1. EVALUATION QUESTION 7 LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK
WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE
FULL PRODUCT?
2. Preliminary Final Production
3. Preliminary Final Production
4. PROGRESSION I have learnt to use a variety of different
skills from my preliminary task to my final production, enabling me
to produce a high standard magazine. When I created my preliminary
task I had very little knowledge of how to actually use photoshop.
This meant that I did very little by means of editing, leaving both
the front cover and contents page basic and boring. The arrangement
of the text and layout of the preliminary task is very poor and
doesn't really comply with any of the codes and conventions I've
found in my research. The masthead for example is relatively
nondescript, just bold and capitalised. It's not in the centre of
the page and it definitely doesn't look professional and stand out.
However, by the time I started making my final production my
knowledge of photoshop had improved greatly and I knew the common
codes and conventions for a music magazine. To improve my masthead
I centred it, and created a small drop shadow to make it stand out,
creating a more professional feel.
5. LEARNING My research into the codes and conventions of music
magazines proved to be very valuable as it helped me raise my
production to a much higher standard. It was after looking at my
research that I realised how poor the layout for my preliminary
task was. I'd used only two images, and both these images became
the background for the text. While this is common for front covers
it practically never appears on contents pages. Instead, contents
pages tend to have two or three smaller images and well arranged
text. The text on my preliminary is all clumped together, in a
basic font with no description underneath. In my final production I
separated the text using colour rows instead of changing the text
colour. I wouldn't have thought of doing this before doing my
research and I believe it looks far more professional and
effective. I also wouldn't of been able to accomplish this in the
preliminary task anyway as I didn't understand how the layers
worked.
6. LEARNING My photography skills in the preliminary task were
clearly lacking as the images I produced were over exposed and
boring. At the point of taking the photos my knowledge of lighting
was very poor, because of this I just took two photos and didn't
make any effort to adjust the the brightness. However in my final
production I understood the importance of lighting and setting. Due
to this I took the photos in a studio environment. This allowed me
to manipulate the lighting, creating professional looking photos.
Once I'd taken the images I used the hue and saturation tool on
photoshop to make the images stand out further. I learnt how to do
this after watching a photoshop tutorial on youtube, this is
something I never even thought of doing in my preliminary
task.
7. CONCLUSION So to conclude I've learnt a lot from when I
first created my preliminary task. To begin with I was clueless on
how to layout my front cover and contents page, resulting in a
messy text arrangement and boring images. Following my research I
learnt all about the common codes and conventions of music
magazines which allowed me to layout my product in a clean and
professional manner. I also learnt the importance of planning,
without the opinions of my focus group on my multiple mock-ups the
final product wouldn't have reached this kind of quality.
Throughout the process of creating my final production I learnt how
important it was to use the tools and features offered on
photoshop. I neglected to do this in my preliminary task as I was
unfamiliar with the programme which led the production to be very
basic and boring. However I didn't make this mistake in my final
production and after watching a lot of tutorials, used the
photoshop tools to the best of my ability. I also didn't have a
good understanding of the camera and lighting in my preliminary
task, because of this the photos were far too over exposed. In my
final production this was not the case and I created professional
and interesting images for my magazine.
