Friday, 26 September 2014

Skills Development Essay

Skills Development Evaluation Essay

My technological knowledge has progressed throughout the year; my skills and expertise especially in Photoshop have predominately improved. At the beginning of the year we was set the task of creating a College magazine, my skills where only limited as I started media knowing the basic’s to using Photoshop CS5 such as using the Quick Selection tool to isolate one or more parts to a selected image. However when it came to editing for my College magazine I clearly needed practise to develop my skills further, so when it came to establishing my music magazine front cover I was able to use the various Photoshop tools effectively, such as the lasso tool to cut objects and the spot healing tool to create a convincing product. Additionally throughout the year I developed my camera work skills and uploaded video footage to my blog of feedback peer groups, these groups helped me gain outside knowledge on how to improve my existing products. Further techniques I have learnt throughout the year are how to present my work on my blog, at the beginning of the year I simply wrote up my planning and research on a blog page which was boring and lacked technological skill. Nonetheless as the year progressed I was taught how to use various other platforms to present my work such as on Prezi. Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas on a virtual canvas.    
In terms of creativity, I took inspiration from various existing music magazines and believe my creativity has enabled me to generate continuity throughout my products whilst still keeping them interesting and not becoming repetitive and boring. A key feature I believe is important in the creativity of my products is the colour scheme; I chose to follow a scheme of three main colours that where associated with my chosen genre and they were gold, black and white. From choosing these colours I used my creative skills to style my model around these colours, for the costume and make up and knew the importance of continuity so used the same makeup and hair styling for each shot however changed the outfit to keep the audience interested. Finally the style of the text was important for the image of the products, therefore I used my create skills to make a stylish text to flow with genre using a text creator website.
Before creating my music magazine products I researched and planned everything in advance, this helped me to understand codes and conventions used to create a successful music magazines. For the research element of the task I bought several existing music magazines such as Q and Billboard magazine this allowed me to decode the key conventions that make up a professional magazine front cover, contents page and double spread. From doing this I was able to draw up box drafts of each of the elements I had to create, I then advanced my skills further by scanning in the hand drawn drafts and uploaded the images from the scanner onto the computer and onto my blog to show my research and planning. For my college magazine I followed the same process for planning however for the research I used another medium of medium and googled ‘college magazines’ and looked up other people’s products they had created in Media from previous years. Furthering my planning and research I created a reader profile for my music magazine, a reader profile is a piece of text that describes what people read a magazine. It was useful for me to create a reader profile because it helped me decide on the content I should include in my magazine in order to attract my target audience. In post – production after choosing my genre and colour scheme, I took several practise shoots with my model in order to get the right idea and framing I would use when it came to actually producing my magazine. Looking into the technical side of my media magazine products I explored the demographics of my piece and decided whom I wanted to aim my products at. After the first drafts of my three pieces of work I did a peer review, this helped me understand where I was going wrong with certain aspects of the magazine and how I could improve them further.  I also did a series of other tasks for my planning and research, market research, price and publication, sociographics and LIIAR analysis on existing music magazines, all these tasks helped me construct my music magazine effectively for my target audience.
When designing my products, I took inspiration from various other existing magazines that I had analysed and their use of conventions that make them successful music magazines. By looking at magazines such as Billboard and Q magazine I wanted to create a house style for my magazine in order for it to look conventional and professional. Another key convention used throughout was continuity, to follow continuity I chose a specific text and throughout all three areas of my magazine this text was used to show the audience continuity and it helped the magazine flow and look skilled. The majority of existing magazines use a colour scheme of three, so therefore I used this convention on my magazine and had the colour scheme black, gold and white, this linked to my models outfit and make up which added to the continuity of the magazine. To make my magazine look specialised I added features to my front cover, for example I added plug in the top left hand corner, a footer and cover lines that are conventionally put in the first third of the cover. Adding to this I added a barcode at the bottom right hand corner of the page, I found this to be the conventional way of placing the barcode from studying other existing magazines. Additionally to this I also placed the price and issue number around the barcode this made the layout of the magazine look well thought out and neat. An additional convention also used is the use of a medium close up, this is the most common shot used in magazines because it allows the reader see most of the models outfit and their face in enough detail. Moving onto the contents page, I similarly used another image of my model in the same outfit and make up but in a different pose this is a conventional way of showing the reader continuity and making the magazine easy to follow. I also checked on the positioning of the page numbers and found that there were located in a certain order, for example with the double page spread, they would not be placed at the beginning of the magazine but would be seen later in the edition. Usually between page numbers 14-28, that is why I chose my page numbers for the double page spread to be 24-25. My double page spread also consisted of an interview, I found this was the conventional way to present a double page spread article. In order for the interview to look professional and conventional I used a question and answer format using the letters Q and A to indicate to the reader the exact part of the interview they are reading. Overall I feel that from using conventions from real media texts it enabled me to get the professional standard I was aiming for with all three pieces of my music magazine. In conclusion from the start of course my skills where very limited in terms of digital technology, creativity, research and planning, and understanding key codes and conventions, however after relevant practise I feel confident in my skills and they have developed significantly making me feel that I am now ready to be able to produce good pieces of work for my A2 portfolio. 

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