Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back to the preliminary task back, I have a learnt a lot on InDesign since first using it. In the preliminary task, I used InDesign to create the school magazine which allowed me to learn and get use to the programme. InDesign was hard to pick up at the start; I'm use to using Photoshop, after playing around with all of the tools after a few lessons I began to pick up the techniques and actually found it easier than Photoshop. InDesign helped me to create an improved and professional look. As the whole programme's purpose is to create magazines, it was clear as to why we should use it - there are a wide variety of tools to use opposed to Photoshop where there are only the minority. When it came to taking images for my preliminary task, they didn't look professional as they had been taken on my phones camera. I didn’t think through props and angles of the camera. The photographs where just quickly taken. I decided to make my magazine mainly dedicated to the schools canteen. I had a few close up of the food, the front cover is a mid-shot of the canteen staff and some student.

The photos, finalise the whole magazine and if you end up with an awful set of photos then it will highly influence how professional and successful your magazine becomes. When it came to my real photo shoot, I prepared a lot beforehand unlike how I did for my preliminary task as I wasn't very prepared at all. I planned out exactly what photos I wanted and planned all of the outfits, make-up location and hair looks beforehand so I knew what my cover and overall magazine would roughly look like. I took over 100 images in total, so I had a wide variety to choose from in contrast to the preliminary task where I only took around 10 photos in total. Since the preliminary task I have become more confident on InDesign as I have learn what most of tools do and incorporated my new knowledge in my music magazine. I’m now better at using InDesign than I am Photoshop.

You can see form the preliminary magazine and my music magazine that the preliminary task lacks realism unlike my music magazine which looks similar to something you would find on the shelves of today. My progress mainly came from looking at a huge variety of real music magazines and using their codes and conventions and adapting them to my style of music. This meant that I was sure that my magazine would be as successful as other top magazines on the market. Such as Kerrang, NME and The Rolling Stones. The main skill that I gained between making my preliminary task and the music magazine was time, I had two months to completely finish my music magazine; this gave me much more time than the preliminary task as I only had two weeks for that. Because I had such a long time with working on my magazine I became very fluent with all of the InDesign tools and began to pick up new technique each time using the software. When creating my preliminary task my InDesign skills weren’t very good as this was the first time at using the software and I also only had two weeks. Comparing both magazines you can see a significant improvement throughout the months of how I have learnt to use the tools and display that strongly within my magazine GRANITE. 

Planning also made a huge difference when it came to the whole creation of my music magazine. When we created the preliminary magazine, we weren't given a lot of time to plan, prepare and organise exactly what we wanted our magazine to look like, or plan the features such as the images, sell lines and location. When I planned for my music magazine, I made sure that I had a list of contents ideas, sell lines and a well-written article as well as a draft drawing of the front cover as I didn't want to fall back into the same hole that I had with my preliminary magazine. This meant that the content of my magazine fitted in very well and effectively with the genre and overall vibe of my magazine. Overall, I definitely learnt how to enhance the magazine's quality and professionalism opposed to my initial school magazine for my preliminary task.
As you can see from the comparison of my two front covers, the preliminary magazine lacks realism unlike my music magazine which looks extremely professional. My progress mainly came from looking at a huge variety of real music magazines and using their codes and conventions and adapting them to my style of music. This meant that I was sure that my magazine would be as successful as other top magazines on the market. The main skill that i gained between making my preliminary task and the real thing.

Planning also made a huge difference when it came to the whole creation of my music magazine. When we created the preliminary magazine, we weren't given a lot of time to plan, prepare and organise exactly what we wanted our magazine to look like, or plan the features such as the images, sell lines etc. When I planned for my music magazine, I made sure that I had a list of contents ideas, sell lines and a well-written article as well as a draft drawing of the front cover as I didn't want my magazine to end up not looking professional and being successful, like my preliminary magazine. This meant that the content of my magazine fitted in very well and effectively with my target audience to this genre of music.

 

Props and costume

 This task is another part of planning on what I would like to be featured in my magazine. This specific task I believe is important readers will only buy the magazine if it appealing to them. In aiding my final product, I know strongly what props I will be using as well as the outfits which will similar. These are important features as they can portray easily the magazine.

Contact Sheet

This has allowed me to view all of my images in a small format to pick what images I like best for my final creation. After producing my contact sheet using Photoshop, I decided to print of my contact sheet and by using a magnifying glass I could clearly see the detail within all my images and able to pick my favourite outcomes.

I decided to do so, as seen in many other professional photoshoots, this technique is used to be able to demonstrate how the image will look once printed out in a real life copy of the magazine. After doing so, it was clear that several of the images would be suitable for my magazine by attracting my target audience and suiting the genre of my magazine through the clothing and body language shown.

  From my contact sheet it is clear that I have used a range of shots from close-ups to long shots, moreover the use of outfits I have used and facial expressions/body language from my model make it clear what type of magazine I have created. Although nearly all of my photos were appropriate to use in my actual product, some were harder to edit due to the background being patterned and very detailed therefore were not included in the final production.