Note to moderator

Over the time in which i have been ding this task i have learnt a vast amount of things, like the importance of research and planning and how it contributes greatly to a final media product. I have thoroughly enjoyed this task and i hope you enjoy looking through my work as i have had doing it.

Thank you! and Enjoy!

Cameron Letts. 

Front Cover

Front Cover 

           

Contents

Contents Cover

Double Page Spread

                                                     Double Page Spread

Preliminary Magazine

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

Throughout this piece of work i have learnt a lot about magazines in general and the effort and detail that goes into making a magazine look 'professional' a clear indication of the knowledge that i have developed throughout this piece of work is the difference between my preliminary task and my final product.

Firstly, the type of shot i took on both magazines has a significant difference in the overall look and style of my magazine. For my preliminary task i took a long-shot and edited it to fill the entire page, this made the photo look stretched and look life the photo was very unprofessional, this contrasts with my final product. For my final product i opted for a more simple mid-shot so there was little risk of it getting stretched. Also the overall design differed from my preliminary task as well. My preliminary task had no borders so this meant i had to add the title of the magazine onto the photo on the magazine, this meant that part of the title went over the models head and i had change the titles colours to white and black instead of just white, which i intended to do, by doing this it warned me not to do it again because it gives the magazine a messy look to it, i implied this into my final magazine by having a border, which allowed a clear space for my title and made sure it didn't go over any of the picture and it was able to go well with my colour scheme, unlike the one on my preliminary task.

On the topic of colour scheme, i learnt that it was hugely significant in the overall look of the magazine. On my preliminary magazine i did not stick to any colour scheme and just stuck to the one that i was given due to my back drop, so i stuck to just a white colour scheme, which didn't really go with what my model was wearing. By now knowing this i was very specific on what i made my model wear, for example on my cover on my preliminary i had a white background and white writing to go with my background, but he was wearing a blue, yellow and red shirt which really didn't go with the colour scheme of my magazine, there is a clear change and clear improvement of knowledge with my final product. With my final product i have stuck to a strict black and white colour scheme (with a slight involvement of grey) this allowed my magazine to look a lot better than my preliminary magazine due to the colour scheme, so overall i learnt a substantial amount from the period of the making my preliminary and my final product

Arguably one of the biggest differences between my preliminary magazine and my final product is my contents page. My preliminary magazines contents page is very different from my final product. On my preliminary contents i had a large long-shot photo covering the majority of the page apart from the bottom which has the date that the magazine came out. My preliminary contents page was significantly different to my final contents, firstly my preliminary contents had little writing on it, so it didn't really give a lot of information about the actual content of the magazine, which is very uncommon in most 'professional' magazines, this is in great difference to my final product, my final product was packed with information about the content of the overall magazine and also the overall design was much better than my preliminary design, as my preliminary contents page was very basic and boring, in contrast to my final product.

Overall i have learnt a substantial amount from the period of making my preliminary magazine to my final product and this is evident if you compare both the magazines.

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

Before i had started this task my skills on certain software was very limited. Since starting this piece of work it has developed my skills a great amount and has allowed me to become more educated on certain software's, which can benefit me in  later life.

Camera

Throughout my entire project the camera I used was a Nikon D300, due to this being the only camera that was available to me. while looking back at my photos, I felt that this camera gave off a high quality image. This camera i feel was very easy to use and this benefited in the duration of my photo taking process. Along with the camera I used a tripod, so that my pictures were steady and still. Also i used artificial lighting and a white backdrop to improve the quality and overall look of my photos, i feel these aspects were a huge factor in the quality of my photos and it enabled me to make the pictures look as professional as possible.

Computers

I used 3 different types of computers through this project. The first computer i used was in fact my own laptop. I used my own Acer laptop for mainly research and planning. Also i used my mums MacBook Air, in which i downloaded photoshop, so i was able to do the actual magazine at home. I also used the standard computers at school, this was for writing the evaluation questions, making the magazine and using them for research and planning. I already knew how to use these computers to an acceptable standard. The computers at school have the Windows 7 software, which i thought was a very good thing to be provided, due to the simplicity and my already able ability to use this software. 

Photoshop

I used Photoshop to construct both my magazine draft and final magazine piece, also it was used during the creation of my preliminary task. I used this software on my mums MacBook. At the start of the course I was not very experienced with Photoshop and found it hard to navigate. However towards the end of the course I was completely fine with it, my skills with photoshop progressed a lot. I learnt how to crop using both the magnetic lasso tool and also how to remove unwanted background from images using the magic eraser tool. Another tool which I frequently used was the spot healing tool, this was used in order to make my models skin clearer. To summarise, I feel that this course has provided me with a good knowledge of Photoshop. 

Animoto
Animoto is an animation feature which i used to present one of my evaluation question and also presented my 25 word pitch in my research and planning.

Slideshare
Slideshare was a feature I had used on the last part of the course when i was working on my evaluation questions, it is an effective way to share slides off of say Powerpoint and Word, this makes presentations look more professional and is easy to out into blogger and the work on it looks very good.

Other sites/Programmes

During the course I used several other programmes when completing this coursework. One of these was Blogger, it was my first time ever using this but i feel it was simple enough to use. I used blogger to post all of my coursework. I also used Spotify, this was to compile a 20 song playlist in my research, i was going to use sound cloud but due to my music genre a lot of my songs were not found on sound cloud but i did have a brief play around with it. I used Google Chrome, a simple thing to use but was vital during my coursework. i used this to complete my research. I learnt how to use all of these to the standard I needed. Another thing that i used was a memory stick, i used this so i could access my work from home. Email was also used in the transportation of my work from school to home and it allowed me to get on with my work at home.