Evaluation How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? To construct my music magazine, I used a combination of Adobe Photoshop (mainly for the cover) and Microsoft Word (mainly for the contents and DPS). I feel I could have produced a better outcome if I used software such as Adobe Indesign. The main reason that I didn’t use more apt software was because I didn’t know how to use it, however I should have tried a bit more with it and created a possibly better finished product. For next time I will use programs or software that is best suited to what I am doing.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I have included many features to my media product that are used by real products and real companies. There are also things I haven’t used that I will next time. Something I need to do/improve next time is putting my text into columns and making everything legible.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? My media product represents an indie social groups through the pictures of people and what they are wearing, i.e. flannel shirts, tight jeans, headband maybe (bandana), mid/long length hair. This is social group which I have tried to represent and because of this they are also the target audience of my media product.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product? A company that would distribute my product are MusicMags, they distribute all different types of music magazines and my media product is a music magazine therefore this is the right media institution to distribute my magazine. They would benefit from distributing my media product because they don’t sell any music magazines like mine and therefore distributing mine would bring them in a new type of audience as- well as the ones they have already from their distributing. I would benefit from letting them distribute my product because they sell many magazines and their annual average is 2.5 times the industry standard, therefore distributing more magazines than any other company.

How did you attract/address your audience? To find out what would attract my audience, I had to do research into existing magazines on the market. I found that there was no current replica of my type of magazine to my target audience; therefore I just analysed other current magazines on the market. After looking at NME magazine, I found that although there genre of music was different, the style in which they sent pages out would be good for my target audience, as it gets a lot of information onto the pages, but in a suitable format to read, being broken up by pictures. Q magazine, normally have a dominant image on 1 page, and a lot of text on another. This might bore my target audience, as the younger you are, the shorter your attention span, and a lot of text with no images may be daunting for them to read, therefore I chose not to use their method. To find out what to focus my magazine on, I constructed a questionnaire in order to find out what different social groups (e.g. age, gender) looked for in a music magazine and what genre of music different age groups preferred. I surveyed 50 people in my local town. This means my research isn’t very representative of the UK population, however I can got a general idea of what people were looking for in a magazine, and I could of decided to do more research on a larger scale if my findings weren’t conclusive enough. Also I applied the secondary (field) research that I’ve done from current magazine’s to help influence my decision on what to market and focus my magazine on. I first asked there age and gender, in order to compare results with different social groups.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Throughout the process of creating my media product i gained the ability to use many different technologies. The tools i used most were the Macs and Adobe Photoshop. Learning to control an Apple Mac computer was difficult at first because it was so different from using a normal computer, this slowed me down at the beginning of the process, but after a couple of weeks of using the technology it gave me many advantages; mostly the use of special apps designed for the mac like Adobe Indesign and Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop was the main technology i worked with over the creation process of my media product. This program was hard to use and get used to at the start and was very stressful throughout the whole process but without it the creation of my media product wouldn’t have been possible. All the possibilities that Photoshop opened up to the creation of my magazine such as: the ability to edit my photos, add text and vital information and create my whole magazine! Overall the Photoshop tool came in extremely useful in the construction of my media product and was the most handy tool we were provided with.

What have you learnt in the progression from the preliminary task to the full product? After the preliminary task, I undertook research and planning to ensure that the content within my final music magazine was appropriate and well-suited to my genre. By doing so, the contents within my music magazine was far more genre related than that of the contents within my preliminary task. This is because I had not previously read a school magazine so just assumed the contents I was providing was accurate and relevant. By researching other similar magazines I was able to understand the different types of layouts, forms and conventions when making my product to make it appear as life like as possible. This meant that my actual finished music magazine looked much better/professional than my preliminary task did. My preliminary task outlined to me the importance of having a well thought out plan, to use my time effectively and have the right skills needed to make my actual music magazine the best it could look. As I became more updated with the tools Photoshop provided I was able to include this when planning my music magazine, making them seem more realistic and therefore easier to stick to when actually creating it. My skills with making a magazine have improved through the use of Photoshop. I have learned to use tools such as the lasso tool, text tool, etc. This meant I was able to make my magazine more effectively and appear more professional. My skills also improved as I became more educated with magazine terminology. As I became more updated with the tools Photoshop provided I was able to include this when planning my music magazine, making them seem more realistic and therefore easier to stick to when actually creating it. Regarding the construction process of making my products, my progression with factors such as use of fonts, photography composition, page layouts and selecting appropriate mise-en-scene in comparison to when constructing my preliminary task had improved a significant amount due to the skills I had acquired and perfected. When carefully selecting the fonts for my magazine I chose to use a website called 'Da Font' which allowed me to find a font which suited my Indie genre and subsequently downloaded this font onto Photoshop so I could use it throughout my magazine, keeping the theme consistent. When constructing my preliminary task I was not as educated in the importance of photography composition - whereas, when creating my music magazine I was much more aware of placing my photography in the right areas and choosing a specific place for certain graphic features rather than just placing them anywhere, this made my magazine look more professional. I have also accurately selected appropriate mise-en-scene features within my photos, using my indie genre related settings, props and costumes for my models.