Final Words:

To the Examiner,

I hope my blog ties in with my final magazine, I tried to make the image header fit with the idea that my blog is indie/acoustic themed. The mixpod playlist on the right hand side suggests the style of music I am personally interested in, but also the music that is featured in my 'Unplugged' magazine; beneath this on the right hand side is my labels list, this makes my blog easy to navigate around.
Since my preliminary magazine I have made many improvements with the colour scheme, layout and photo shoot set-up; this has also been improved since my final draft. My final magazine colour scheme is consistent throughout and the fonts I have used all tie in together and work well with the style.
I have fulfilled my skills throughout this coursework project, especially through Photoshop, I have learnt a lot since I started the course including computer skills and I have improved my determination when working.

Thank you for marking my blog,
Jess Pardoe

Final Magazine (Re-Post)

Media Evaluation: Part 1)

Media Evaluation Question 1

2)

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine hasn’t taken much inspiration layout-wise but the social group it would attract is similar to those of Billboard or NME, a mix of rock and acoustic fans means there is a wider audience. I think my product represents the indie/alternative/acoustic scene as being laid back and interested in vocals – as opposed to the fans of a magazine featuring dubstep style music. I didn’t base the looks or visual appearance of the ‘band’ on any existing bands in particular, I looked at people such as The Dum Dum Girls and Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to study particular existing girl bands in general as I wanted something to compare my band to afterwards.

The images on this double page spread are all the final ones chosen for my magazine, I took over 200 photos to get a range of possible choices for my magazine as I think it’s important not to just take one photo, as I can always improve the shot.

The qualities the existing NME magazine above shows are the layout of the text, the structure of the image and the tag-lines and advertisements on the cover. Firstly I think the front suits the magazine as well as the band which creates a style of writing associated to them, the yellow and white writing looks really effective over the top of the image. The positioning of the band members in the photograph imply that the band will be lively, which they are - so this depicts a true image of the band; also the clothing they are wearing links through each person to give off a similar vibe. The advertisements tie in with the fonts used on the magazine as well, and they don't distract the audience attention from the topic of the magazine either, which works exceptionally well. I took a small amount of inspiration from this cover however as I was looking for a more simplistic effect with less bulky writing or adverts; the font used on my cover does go with the theme of my magazine and band though so although I haven't used anything similar, I have thought along the same lines as NME magazine.
The Wombats magazine cover portrays the band as idols in a way, as they look the part and have an action photo which makes it a lot more appealing to the eye and would stand out amongst others in a shop. I tried to create the same effect with my photograph but without using an action shot as the band I have featured are more acoustic and "chilled out".

Other bands similar to my false band - Dustland Fairytale - and the exisiting band - The Wombats - are;
Laura Marling, YeahYeahYeahs, The Pretty Reckless and Dum Dum Girls.

3)

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product? Why?

As I have previously noted, my magazine is somewhere between NME and Billboard, having big names of artists inside but also featuring new up-and-coming bands of the UK. The institution that might take my magazine on could be the same owner of NME magazine; they claim to be the most well-known and iconic music magazine in the UK. I think my magazine gives off similar vibe to NME magazine on the inside and outside, the cover always features a particular band or artist and the inside gives a double page spread about them; my magazine also features other topics such as festival line-ups etc. which is what NME allow as well.

This is an example of an NME magazine, featuring The Vaccines;


Institution of magazines consists of production, distribution, exhibition, ownership, profits, funding and audience. I have researched these over the AS course and have compared them to NME magazine;
Because the magazine has been around for a long time, the original idea doesn't need to be pitched to anyone; however the person designing the cover would have to pitch their design to the NME team and they would decide whether to print it or not - I did a similar thing when I created my magazine, I asked around my friends and other students at school about their opinions on my magazine, I used Facebook, Twitter and verbally asking them.

As NME magazine has been around for more than 50 years it is an incredibly successful magazine; in the 1960's the magazine company were producing and selling over 200,000 copies of NME a week, this was only when they had been around for roughly 10 years. By the 70's the sales had decreased to 60,000 copies which was fatal for an up and coming magazine; however they regained themselves by 1973 reaching a phenomenal 300,000 a week.
Krissi Murison is the current editor of NME magazine and it also a British music journalist, she has had this role since 2009 and continues it to the present day. The magazine costs £2.30 to buy in England; this is an exceptional cost for such a famous and successful music magazine, my coursework magazine costs a similar price - this is where I took the idea from to make it affordable to a wider range of people than expected.

5)

5) How did you attract your audience?

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Evaluation q5

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4)

4)  Who would be the audience for your media product?



- My typical audience member for my product is someone who is really interested in keeping up-to-date music, likes to spend some socialising out with people. They would be a student either in college or at university, but my audience profile suggests anyone of the age of 16 and above. Stereotypically interested in creativity and fashion; and they would most likely enjoy going to gigs and festivals often. Their inspiration would be The Arctic Monkeys, The Maccabees, The Vaccines, The Strokes, Ellie Goulding and Laura Marling. I researched this before hand in my preparation work when I created an Audience Profile, however this question clarifies that my magazine is suited to this specific type of person. I believe it appeals to this audience because of the theme of indie/acoustic, the cover photograph alone suggests the genre of the band and the list of existing band names on the cover represent the vibe that the magazine is trying to give off.

This was my original audience profile;
It hasn't changed at all from when I first created it, there are more details about the type of person to be found within the original however: 

Audience Profile

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6)

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

-       Canon EOS 1000D SLR camera, I used this camera to produce my test shots and my final magazine photoshoot shots. By using this I could learn to use all the different settings on my camera and adapt to the lighting or surroundings. The ISO setting was the setting I learnt the most about as you have to alter the number according to the brightness of the sunlight; I also used the 'P' (portrait) setting to do individual photos and the 'AV' setting for group photos with background.

-       Sony Vaio laptop, this is the laptop I created my entire final magazine on; for my draft I used the school computers which had Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 compared to the version 4.0 that I have; using my own laptop with Photoshop allowed me to edit my work at home as well as in school.

-       SD memory card was the card I saved all my photos to, it has an 8GB memory which can store up to 1,000 high definition photos.

I have also used computer programmes such as Photoshop Elements 5.0 and 4.0, Blogger website, Scribd website and Slideshare to post information about my magazine and other posts on my blog.
I have learnt how to use Photoshop to a more skilled level in school as it's easily accessible on all Media computers; the process of cutting around objects in photographs has become easier as time went by for me, I knew how to use the lassoo tool before I started the AS Media course but I have developed this throughout the months of working with Photoshop in school.
I had never heard of Blogger before year 12, this took me time to explore all the tools of the website however as time has passed I know my way around it easily and can access other peoples blogs to make comments also.
Scribd and Slideshare are used to upload Microsoft Word and Powerpoint presentations so that they can be embedded into a blog post for people to view publically on my AS Media blog page. Scribd was hard to use at first as I had to rearrange some of my documents to allow them to be adjusted to Scribd's particular settings. However Slideshare was a lot quicker to learn from as it was simply choosing the Powerpoint presentation and pressing upload.

7)

7) Look back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task) what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from that to the full product?

Compared to my preliminary task my final magazine layout is much better and I thought it through a lot more, starting with the cover. My cover was plain and had a dull colour scheme in comparison to my final magazine with full, bright colours and a border surrounding the page. I prefer my final cover for many reasons, firstly the cover image is more striking and the colours are brighter and the characters chosen look like a band; secondly, the title is a lot bolder and the text surrounding the image stands out. I also had to do my preliminary surrounding a school magazine so I didn’t know how to structure the cover image in quite the same way as for a music magazine.

I was not certain on how to make my preliminary fit the theme of ‘school magazine’ whereas this was a lot easier with my final magazine being featured around music. The camerawork on my double page spread for my final piece varies with close ups, mid shots and long shots which is similar to my preliminary cover and contents; however the front cover image for my preliminary is a mid-close up, whereas my final cover image is mid-long shot.  The colour palette used on my preliminary is extremely plain and consists of yellow, white and black, my final magazine shows a colour palette mainly focusing on coral-orange and black, but also including tones of blue. This magazine is set to be released in spring which influenced my colour choices whereas I produced my preliminary at the start of winter, this affected my decisions. My editing skills have improved from preliminary to final piece also as I have learnt about new tools on Photoshop Elements 4.0, I could already cut around an image with the magnetic tool but I improved my skill of making the image finer and the edges neater when cutting out.

FINAL: Cover