and SurveyMonkey to collect and collate quantitative information on what people would want from my magazine. I posted all my research on blogger, allowing me to find whatever I want as want when needed during the process of making the magazine.As you can see, my research was of such a level that already I was starting miles ahead of my preliminary product in terms of product knowledge.

Planning

For my preliminary magazine there was again very little planning. My planning effectively occurred as I started working on the final piece. This meant the production of the product took a lot longer than it really should have done. When it came to my final piece, I had done a lot more planning. I drafted up flat plans of my front cover, contents and double page spread. These flat plans gave me the layout and format for all of my final pieces, showing the positioning of headings, mastheads, coverlines, images and text. This meant producing my final pieces was a lot simpler and caused a lot less stress. I drew up a detailed photography plan which detailed how many photos I was going to take, where they would be taken, who they would be taken of and what props, if any, would be used. This is a stark contrast to my preliminary piece where I experimented with different models and my ideas in terms of location were lacking thought. I wrote a pitch outlining the key features of my magazine, including pricing, audience, name, genre and other things and presented it to my class, who then gave me both positive feedback and constructive criticism, giving me vice for product development. I also wrote out the script for my double page spread interview in advance.

Production

When starting the production of my preliminary product, I had extremely limited skills on Adobe Photoshop and my product was poorly produced all things considered. When coming around to my final piece, I had much better skills in Photoshop thanks to the practise my preliminary product gave me and was able to perform in a more accomplished manner, performing more advanced operations such as pixel editing, using the magnetic cutout, using the spray can tool and this time carefully altering the levels and colour balance rather than in my preliminary product where the colours were rather unrealistic and became pixelated. The big changes from preliminary to final were most noticeable in my contents pages. For my preliminary product, my contents page was effectively a poor flat plan, produced in Microsoft Publisher, due to my limited Photoshop skills. For my final piece, my contents page was produced on Photoshop and using ideas such as rule of three and maintaining the house style of my magazine, I was able to bring together a much more advanced contents page. In the images used on my cover, contents and double page spread, there was evidence of my newly found knowledge of mise-en-scene. Another improvement in my production, thanks to my research, was the demonstration of media conventions across all three pieces. I styled the mise-en-scene of my models' on other magazines' models from similar genres. You can also see that the coverlines and masthead are positioned in a similar way to that 'Rolling Stone' magazine, a magazine from which a front cover I studied had a rapper on the front, thus giving me a model to base my cover on. I used ideas taken from the contents and double page spreads of 'NME', 'Q!' and 'Rolling Stone' to influence my own, but still managed to create an original style using a unique house style of blue and gold text. I decided on my colour scheme by matching contrasting colours on Photoshop, a much more advanced method than when I just plucked colours I felt would work for my preliminary piece. In regards of fonts, I got all of my fonts for both my final and preliminary pieces from dafont.com, perhaps one of the few things I didn't advance in from my preliminary piece to my final. Intriguingly, I inadvertently used the same fonts for my masthead in both pieces. This did not occur to me until after I had finished my final piece and compared the two for this question. I do, however, think the fonts used in my final piece are better matched than they were in my preliminary piece. As well as producing my product, I have produced many articles on my blog, documenting my progress and when I finished producing each article, I used the spellcheck tool to check my spelling.

Evaluation

Overall, I think I had a varied experience completing my coursework and made huge leaps from my preliminary piece to my final piece. I think I managed to convey the conventions of similar media products very well in my final piece, which is a big difference from my preliminary piece in which I followed no conventions at all. I think my improvements in Adobe Photoshop made a huge difference to the quality of my final piece in contrast with my preliminary and were arguably the biggest change between the two pieces. I definitely think my final piece has a lot more substance than my preliminary and when you pick beneath the initial image and words you can see the research and planning really come to light. In terms of improvements on my final piece, I think I could varied the fonts a lot more as throughout my final piece I only used 3 different fonts, although one of the fonts, taken from dafont.com caused many problems as it did not have any numbers available, so I had to use a similar font and then, using pixel editing, make the numbers look like they were from the same font. I also think I could have included more images, showing a bit more variety but my lack of extreme long-term planning combined with a busy gallery schedule meant I couldn't get hold of the College Photo Gallery and the props I wanted to really improve my shots. I also had poor time management, spending too long on certain tasks and pushing deadlines close. In future this is definitely something to work on. Due to this poor time management and filling my USB Memory Stick's memory, I couldn't save evidence of pixel editing amongst other things to my USB to add to my blog at home and have not been able to in college. This is another key element I should aim to improve upon as evidence is key in evaluation. In conclusion, I am pleased with the progress from my preliminary piece to my final piece and my skills regards various software, such as Adobe PhotoShop, and hardware, Digital SLR Camera, have improved dramatically, as has my knowledge of the media. If I were to attempt the task again, I would feel much more confident, knowing that my skills and knowledge were now of a much higher standard. I am very proud of my final pieces and to finish, have placed them below (due to formatting issues I could not place my preliminary pieces and my final pieces side by side in contrast).

Final Piece - Front Cover

Final Piece - Contents

Final Piece - Double Page Spread

Rolling Stone Magazine Cover Review

The title of the magazine, Rolling Stone, is in a serif font, in red and has a black outline/shadow, bringing the image of the title to life. The Rolling Stone logo is one that is world-renowned and distinctly recognisable. The use of red suggests, much-like NME, that the magazine has many different connotations. The red could suggest the love and passion for music of the magazine yet it could suggest the magazine is dangerous and/or edgy.

The image of Rick Ross dominates the cover of the magazine, so much so he covers the title/name of the magazine. It is almost like he is pushing the sides of the magazine out, forcing more space with his arms. He is almost holding the title up with his little fingers, emphasizing strength and power. You could even argue he is making an ironic attempt at tensing his muscles, which you cannot actually see for his fat. He is topless and this shows his rebellion and care-free attitude. He has many, many tattoos, again reinforcing the bad-boy image he holds. Around his stomach/belly button area has a skull tattoo which is looking directly at the audience, possibly initiating a slight fear in the reader. This relates to the coverline of "Global Melting", which underneath says "Scary News". His jeans are worn extremely low and show the majority of his undergarments. This is representative of his gangster image and the origins of wearing jeans so low comes from American prisons, which relates to his time spent as a prison guard. His underwear is white and pristine, demonstrating he has a wealthy lifestyle and wears fresh clothes. The white fits with the white background and adds to the sharp clean cover's feel. The excessive jewellery on his wrists and around his neck show his incredible wealth. This is further demonstrated by the fact he wears two watches, one on each wrist. The yellow buckle on his belt follows the theme along with the other yellow words on the cover, "Rick Ross" and "Global Melting". The "Global Melting" cover line could perhaps relate to Rick Ross' large, rotund, world-like body and the fact it is shiny, sweaty, melting? The other cover line says "The Pot Princess" which relates to Rick Ross' highly publicized drug lifestyle, represented by one of the chains around his neck. It could also be interpreted as a reference to Ross' 'pot belly'.

The main story or cover line names Rick Ross as a "Gangster of Love" which could be interpreted in two ways. One way could be that he isn't looked upon as a loveable character and you could assume he isn't particularly desirable to women. The other interpretation is that Rick Ross is full of love, which is not too far from the truth when you understand that he has looked after many of his friends from his earlier, 'darker' days and helped keep them out of trouble. He has also put together a powerful, wealthy music team named 'Maybach Music Group' which shows us he wants to share his success and is far from greedy and selfish as many people in his position would be. He has taken chances on up and coming rappers such as Meek Mill and helped give them a career in rap that they otherwise would not have had. You could also look in to the fact he has worked with many, many other artists across the industry, and therefore he is the "Gangster of Love". 

The menu strip at the top helps to hook the reader as it names the edition as "Fall Music Special", with the use of the buzz word 'special' significant in attracting the reader. The use of naming other artists in the menu strip also helps in bringing the buyer in and showing there is something for everyone.