Exam Question: Creativity

Exam Question: Post-Production

After gathering everything i needed to be able to create my magazines I then had to go on and edit and manipulate my images to get the effects that I wanted for my magazine. In my AS media there was not as much post-production editing done once I had gathered my images. This is because I did not have much experience when I was producing my college magazine so for my main cover image all I did to manipulate my image was cut out the background so that all I had was the image of the model. For the contents page I did not do anything with my images I simply arranged them on the page. For my main task in AS I used a lot more editing to change the pictures of my model to make the look darker and slightly sinister so that it fit in with my rock and roll theme. I did this by making the main image black and white and I increased the saturation and contrast to make the models face barely visible to help add an element of mystery to my magazine. Even though I did a lot of editing in my music magazine this was not the case when it came to my A2 media project because I was creating a regional magazine I wanted my images to look natural because that was the style I wanted to put across for my regional magazine for Cornwall. I did do some editing to the images though by making the images colours more intense to make the images stand out more but only to a level where it still looked realistic. The image that had the most editing done to it was the one that i used for my billboard because I wanted this image to become black and white but because of the sort of image it was there was lots of shades of different colours so I had to do a lot of editing to get the right sort of colour so that I didn't lose all of the depth in the image but also so that there wasn't so many different shades that would make all the writing unclear to read. Even after editing the image to the right shade of black and white that I wanted the writing was still unclear and had to be edited to give the writing black out linings to make them readable.

Exam Question: Research and Planning

To make a product successful it is essential to be aware of what products are already on the market so that you are not creating something that is too much like another product because this means it would be less likely to be successful because you are not offering your target audience something new or exciting. As Bentley suggests the 'creation of the new is the rearrangement of the old' with this in mind I looked at existing products to find what they already offer and took the good things about these magazines and carried them through to my product but with a fresh look on it so that my product is not a replication of an existing product but so that it is to a high enough standard to be able to compete with products that already exist.
For my AS project I looked mostly at Kerrang! and NME and what conventions they followed in their product and what they did that did not follow the conventions of a Rock magazine. I also looked at their house styles to get an idea of how to make my music magazine look like when I was creating style models. I looked at colour combinations used by Rock magazines to get an idea of the colours that I should be using to help to appeal to the target audience, from doing this I found that most existing magazines of the Rock genre tended to use quite dark colours like black, red, grey and usually one very bright colour like yellow or orange so for my magazine I decided to use red, black, white and gold as my main colours.
For my A2 project I also looked at existing products like Cornwall Life, Cornwall Today and Devon Life to find the conventions of a regional magazine as these would be very different to the ones that I used in my AS product. I also had to try and find ways to make my product look like a professional, sophisticated magazine because unlike my AS product its target audience was much older so things that would have appealed to my audience in my music magazine would not appeal to the people who I want to read my regional magazine for Cornwall. I also used study groups to find out what they liked about existing magazines, primarily Cornwall Today so that I could get feedback in person about what things I should be looking to include in my magazine.
Although my main focus when planning my products was the overall look that I wanted it to have there were other things that I had to look into that were important to know before trying to create my product. This included camera angles and the different shot types, i had to research lighting to be able to get good quality pictures with the right sort of light in my photos and then I used videos on youtube and tutorial websites to find the right methods to edit my images.

Exam Question: Digital Technology

Throughout the process of creating my AS and my A2 media products I have learnt how to use different tools to edit and create my magazines that helped to make it look like it was done by professionals and look like a product that would actually sell.
When I had to do the prelim task for my AS media project I had no previous experience with using Photoshop or with using an Apple Mac computer which meant that I had to try and learn the skills as I went on which took a lot of time and required me restarting a lot because I did not get a finished looking result.
I believe that my lack of experience with Photoshop is the reason why my prelim task did not come out as well as the image that I had of how it would look like as a finished product.
As I learnt the skills I became a bit better at working on Photoshop and taking advantage of technology available to help me produce my research and my final product. To gain results for a survey that I needed to do I used a website called survey monkey on which you can create free surveys and I then posted these onto Facebook to get the results from my target audience. I did this for both my AS and A2 projects because it produced good results and it was a fast and effective way of gathering results and the website puts them into tables for you which means it saved me a lot of work.
I used Prezi to present some of my findings from research so that it added some variety on how I presented the work that I did this helped to show the examiner that I can use various tools and internet resources to present my work differently. I also had to learn how to use a high spec camera the Cannon 6D to get good quality images for my magazines so that they turned out well after being edited and could be stretched. It was hard to do my editing in my music magazine because I did not know how to delete the background off images properly so my star vehicle ended up looking rough around the edges, which made my magazine look quite unprofessional. For my A2 project I improved a lot on using the technology available to the best of my advantage I used the Cannon 5D camera to go out and get landscape images for my regional magazine for Cornwall and because I gained a lot of experience in using Photoshop I managed to manipulate my images and make the text be in a layout and colour that complimented the images that I used instead of over powering them and I now knew how to edit the image itself to help make the colours more intense and make the image stand out more making my target audience more likely to notice the magazine.
Having the access to the internet was very useful when creating the magazines because I could find a wide variety of already existing magazines online and I could pick out aspects from the that I liked and aspects from them that I did not want in my own magazine but it also meant that I could look at a magazine and use it as a style model on the computer while I am creating mine on Photoshop.

Exam Question: Conventions

It is important to identify and consider the conventions that are used in existing products to make a product yourself that is successful from that genre. For my AS media coursework i had to create a magazine contents and cover page for a school magazine for the prelim task and then had to create a cover, contents and double page spread on a music magazine of my choice. I transferred the skills that I picked up from doing this for my advanced portfolio which i created a magazine cover, contents and double page spread, a website and a billboard poster. To make my AS work work well I had to look into many factors that go into making a magazine. I looked into many different school magazines like from my own college and looked into music magazines like Kerrang and NME to look at the conventions used in a rock magazine. What I identified with the college magazines I analysed was that most had multiple pictures on the cover and the colours and theme of the magazine usually reflected the season in which the magazine was issued. The contents pages were quite simplistic and the text was kept simple too i carried these conventions with my college magazine but I also tried to make my magazine a bit more interesting.

When I was trying to look at the conventions for my main task in A2 I found that the cover images for regional magazines tend to focus more on scenic images rather than images that have a model this included looking at magazines like Cornwall Life, Cornwall Today and Devon Life. So when i created my cover I used a picture of a landscape of a beach instead of using a star vehicle.

The colours used in the magazines usually reflected the colours in the images to create a style that looks simple and elegant and fits in with the image used for the cover rather than looking completely different and not complimenting the picture. So for my magazine I used mostly different shades of blue, white and black to compliment the beach/ summery theme that I have created for this issue of my magazine. The fonts are kept really simple so that the main focus of the cover is the image and not the writing because it is the thing that will sell the magazine. I also found that it is key to balance the amount of serif and sans-serif fonts that is used in a magazine because using too many serif fonts can make a magazine look tacky and unprofessional which means that my magazine would not sell this is why I looked closely at especially Cornwall Today as a style model for my own product because it is the UKs most successful regional magazine.
The main thing that I changed about my product was the concept of the colours that I used in some aspects of my final product. For example I made my billboard image black and white instead of leaving it as it was with its colourful greens and purples I did this because I wanted to appeal to a wider audience and wanted to represent a different side of Cornwall by making the billboard simplistic but still professionally done by making it black and white it added depth to the image and some drama and because of the simplistic image it could be placed anywhere in Britain and still be appropriate for holiday makers which is a good quality that Cornwall Today has people from other counties in Britain buy the magazine because they like to know about the sorts of things they can do down here in Cornwall and the magazine does a good job of persuading people to come down here for a holiday which is something I wanted my magazine to have the ability to do too.

Exam Questions

SECTION 1: CRITICAL REFLECTION (you MUST answer questions 1a and 1b)

1a Questions will ask you about how you skills have developed/how you have used one or more of the following:

1)    Digital Technology  (Jan 2011)

2)    Creativity    (Jan 2011)

3)    Research and Planning  (Jan 2010)

4)    Post-production

5)    Conventions from real media texts   (June 2010  and June 2011)

This question is about reflecting upon progress made from foundation to advanced portfolio, in other words talking about how you have improved skills in a certain area throughout the two year course. You need to talk about main products as well as preliminary and ancillary texts you have creating during AS and A2 media. 
This question (1a) tests your ability to discuss and evaluate your own media practice (e.g. using the relevant terms for software you have used etc), do not spend too much time including theories - although they are useful the examiner (in the case of this question) is primarily concerned with hearing about your work. 

1b) What will you have to write about?

For question 1b you choose one of your practical pieces to write about in terms of one or more of the following areas:

1)    Genre                          (June 2010)

2)    Narrative                     (Jan 2011)

3)    Representation            (Jan 2010)

4)    Audience                   (came up June 2011)

5)    Media Language

There is a good chance (see past paper questions) that the question will combine two (maybe even three) of these areas so make sure you are confident discussing ALL of them.