Evaluating AS Coursework

What specific professional media examples did you look at and how did they influence you?

I began by looking at past and present soul artists, such as Aretha Franklin and Dana Fuchs. This allowed me to get a feel and idea of how the artists strived for success and played a huge role in the making and development of soul music. This also influenced the creation of my artist who featured on my double paged spread.

I then looked at professional media examples, one of which was a front cover of B&S(Blues and Soul)magazine. This influenced my own production as it allowed me to analyze the front cover of soul magazine and look at typical conventions within it, as well as denotations. Although, to improve I possibly could’ve looked at more soul magazines, that differ to ‘Blues and Soul’.

I continued to looked at professional media examples, but this time I thought it would be relevant to look at a different genre and analyze the front cover. Analyzing the previous front cover magazine served as a guide to help me identify the typical conventions within a magazine, for example: a masthead, main cover and sell lines.

I then moved on from looking at front covers and decided to analyze a double page spread, with popular soulful artist ‘Adele’ as the main image. Just like the front covers this allowed me to look at typical conventions of double paged spreads, such as a main image, columns and subheadings. Although to improve I could’ve looked at more professional double paged spreads.

This then encouraged me to analyze three genres of different contents pages. One of which, happened to be a contents page from a soul magazine. Which included a main image followed by a small summary, which doesn’t give away too much information, allowing the reader to carry on reading the magazine.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your magazine? For my research and planning I mainly used the following software: Prezi, Powtoon, PowerPoint,

Emaze, Slideshare. They were both very useful for recording the research from typical conventions seen in all the front covers, double page spread and contents pages. The designs also made the recording more interesting to view.

The making of my production required me to use Photoshop to produce my front cover, double page spread and contents page.

For my evaluation I used similar software to my research and planning with ‘YouTube’ being an addition seeing as I used it to interview a member of my target audience. Although my blog was the software that I used mostly throughout the whole production to document all my work.

When it came to using a camera for my front cover images, double page spread and contents page, I was able to take suitable images and the more I took, the more experience I gained. Although it would be easier to own a professional camera to experiment with outside of school.

What have you learnt about you post-production skills from the process of constructing your magazine?

Using Photoshop to construct the whole production of the magazine was very challenging at the beginning, considering that it was my first time. Although with practise and many drafts I was able to finish my production. To improve I could practise editing more using Photoshop as it was something I struggled with the most. However from my student magazine it gave me confidence when it came to conventions of magazines as I became known to the layout and the need to have a masthead, main image, sell lines and so on.

What have you learnt about your language skills from the process of constructing your magazine?

Having researched into my target audience, I learnt that the language used had to be suitable for them. As well as ensuring that the sell lines and banner would attract the reader to purchase and continue reading the magazine. I learnt that having a masthead and headlines is one of the main conventions and with mine having the word ‘soul’ in it could attract my audience being that they are interested in soul music.