Exam practise

For my AS media portfolio, I created the pages of a new music magazine called "Techniques". The genre for this magazine was technical equipment and because I was unfamiliar with this genre I had to research it and learn the new codes and conventions of the genre this was crucial to producing a good product. I by researching other magazines of the technical equipment genre.

At AS I researched primary sources: I researched music magazines of all genres, as before starting my media journey I never had really looked at music magazines or even read that many of them so I knew learning the codes and conventions of not just my genre but music magazine as a whole was important. Some of my primary research was more useful than others, one magazine that was useful to me was an issue of Acoustic featuring Gabrielle Aplin in a medium close up as it had a similar style to what I knew I wanted to do keep it simple but visually impressive. By seeing this magazine it enabled me to visual the style I wanted to do and more importantly knew people would like it as my fellow media students around me commented on how nice the magazine looked. One theorist that applied to this photo was Mulvey's male gaze as Gabrielle is looking directly into camera while having her makeup and hair done nicely attracting male attention. I found this to be very useful as it put in my head how a magazine should look and what kind of look the finished product of a technical equipment magazine should look like. This helped my creativity as it made me aware of the codes and conventions of not just the technical equipment genre, but magazines as a whole. I found this research to be very helpful  since I had no prior knowledge, I know that good quality research was essential to helping the creative process of making my magazine. I felt that personally it did help me as it made me aware of certain things I could do to to help appeal to my TA for example.


A2 HERE


In AS I did paper based TA research to people of my demographic which was both genders and 16+. I asked questions like what colours they found appealing, What instruments they liked, What masthead they liked the most and if they liked ad's in magazines for example. I felt I conducted target research very well as it enabled me to gain a clear understanding of what I needed to add to my magazine and what would and wouldn't  appeal to my TA. When I first started media in September I would not of been able to conduct TA research as I would of not been able to decide on what questions to task, but thanks to the journey I went on with media I learnt how to do this effectively by not asking to many open questions for example . I found this successful as it helped me get a sense of what my TA wanted and liked, however one thing I was not so pleased about was the questions I used, I found out quickly that I had used to many open questions and quickly had to much data  to analyse in the set amount of time I had. If I could go back and change the questions I ask i would as I could of found out more information on my TA'a preferences or what people expected out of a magazine that focused on instruments.

A2 HERE

In AS I looked at the codes and conventions of magazines of all musical genre's as at the start of the year I did not know any of them. For each music genre they each had a similar layout but there was subtle differences between all of them. I wanted the pages for my technical equipment magazine to "pop" and look vibrant hence the Andy Warhol theme in some of my  designs especially present in my DPS I made the other pages pop through the colour scheme I choose to use. I created synergy by using the colour blue I picked up in the blouse my model Lauren Sharp was wearing. I realised the range of colours I used made my magazine appeal to both gender's.

At AS I found didn't plan in as great detail as I would of liked. In retrospect I wish I had planned more details specifically in my photos with such details of what I wanted my model to wear for example a colourful blouse ,I wish I had planned more locations as well as most of my photos were from a studio shoot, I also wish I had planned my model's poses more instead of improvising on the spot . In hindsight my product did end up looking good but I feel that if I had planned out the details of my photos would of been better which may of led to me getting a higher grade.

I wish I had planned more for the design and layout of my content's page, I had created had drawn plans on A4 but they were double page, not single page like my finished product and not impressive and missed out many key details such as a basic outline , which you can see in my evolution if my contents page but you can also see how far I have come on my media journey and improved over time.