Note to Moderator

Dear Moderater,

Please find below my Foundation Portfolio G321.
My breif was to research, plan, construct and evaluate a front cover, contents and double page spread for a music magazine. Please use the labels to easily navigate my blog. I chose to create a pop genre of magazine.

Kind regards,

Lydia Cutting 2231

Completed Construction

Front Cover

 

 

Contents page

 

 

 

Double Page Spread

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s228/sh/e56d6bb4-ae4c-4155-ba1a-e3ce2e190cfb/ba9b6e930c4825b0107e0ea19e8a0dfb

Evaluation Question 2: how does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social group I have aimed my media product at is young adult females.
My media product, in some ways enforce stereotypes and in other ways it challenges stereotypes. For example, on my front cover the image is of a young female, stereotypically wearing make- up, and is wearing a lot of jewellery. Stereotypically young females put a lot of effort into their appearance, do their make up, hair and pick out trendy clothes. Girls are also stereotypically weak and inferior to men, and my media product challenges this stereotype as she has quite a powerful stance with the camera angle lower and therefore making her appear more powerful.
My media product shows representation through colours and language used, for example the colour scheme is red, which is a colour commonly linked to women as red represents lust and provocativeness which can be linked back to women as they stereotypically want love and can be provocative in how they do their make up, hair and what they wear.
I chose the feminine stereotype as my media product is aimed for women, this also means that using a stereotypical female image will draw the women towards the magazine and the articles as the stereotypes are more likely to apply to them, or even how they could want to be.

 



Evaluation Question 3: What kind of institution might distribute your media product?

Evaluation Question 4&5: Who would be the audience for my media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

http://edgyp11.wix.com/technologiesused

Evaluation question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Comparison to prelim task:

I think that I have improved since my prelim task as my front cover, as you can see on the labels above, has changed significantly. Even though I think that my contents page prelim and my newest contents page are very different, however I feel that they are both the weakest out of my front covers and contents page.

to do:

Over the next couple of days I will be making the following changes for my evalutaion :


Question 1:  Apply to front cover, dps, contents - more detail, link to genre, use terminology: direct address, talk about font styles, images.
Question 2: Edit clip - beggining, mise en scene, text with prezi, analyse original images
Question 3: get rid of repeated sentance off prezi, use words like digital platform for online part, for example tablets. List data from research
Question 4&5: pic of girls from question 2 - link to question,
Question 6: log in for technology, give examples of when you used them.
Question 7: use blue sheet and use phrases,

Update

Today, I uploaded my video response to question 2 and tomorrow I will be getting feedback.

Update

Today I will be filming audience's responses to my Question 2 and tomorrow I will be editing them.

Update

Today I attempted to film however it did not go too well, I have also updated my original images so that now they are all there. I plan to attempt at filming again on Monday.

Mrs D

Well done Lydia, this is detailed and an excellent draft. Make sure you cover all 3 pages for question one and explore house style. I'm glad you are adding some moving image to your evaluation in order to have more variety of ICT methods.

To do next lesson - Update

Tomorrow I will be filming people - interviewing about Q2, how does your media product represent particular social groups?
How do you think I have represented particular social groups on ... (front cover image, contents image, dps)

Original images - DPS, front cover and contents

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

Comparison to prelim task:

I think that I have improved since my prelim task as my front cover, as you can see on the labels above, has changed significantly. Even though I think that my contents page prelim and my newest contents page are very different, however I feel that they are both the weakest out of my front covers and contents page.

Evaluation - Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

http://edgyp11.wix.com/technologiesused

Evaluation - Question 4&5: Who would be the audience for my media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation - Question 3: What kind of institution might distribute your media product?

Evaluation - Question 2: how does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social group I have aimed my media product at is young adult females.
My media product, in some ways enforce stereotypes and in other ways it challenges stereotypes. For example, on my front cover the image is of a young female, stereotypically wearing make- up, and is wearing a lot of jewellery. Stereotypically young females put a lot of effort into their appearance, do their make up, hair and pick out trendy clothes. Girls are also stereotypically weak and inferior to men, and my media product challenges this stereotype as she has quite a powerful stance with the camera angle lower and therefore making her appear more powerful.
My media product shows representation through colours and language used, for example the colour scheme is red, which is a colour commonly linked to women as red represents lust and provocativeness which can be linked back to women as they stereotypically want love and can be provocative in how they do their make up, hair and what they wear.
I chose the feminine stereotype as my media product is aimed for women, this also means that using a stereotypical female image will draw the women towards the magazine and the articles as the stereotypes are more likely to apply to them, or even how they could want to be.

 



Evaluation - Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s228/sh/e56d6bb4-ae4c-4155-ba1a-e3ce2e190cfb/ba9b6e930c4825b0107e0ea19e8a0dfb

Final product

Front Cover

Contents page

Double page spread

Contents update

Today I have edited pictures and put my chosen one onto my contents page, however I need to put a cover line with the picture and change some of the cover lines from the front cover to link to the big images on the contents.

Editing Contents

Edited Image 1

Original Image 1

Edited image 2

Original image 2

I edited these pictures on serif photo plus by cropping them and using the curves tool, I also used the brightness and contrast tool to make the images brighter. Also in the second image I edited out the plug by using the clone tool to make a less distracting background.

Image Editing

Today I edited a picture for my double page spread:

Before:

After:

I think that the edited image is better, I am going to use this image on the double page spread to try and show more of a variation of camera shots as most of them are close ups.

Mrs D

Well done for starting on the evaluation. Your construction is coming along nicely. Make sure you add page numbers to your DPS and your larger font on your front cover is featured in your contents page. Make sure you have more variety of shot distances when you take more images. Keep up the good work.

Today I have been editing a picture to put into my magazine

Before:














After:

I have edited this image, however I am not too sure that I am going to include it as the angle is strange without a background and her hands look odd. I do not think I am going to use this image despite the editing.

Update

Over this weekend I have drafted a few evaluations for my front cover and contents page. I  will post when my double page spread evaluation is done.

Audience Feedback 1

Contents page change

Today, I have changed my contents page, I have added new images, fonts and font sizes, I have also added new articles.

Front cover update

Today, I have changed the front cover by adding new fonts and font sizes and a new image to try and make the front cover more eye catching.

Audience Feedback - Recording

Today I asked a couple of people about what I could improve on my magazine, I also recorded their responses but I need to edit the recording before I upload it. I plan to upload my response next week.

DPS changes

Today, I have changed my double page spread design to make it more appealing to my audience.I changed some of the fonts, added more pull quotes and images and this should appeal to my audience of females as the fonts are quite girly and also the colours still fit into my house themes.

Front cover changes

Old Front Cover:

As I have changed the genre of my magazine, I have changed the name and slogan on my magazine, I have also put in new music artists and band names as the genre has changed. 

I feel the changed front cover better suits the pop genre as the appearance of the girl on the front cover has more of a pop feel than a rock/pop feel. Also the name 'Mirrors' can link into the 'fashionable' theme of the magazine. It also links to the female audience as they stereotypically spend a lot of time in the mirror.

Changed:

11th March

Today I have printed off my 3 different pages, my front cover, contents and double page spread and have looked at how I can improve on each of them.
For my front cover I plan to change my magazine name, as I have changed my genre, and the bands that feature on the front cover need to change to a pop genre. I could also add a slogan to my front cover, also I have a date on it twice.
For the contents page, I need to change the names to pop artists and put my page numbers in order, I could also add more articles to fill the page more. I am also going to re-take my images and add one or two more to the contents page. I have also made a mistake with the band names, but as I am changing the band names, they will change on both the front cover and contents page.
For the double page spread, I could make the pull quote bigger and the main text slightly smaller. I also need to add page numbers, and could match the title to the cover story fonts on the front page. OR I could pull the image over one page and make my text smaller, it would then fill the left page more and make less of a space at the top of the page. I could also put the pull quote on top of the image on the right.

Mrs D

Well done for hitting your deadline. I like the 'feel' of the dps. Some gaps at the bottom and you need page numbers. There is a lot of text here - this could be cut slightly. Keep up the good work.

DPS 8

DPS 7

DPS draft 6

DPS draft 5

DPS draft 3

DPS draft 2

DPS draft 1

Change in genre

I am changing my genre as I have collected audience feedback that indicates that my magazine would be better suited to this genre of pop. 

I asked a group of 20 people, when looking at my front cover and contents page, what genre would you say suits my magazine best? 

1.  Rock/pop = 2
2. Rock = 1
3. Pop = 9
4. Indie pop= 5
5. Indie rock= 3

This pie chart shows that my audience thinks that my magazine works best as a pop magazine, however some of the headings need to be changed to pop bands instead of my old genre of rock/pop bands. 

My new genre will appear similar to the front covers below:

Mrs D

Well done for reaching your contents page deadline. You were even early. Keep up the good work. Your colour scheme, font choices and images work well, but aren't really reading rock. You could possibly consider changing your genre slightly. You could also go back to your RMAs and check how many other features they offer to help with your articles and get some audience feedback.

Contents draft 4

In this draft, I have added in more articles in the middle column and made sure the cover lines have the correct page numbers, I also made these articles centered and made sure that the colour schemes and fonts link to the front cover.

Contents draft 3

In this draft I have added an additional image and changed  some of the headings to link to the stories on the front cover, for example; Purple sea & tide with the right page number and Florence and the machine tour dates released. I also changed the band name for the free competition at the bottom of the page so it links to the cover and I have placed the 'free kings of leon poster' at the bottom of the page which also links to the cover. I have kept the same colour schemes and fonts so there is a house theme. 

Contents draft 2

I have added text that links to the front cover, for example I have used the cover line from the head story and used the same fonts and colour schemes. Although, I have used the wrong band name at the bottom of the page in the competition and I will change this on my next draft.

Contents draft 1

Today I started to put together my contents page, I have tried to link it clearly to the front cover by using the same colour scheme and fonts. I have also tried to link it to the front by using the same model for the covwer photo as it shows the cover story being linked to the contents page.

Contents page planning

I plan to take photos for my contents page, the images I want to produce will appear similar to the band on the right (Q magazine) contents page and I will also have some individual photos of artists, similar to the left (NME magazine) contents page. However, the design of my contents page will not have as many images as the contents page on the left but will have more than the contents page on the right.
I plan to have an image that links to my front cover, being larger than the other images on the page to show the link to the front cover. In the other images I plan for there to be a girl band dressed in dark rocky clothes, a male artist holding an electric guitar and another two images of female artists. The articles featured on the front cover will be in a bolder font to the others - showing a link to the front cover, and the articles with images will have more description to the article underneath the heading.

Photo editing

Today I edited an image for my contents page, I lightened the image, making the background and her face lighter, I also made her eye make up thicker and darker to make her appear more rock looking, linking to my genre.

original image

Edited image

contents

Today I am installing my serif software and will be researching images that I would like to inspire the images I will produce on Friday

Contents page planning

On Friday I will be taking images for my contents page and on Saturday (if Serif has arrived) I will edit and put the images onto my contents page.
However, my models were unavailable as they were ill so we have rescheduled for Wednesday, but in order to meet my deadline I plan to take images of different people in the poses I would like, and then at a later date I will change them.

Contents page draft

Today I have started on my contents page and I have changed the fonts on the front cover as my audience feedback suggested.