A2 advanced portfolio_production_diary_template

A2 Media Studies Daniel Morris Advanced Portfolio Production Diary

PROGRESS UPDATE PLAN FOR NEXT MONTH / WEEK(Including Possible Contingency Plans If Problems Anticipated)

September 2012 (Detailed Monthly Summary)

I have been doing some very basic planning of my entire project, looking at the general ethos and conventions of the type of newspaper I would like to create. After looking at some local British newspaper conventions, I have seen that they are very patriarchal, showing very strong feelings about kindness and good will in a community – sometimes acting violently/in a mean fashion towards those who affect the local community in a negative way.

After deciding on the general idea of what my Newspaper will be about – A good-willed patriarchal local British newspaper – I shall research more into the conventions of this type of paper. Looking at the sort of stories involved as Main articles.

October 2012 (Detailed Monthly Summary)

I have created a slightly more thorough idea of what I shall be using in my Newspaper. After doing some research I have found that key areas of the most popular news articles revolve around these issues: Political, Environmental, Scandals and Violence/Death. I have therefore commenced researching for my Ancillary 1 project – The Billboard. I have decided that I shall be using a political themed billboard surrounding what’s best for the British community. I have looked at and documented some billboard examples from some of the larger British newspapers. Unfortunately I could not find any good billboard examples from local newspapers so that it would suit what I was going to create. However they were very useful for general design ideas.

I shall commence the actual creation of my billboard. After some fairly brief planning I have a general Idea on what I would like to create - Sticking with the political theme.

November 2012 (Detailed Monthly Summary)

I have completed the first draft my billboard, using inspiration from my billboard design research + choosing a political theme. It contains the main political party figures in power at the present time, with the slogan “Your Country, Your Future. Act Now” I feel that this brings across the message that I want to send out.

I will touch up and make any amendments to my billboard. I shall also complete my analysis of Billboards, analysing the designs I have previously found.

December 2012 (Detailed Monthly Summary)

I have fully completed my billboard, with a different background and the new slogan – “Don’t let your country fall into the hands of others. Act Now.” My Billboard analysis is now complete and ready to be uploaded to my blog.

I shall finish off any work left over from my Ancillary 1 project. I will be moving on to my Ancillary 2 research.


Mon W/B 07/01/13 (Detailed Weekly Summary)

I have commenced researching Radio Advertisements for my Ancillary 2 project. I have listened to multiple radio advertisements and wrote about the history of Radio and its relevance to modern advertisement. I have also begun to analyse 3 radio adverts, I have already wrote a fairly brief analysis for one of the three.

I shall complete my analysis on radio advertisements. I shall plan my Advertisement.


I have completed my analysis of 3 advertisements – This helped me plan the structure of my radio advert. I have begun planning my radio advert, mainly focusing on what type of advert it will be. I have decided that it will be formal, and include a way for my newspaper to be practical and helpful to the subject in the advertisement.

I will continue to plan my Radio Advertisements and hopefully write some potential scripts.


I was not able to continue with my Ancillary 2 as I had to complete some other work this week. I have created questionnaires for research about the Newspaper that I will be creating. Then I have distributed my questionnaires and now I have them back completed.

I will put the data obtained from the questionnaire into a table. Then I shall create a few different methods of showing the results of my questionnaires, probably charts or graphs.


I have completed a Word document featuring Graphs, Charts, and a short summary of the results and what I plan to do with them. I have based many decisions about what I will be doing with my Newspaper off these results, such as the name of the paper and what kind of stories should be involved.

I will be researching and analysing Front page covers of magazines in order to become better prepared for the creation of my newspaper.


I have been looking at many different newspaper front covers from all across England to see what they look like. I have acquired a fair bit of inspiration and I have a few ideas of what I can do with my Front Cover. I have begun to analyse one of the front covers I have found in order to gain a better understanding of how it is composed.

I plan to complete 3 analyses of newspaper front covers that I have found.


I have now completed all 3 of my analyses and I am ready to upload them to the blog.

I will re-visit and start working on my Ancillary 2 Radio Advertisement Project.



I have been working on my Ancillary 2 project, writing the scripts I am going to use. Personally I have not enjoyed this, creating something that is purposely cheesy and to sound cheap in order to catch the audience’s ear isn’t something I find very fun. However I feel that the script that I have wrote does fit the codes and conventions of radio advertisements therefore I am happy with what has been created.

Next week I will need to find an actor or two in order to record my radio advertisement, hopefully this shouldn’t take too long and I can commence with editing the advertisement.


I have found an actress in order to record the advert; both herself and I recorded it within 10 minutes, which left plenty of time for me to use the program ‘Reaper’ to edit what we had recorded. I was given a fairly large amount of copyright-free music and jingles from the college media lab. This enabled me to instantly start work on the project.

Complete what I have already worked on and prepare it to be uploaded to my blog, hopefully this shouldn’t take too long so I should be able to start work on my main project. (Newspaper)


I have finished my Ancillary 2 Radio Advert on Reaper and exported it as a Waveform Audio File Format (.wav) so that it can be played easily and uploaded onto my blog when I am ready to put it on with the rest of my Ancillary 2 work. I have begun designing very basic outlines for my Newspaper; so far I have completed two designs for my Front Page using Photoshop.

I shall complete three designs for both my Front Page and Page 2 of my newspaper on Photoshop. If I can I shall then pick one design from each to carry through for my main project.


I have completed all of my designs for both my Front Page and Page 2, for each design I have exported it as a JPEG image so that it can be viewed easily on any computer and so it is ready to be uploaded to my blog. I have also completed the design for my Masthead, ready for use when I start work on the project. I have chosen my favourite designs, copied them into appropriate working folders ready for next week.

I shall commence work on my chosen designs, hopefully to create a more advanced template for both designs. I shall also start work on writing the content for my newspaper, eg: the main articles, competitions, freebies, contents etc


I have been writing all of the stories that I will be using for both my Front Page and my Page 2 of the newspaper. I have tried to include a variety of subjects to centre the stories around, eg Environment, Government/Police scandals, Local attacks etc I have also worked on my initial templates so that they should be ready for content to be inserted into them.

I will need images to go with my articles + general content. So I will have to go out with a good quality camera and take some fairly professional/formal-looking photographs for use. I will then try to insert both my stories and images into my templates to create a basic first draft.



I have entered all of my stories into the newspaper pages, including their Titles and borders/underlines. I have set a consistent font and font size, also making sure the text paragraphs are equally aligned to the rest of the page. – I have done this using Photoshop’s text justification features and by drawing guidelines. I have inserted a couple of main images for the articles, but I still need more in order to make the newspaper a little more entertaining to read. So far I have a very basic first draft which will need a lot of work doing to it in order for it to meet my expectations.

I must take some more pictures to go with my competitions/freebies sections. The pages need to be organised in a more appealing and logical manner, I feel that it is in a bit of a mess at the moment so I will be reconsidering some major parts of the design.


I have inserted, re-arranged and re-wrote some stories when adding in advertisements and generally trying to organise the pages in a logical manner. I have been inserting images that I have taken the week before, using light coloured backgrounds and borders in order to make them stand out + look more professional.

I need to make the pages look more like an actual newspaper like I have seen during my research, I feel that it looks simply too “cartoony” at the moment. I think there is too much open space between articles, which is an issue I plan to address.


After realisation that my font sizes were simply too large to be considered a standard newspaper size, I had to write nearly double the amount of text to make the stories involved fit the newspaper pages well. I have inserted multiple red and black lines in order to add sufficient borders to the Pages; I feel it was necessary to break up the page well like other newspaper examples have done.

I shall touch up and work on anything that I have missed out on over the next few days. I shall also be completing my Evaluation, which will be uploaded onto my blog possibly via a glorified powerpoint by using the Prezi software.

PROGRESS UPDATE PLAN FOR NEXT MONTH / WEEK (Including Possible Contingency Plans)

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A2 advanced portfolio_production_diary_template