George Backhouse: April 2016

Friday, 29 April 2016

Note to Moderator

Dear Moderator,

The brief for my AS Media Studies coursework was to create a front cover, contents page and double page spread for a new music magazine. My chosen avenue for the magazine was popular music, including genres like pop, rap and R&B, as this gives my magazine one of the biggest markets to appeal to in the world. Surprisingly, there is a lack of paper magazines that publish about popular music compared to other genres like Rock, so I wanted to create a magazine that can provide all the latest information about the charts and the biggest artists in modern music that can be widely bought in shops.

I have used labels on my blog so you can easily navigate to the posts you are looking for.

Yours Sincerely
George Backhouse
Edgbarrow School

Centre Number: 5111
Candidate Number : 0061

Evaluation Question 7

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

Here is a Google Slides presentation that shows the progression from my preliminary school magazine up to my final draft of the Pulse music magazine. Google slides was chosen as it is a simple and easy to read way to present my work.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zxRX_CONsb_C9bYui4Tp2ZejkHtcx8z00-dXlCzX9QM/edit?usp=sharing

Evaluation Question 6

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

In this section of the evaluation, I will be showing some programs I have used throughout the creation and publishing of my music magazine, why I chose to use them and what I have learnt while using them.

Serif PagePlus x6

The main application that I used in the construction of both my preliminary task and main music magazine was Serif PagePlus x6. This is a very good tool for making publications due to its wide variety of page, picture and text editing tools. Some examples of where these have come in handy for my magazine are for my final masthead, where I used the gradient fill feature, and the glowing around the slogan. I also tried out PagePlus x9, released in November 2015, and it had many helpful features such as mini tutorials. However, in the end I stuck with x6 as I was more used to the layout!

Serif PhotoPlus x6

The second Serif feature I used was PhotoPlus, which is a great photo editing tool that I needed to crop out backgrounds and make minor editing improvements to my images. This program could be accessed straight from PagePlus, which was really helpful in terms of ease-of-use. The use of this application has helped me learn a lot about orienting photos properly and also the importance of taking photos on a neutral background if I want to cut them out, as this was severely annoying and time consuming when I had to manually cut out a person from a busy background.

Microsoft Word

This popular and common text tool was used by me a few times during construction to help orient text the way I wanted it, and also to double check everything was going to fit on the page.

Evaluation Question 4 (and 5)

Who would the audience be for your product? And how did you attract/address your audience?

For the fourth and fifth evaluation questions I put them together in a Popplet. This was done as I could create a mind map style that allowed me to easily allow the questions to flow into each other.

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For this question I am able to refer to the Product Placement section of my coursework, where I analysed what distributor I would like for my music magazine and where the magazine would be sold.

In my Product Placement section, I chose Bauer Media to distribute my magazine as they have a huge portfolio of successful magazines which gives Pulse a solid base to build upon, and also provides multiple opportunities for synergy with many other types of media like radio stations. Specifically, deals could be easily struck with popular stations like Kiss FM, who can help advertise Pulse magazine in return for advertisements in the magazine. However, I have also undertaken some research into alternative distributors who could also be used. One example that I looked at was IPC Media (Time Inc. UK) as they are a UK based distributor who also have popular music magazine NME in their portfolio.

However, their product range is dominated by upmarket and specialised magazines such as Homes and Gardens and Cycling Weekly. This makes it less of a suitable option as Pulse doesn’t really fit with the portfolio that much despite IPC Media having lots of experience in this country. Furthermore, I would want to have a fully functional website to help bridge the gap into the online world and Bauer Media has got a variety of magazines that utilise an online version of their content.

Overall, I would still look to use Bauer Media as my distributor as they are the largest and highest powered publishing company for music magazines, and I think Pulse would be best supported as part of the Bauer portfolio.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Here is a link to a Powtoon showing my response to the second evaluation question.

https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/bJqv6Hj6woK/?mode=movie#/

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Planning

Here is my planning on how I'm going to tackle the evaluation, as well as what presentation software I will be using.
Evaluation (20marks)

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Prezi

· My magazine uses many features of popular music magazines that I have studied such as a big main image, a bold masthead and secondary leads.

· I have tried to word my article and contents page in a more informal style to help make my magazine feel like a magazine and not like a newspaper.

· My product has many different sections including interviews and analysis to help it become a magazine with a wide variety to read about.

· There are links to a website and email in the magazine which fits the code that many magazines are branching out into the virtual arena.

· I am going to try and use a presentation software like Prezi as it allows me to put up screenshots and then annotate them is a visually appealing way.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? Powtoon

· I’ve tried to portray my cover star Ozzy-B as intelligent yet has a bit of an attitude and isn’t afraid to speak out. I feel this can represent quite a lot of young people who may come across as cocky or rude but are quite smart.

· My magazine doesn’t feature anyone that is particularly old which shows how the music genres I mainly am reporting on are mainly run by young people.

· For this question, I might try Animato or Powtoon as they have a wide variety of characters that I could use to show the social groups represented.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Type

· I will refer to my Product Placement section of the coursework but also reference aspects of my final design that would make Bauer Media a good partner.

· I will most likely be doing this section in text as there isn’t much scope for adding visual effects.

Who would the audience be for your product? And how did you attract/address your audience? Popplet

· I mainly wanted to aim for young people as they are most closely associated with the genres on show. I can also reference my questionnaire. I may try to interview some classmates about my magazine but also someone older such as my dad, to get a wider view.

· I can use a mind mapping tool such as Popplet to easily separate the different demographics who might read Pulse, and how aspects of the magazine appeal to each one.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Type/Word

· I have used PagePlus a lot throughout and used extra features like PhotoPlus for photo editing. Since I have had practice with it from the prelim, I have found lots of extra things I can do such as the blue glow around Ozzy-B in the contents.

· This may be another section where I will mainly use text but I may test out something like Emaze.

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

· My final design has a reasonably similar layout to my prelim, but thanks to having more practice I can make the final design look more striking and provide more information as well. I have also got many more effects in my arsenal such as glows and outlines to provide more variety in my images.

· For the final section, I would like to be able to make a comparison between my prelim and my final design. This may be done most effectively with a commentary.