ANALYSING PREVIOUS WORK

BY HOLLY ETTY

THE BLOG I HAVE CHOSEN

The blog I have chosen to analyse is Alfie Green’s blog from 2014 A2 Media. I chose this blog as I believe it was very successful in the way he chose to design, layout and post on his blog as well as the variety of media he used; I shall be further discussing these aspects in the next few slides.

Firstly, what attracted me to pick this blog was the fact that I really like the clean cut style, fonts and pictures he used as they are very clear and interesting and they enable the blog to look professional as well as cool and current. I think the fact that the layout is very simplistic yet engaging, for example with the header using images and concepts from the music video. This enables the blog not too look too cluttered and allow it to look succinct, as well as interesting and slick. I also think it was a good idea that he has made the first post visible the final music video as this allows the blog to be easy to navigate and showcases well his final product from the first glance. Indeed, this allows the blog to be easy to understand and allows the examiner to know exactly what it is about in regard to his coursework.

THE ‘DRAFTING EVIDENCE’ SECTION

The first thing I find interesting about Alfie’s draft section is that he has used lots of different ways of presenting his work. I really like the fact he used a video clip to compare his initial and final draft of his music video. Not only does it make his blog more varied and interesting as it breaks up loads of text and PowerPoint's, which can get very tedious to read after a while, it also showcases how much work he's put into his final video and how he's progressed. I also like that this section is very full of pictures with descriptions rather than having to click on slide share - its all just there waiting to be viewed. This makes it easily accessible and allows the layout to be clean and interesting at the same time. He has also sectioned his blog e.g. ‘Digipak Drafting’ and ‘Brand Guidelines’ to make it easy to see what part of his music video drafting process he's discussing.

THE ‘RESEARCH EVIDENCE’ SECTION

I really like this section as it is all very organised and is very appealing to the eye in regard to layout. This section is very detailed and has lots of different multimedia such as text posts, pictures, videos and PowerPoint's. This varies the content as research can be really boring sometimes as we may have read/heard of these things before. I really like the idea of the History of Music Videos, video as its showing what that is and is explaining it in great detail, as well as not being a boring text post of regurgitated information. I would like to have a research section similar to this as I believe it is very well organised and attractive to look through despite there being lots of information.

THE ‘PLANNING’ SECTION

I like this section as it is very detailed and you can tell he put a lot of work into the planning of his final product. All of his ideas and planning materials are in the right order as well as being in different formats for various sections such as the cover sheets are photos and the article/interview is a video. This makes this section very interesting to read/watch/view despite there being a lot of posts and a lot of content. I think its important to make sure my planning section is similar to this as I want to be able to justify to the examiners exactly how I planned to do my magazine, where I got the ideas from and all of the content, so that it all makes sense and that I can refer back to it in my evaluation. I like that its detailed as we can also see what he changed and kept the same about his original magazine concepts i.e. sketches which I think is very interesting as you can see how he has progressed and changed his magazine throughout the process from planning to the final product.

THE ‘PRODUCTION LOG’ SECTION

This section is extremely detailed as you can see that he has made 22 production log posts. This highlights that he made sure he posted after almost each different task he had during his coursework. He has included a variety of media platforms in this section such as Youtube videos rather than pure text posts which makes it more interesting. However, when I create my production log I think I will attempt to do a production post after almost every media coursework session to ensure that my progress is recorded.

THE ‘EVALUATION’ SECTION

What I like about this section is that there is no text on the actual blog. This makes it more interactive for the viewer of his blog as it is predominantly videos (e.g. his evaluation video). I think this is good as it makes it interesting to view as you're not just looking at blocks of text, despite there being text that you can read along with the video to in regard to his Evaluation video. I think this is a very innovative way of presenting his evaluation as even though his evaluation is written in his own words, in reading them out and doing a video to go with it he can express his words in the way he wants to, as well as having music in the background which compliments his magazine style. The whole style of the evaluation video adheres to his magazine’s genre of R&B and also the house style in regard to colours he's used. I think this is a very good way of presenting his evaluation and I believe I would like to do something similar when I get round to evaluating my final magazine. I also like that he designed part of his evaluation as a magazine and put this on his blog as it really shows off his media skills and makes his blog different to everyone else.

THE ‘FINAL’ SECTION

This section is very brief and to the point which is good as there doesn’t need to be a lot of detail in this section as its just showing the final product. However, in regard to the audience feedback section, I think he could of done a video clip instead of a PowerPoint as this probably would have been more interesting and effective.

THE ‘PRELIMINARY TASK’ SECTION

Similar to the ‘Final’ section, this is fairly breif as it was only one task. However, the preliminary task section does emphasise how much his skills have improved since the beginning of the course and his first piece of coursework to his final product which is good and interesting to see. Despite it only being one post, it is still in a good amount of details with pictures and text to keep it varied.