Original Photographs

Finished Products

My finished products. Amplify cover, double page spread and contents page.

Looking back at your prelimiary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Photography:

The photographs from my first magazine weren't very well planned. The photograph along the bottom I think is quite good, but the other park photographs are blurry and badly organised. I've now learnt about shot distances, angles etc. and I think that the photographs I took for my final are a lot better than the old ones, as I knew what I wanted for my final magazine, whereas for the college magazine I just took random photos. I planned these photographs a lot better, as well as the place I took them.

Fonts:

I've learnt a lot more about fonts now too i.e.: not to use too many different fonts so that it looks messy and un co-ordinated, and using similar fonts to form some sort of house style. The use of http://www.dafont.com/ has been incredibly helpful. On my college magazine, I only used fonts that I found on PhotoShop, and they don't really suit, whereas there is a house style for font in my music magazine. I used over 7 different fonts over my three final pieces, from both PhotoShop and http://www.dafont.com/.
Some of the fonts I used: (dafont) - "Soopafresh", "Capture It", "28 Days Later" and "Chilled", and a regular Microsoft font - Trebuchet MS.  

Layout:

The layout of my college magazine cover isn't very good as the three main photographs are just square images that have been tilted slightly. I now know how to feather the edges or put a border around each picture so they don't look like they've been edited in Paint. The writing on the cover is also very unorganised and disjointed between "gig and... we talked". It doesn't look very much like the cover of a magazine, possibly more like a poster, but I have now developed the skills on how to organise and lay everything out like a real magazine.

PhotoShop: My PhotoShop skills were very basic when we started the college magazine, as I had never used the program before. That's why the college magazine looks badly constructed. The four people along the bottom have just been cut out and placed onto a black background, and I can see mistakes i.e.: where i've cut the people out from their original background, and cut a small piece of them off too. I have now learnt to use PhotoShop more effectively and gained skills by using lots of different tools in the program.

Planning:
When I was making my college magazine, I didn't properly plan it. I believe that the only real planning I had was a sketch of a possible cover layout, and asking my friends to be in a photo shoot. Now I've learnt the importance of planning my magazine properly, so I know what I'm doing each day to get my magazine completed within a certain time. I had certain days where I would either be: taking photographs, editing photos/magazine, or writing for the magazine. I also had to plan things such as the use of my equipment - making sure that there was a camera available on the day I wanted to take photographs, instead of just arriving and hoping that there would be a camera free.

Audience Research:
My audience research for the college magazine was very weak. I didn't really know what elements I should have in my magazine, therefore I didn't really know what to ask the students around me. I now know how to construct a questionnaire that has specific questions that I can gather information from so I know what people like to see. I've learnt that the more questions you have, or the more detailed the questions are, the better the end result of your magazine will be as you know a lot about the people you want to target/represent.

Overall, I think that my PhotoShop skills have improved the most. I'm now very comfortable using the program, and find it almost easy, whereas when making the College Magazine, I was very un-confident and it took me a long time to complete small tasks using some tools.
I've learnt more of how a magazine should be laid out properly, to make it look like a real magazine and so that it looks interesting to viewers.
I have learnt how to use fonts and colours appropriatly, so that nothing clashes in my work. I also learnt how to write a suitable article for my magazine.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I developed PhotoShop skills by using lots of the different tools within the program.

I used techniques such as, drop shadows, strokes, inversing selections, editing photographs with contrast etc.

This is a screen grab I took whilst I was using the Drop Shadow tool in PhotoShop.

This is a screen grab I took whilst I was using the Stroke tool in PhotoShop.

I leant that Flickr is a much easier way to annotate my work, or any work. It's very useful for analysing products, and I used it a lot to annote my magazine, and other magazines, for example: Billboard.

I had never used Blogger before starting our media work. I found that it's a much easier way to store, organise and change your work, instead of having to print everything out and hand it in. It's very simple to use. I think that evaluating my work on Blogger instead of in an essay form is much better, because of things like: when evaluating different aspects of my media work - it's all broken into sections and divided by elements such as links and pictures, which makes it a lot easier to concentrate on writing small chunks of writing, rather than one long paragraphed essay. I think that when writing an essay to evaluate something, you can lose the ability to pay attention to detail, whereas on here, you can write as much as you can, because of the fact it's broken up.

 

Equipment I used:

Nikon Camera

I learnt about things such as shot distances, and unusual/interesting angles when using the camera. Taking all the photographs straight on at four people would've been very plain and uninteresting for the reader, so I took my photographs from all different angles and distances. My two favourite angles where: taking the photographs from below - looking up, and having my band sit down, with me sat closely infront of them to take the pictures.  

Computer

Lights for the photograph shoot

The very bright lights made it so all of my photographs weren't dark and blurry. The bright lights on my band meant that the camera wouldn't have to use flash - making them shiny and red-eyed. I had never used the lights before. They also made it a lot easier for the camera to pick up little details and made the white background more purely white than cream - as it would have come out in normal lighting. 

How will you attract/address your audience?

Click on the photographs to read my analysis of them, using Flickr.

LAYOUT2
Originally uploaded by Hannah Stagg

Amplify Contents Page
Originally uploaded by Hannah Stagg

Covverrrrrr
Originally uploaded by Hannah Stagg

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience is all males and females between the ages of 16-24.
Demographic categories: I have chosen to target the catergories C2, D + E mainly, as i feel that they are the ones that my target audience are most involved in, as teenagers. However, catergories A, B, + C1 are also targeted as fans of the music I have chosen to represent spread across all ages and walks of life, so my magazine can appeal to absolutely anybody who enjoys that type of music. I think that category E would be able to afford my magazine, but perhaps not every week like a loyal buyer, probably only when the magazine would really attract their attention, i.e.: 1 or 2 times a month.
Individualists and aspirers.

Below are links to UKTribes, and the main types of people that i'm aiming my magazine at:
Scene Kids - www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=10
Moshers - www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=12
Skaters - www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=11
and Indie Kids - www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=8

Here is a video of one of the groups:



The target audience listens to music like indie, rock and alternative etc. which means bands like - You Me At Six, Muse, The Blackout, Panic! At The Disco etc. Most spend their money on keeping their phones topped up, food and clothing, and shop in places like HMV and Rock Collection. On average they spend under £30 a week. They would watch TV programs such as, Skins, Friends, Scrubs, music channels, Glee etc.

(both images taken from http://www.google.com/ when "scene kids" and "skater kids" were searched)

I would like places like HMV + Rock Collection to advertise in my magazine, as I know that, from my audience research, these shops appeal to my target audience. I would also like things such as instrument shops/lessons to be advertised, i.e.: guitar lessons, to get people more involved in the music they love. I would like other advertisements such as hair products because scene/indie/skater kids like dyeing/styling their hair, which I also know from my audience research.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I would use IPC Media (http://www.ipcmedia.com/as) and their partner company MarketForce to distribute my magazine, because I think that my magazine is a lot more similar to Kerrang! than NME, and as Bauer publishes Kerrang! and IPC Media publishes NME - there wouldn't be two closely related magazine under one publisher. Although NME also focuses on some of the music that my magazine does, it has a wider range of genres and bands within the magazine, and mine will focus only on indie/alternative/rock. This is my USP - that it is almost specialist in the fact that it only focuses on certain genres. I would have my magazine advertised mainly on music channels such as MTV and Scuzz - as these channels play the music that my target audience listen to, and other channels such as E4 and LivingTV. I would want it distributed and sold in places like newsagents and supermarkets, like most magazines. My target audience is large as I know of a few other magazines that publish for the same audience, i.e.: RockSound, Kerrang! NME, Metal Hammer etc. All of these magazines are distributed to my kind of audience, or ones very similar, so I know that my target audience is large enough to have my magazine distributed in places such as Tesco and other major supermarkets, alongside the others.