Evaluation

Evaluation of Media Coursework.
Introduction
Our media course was split into 2 assignment briefs. One was to make a short film of a conversation between two people across a table. The needed techniques were a 180-degree reversal shot, exchange of dialogue a to have a scene with an entrance of a character through a door and to walk across the room before the dialogue was exchanged. The other assignment briefs was a magazine cover and a content page for a college. The needed techniques to be shown was a medium close-up shot of a student at the magazine college, 4 original shots to be included within the magazine to be placed in ever the cover or the contents page and also the main cover and the content page must be for the same magazine. I choose to do the magazine assignment brief as it was more appealing to me.

I choose to work as a group with 3 other students in my class; Jamie Baker, Daniel Mason and Robert Gibson. We began to brainstorm and think of possible colleges for the magazine to be made for. We made a few ideas (music college, Film college, fashion college) but the majority of the group decided to do a sports college. Our college that was made was called Harlow Sports College. We made a logo and made the basic information needed for the magazine. The magazine would be issued monthly at £2.50 with an annual edition and a special edition. Me and Jamie Baker did the monthly editions, Daniel mason did the annual and Robert Gibson did a special edition. We researched all range of magazines to look for a basic layout to follow.

I looked at a music magazine called Kerrang, a sports magazine called 442, a gossip magazine called OK, and a man’s magazine called NUTS. We looked at these magazines and choose to base our layout similar to the sports magazine 442. After studying the magazines i made some mock covers to get use to the tools and improve my editing of photos and making a base magazine to help when i make my final magazine. I learnt how to make a good design and layout of a magazine. This helped me plan a good layout and decreased the time it would take for me to make the final magazine as instead of learning the techniques along the way and missing things that could be included in the magazine to increase its realism i did it before hand so when i want to add any finishing touches i can do so without having to learn before hand. We as a group made a base layout and template to make sure we all had a basis similarity through our magazines. Our magazines do have their own layouts and designs but do follow the same guidelines.

After we all had finished our magazines to a basic level we came together again as a group to see if anything can be changed to make the magazines look like a series of magazines instead of individual magazines with the same layout. We choose to included pictures of each others work in the annual magazine to make them relate more. Also we included similar with the same people involved in the pages. We did a final error check  for our magazines and then went back to add anything needed to increase the realism and make the magazine look more professional.

Evaluation Of Finished Product.
I believe my final product is a good example of a magazine. It follows the guidelines of a magazine and includes all that is needed in a magazine; Headmaster, sub-title, Date line, selling line, price tag. All these things are in my magazine and done to a decent standard. My final image is edited and improved to a standard that i believe that could be used on a magazine. I did have some problems with my original main image. The picture wasn’t to the specification needed and i had to retake my image. My image was a medium shot instead of a medium close-up so i ever had to re-scale the image and lose quality or retake my image. I did at first try to re-shape my image but i lost too much of the image so i tried to re-scale it but the image became pixelated and the quality was reduced. So i choose to retake my image. The image i replaced it with met the specifics after i made a slight variation. My magazine layout i am particularly happy with. The layout was made as a group with my other media peers. We were working in a group and needed the magazine to be linked so the magazines looked like they were part of a series of magazines. Keeping to the pre-made layout i did change it a tad to make the magazine look more individual. I put Japanese text in the cover and contents whenever i could. I also kept to traditional colour scheme that is relevant to a Japanese background. I tried to give my magazine a very Japanese feel to it as the main articles are of a Japanese theme.

With my main cover i used techniques that i previously learn’t when making my mock magazine cover. I learnt that i needed to make the text stand out more than the main image. I tried enlarging the text and change the colour but this had little effect. I then learn’t of an effect called outer and inner glow. This added a surrounding colour to the text to make the text seem bolder. I experimented with all different colors and fount that using the opposite colour to the colour of the text increase the visibility.

Another technique i learnt and used in my main cover is were to place images to fill space and were to place text to increase visibility. I made a mistake in my mock cove in placing the font against the main image. This makes the text harder to read and makes it look like it has been placed incorrectly. With this mistake i researched deeper into magazines and fount a majority of magazines have a side panel for text instead of having it placed back against the main image. The image placement was also a key skill i picked up on during the making of my mock. I fount that when images are placed correctly it makes the magazine look more professional and improves the layout of the magazine instead of making it look messy. In my mock images i didn’t experiment with image placement and just had them in the bottom right hand corner which left huge spaces of the cover empty. On my main cover i placed many images without backgrounds around my main image and text to make the magazine page full and bold. If i just placed them at the bottom parts of my cover would be empty and look rushed and unprofessional. The images i used did not stand out with detail as most of the was unoriginal images and mainly silhouettes.

Evaluation Of Product With Regards To Audiences & Institutions
My magazine is aimed at teenage students. I tried to make it appealing to 16 to 18-year-old by following examples of magazines i found on the internet. I used techniques used in the well know magazine Kerrang to try and relate to my audience. I used similar text and image styles as Kerrang because Kerrang uses the images and text to relate and interest the reader. Seeing as both magazines have the same target audience i thought it would be a good way to connect with the audience and make the magazine feel professional. Kerrang uses appealing style text and uses over exaggerating words to express the articles. I used this style of writing to sell my articles to the audience and try to get them interested and want to read about the articles story. I also made sure the articles i included were appealing to the audience with my own judgement and what i personally would find interesting to read. I thought this would be a good way to determine what to include seeing as i am in the target audience age range. Personally i think the way Kerrang use the text in their articles really helps the magazines to sell and with me using a similar technique my magazine would sell well within the target audience. One factor that i think would holds my magazine from being successful is the limitation of articles i could write about. Seeing as my magazine is aimed only to martial arts there is only so much that can be wrote about. This limitation effects my magazines selling in the future as the articles would become repetitive

I feel the audience would look at my magazine and be appealed to it but the picture and be interested in the articles. The big bold images i chose to use gives an impact to the audience. I feel the images are appealing and eye-catching and therefore would pick up the majority of people interested. With most magazines the cover image is the first thing the audience sees so if i have a very powerful main image the likeness of someone buying my magazine increases. A fault i my magazines appeal would be that quality of my main image. The main image is still appalling but it isn’t the best as the editing was not done brilliantly. This fault will reduce my magazines appeal but not a huge problem because it can be fixed easily.

Overall Evaluation

I feel my magazine was overall a good magazine. The layout and design can be seen in other well-known magazines and i feel the techniques i used from other magazines was done at a decent standard. My magazine successfully shows relation with my group’s other magazines. Although i did use a different color scheme and slight design variation to the rest of my group i feel it can still be related back to the different magazines visually. My magazine does only relate to a very narrow market, but i believe it relates to such market quiet well with he articles at offer and the images being humorous and lively. Factors that i feel personally that i didn’t do well would be that the images i used wasn’t of the best quality. The quality of the images reflects its professionalism and with images that lack quality gives the magazine a disadvantage. Another factors would be how my magazine would proceed in the future. Lacking flow of articles limits my magazines production and would leave the later magazine articles weak and repetitive. Overall i find my magazine a successful example of magazines. It shows relation to other magazines that are professionally produced but it doesn’t show a perfect example because of a few lacking factors.

Final Product

This is my final magazine product.

Main cover

Contents page

Step by Step of my contents page

1.I needed to do before anything was to make sure that my page is the same size as my cover page. A4 size. Simple enough.

2.I needed to make a base border for my contents page. As i was working in a group we decided on a base of how our magazine was going to be presented. We would have a side column for pictures and the white area would be for text.

3.To make mine stand out for the rest of the group in the background of my orange border i put Japanese writing. The writing is all the martial arts that i can find on the internet, i translated the names to Japanese. I then placed them in the background and reduced the opacity to make sure the writing doesnt take all the attention of the reader.

4.I filled the white space for the text with a blue box. I did this to reduce the plainness of the page and to make it relate more to my front cover. I added an outer and inner glow to make it look more exciting and professional. That colour is in all of my group’s magazine so that it looks like a continuous magazine series.

5.The side image i placed is me in a martial arts pose. I did this because i couldn’t perform any others and get a good image of it. I had to change the image direction and size to make it right for my magazine.

6.I put a little image of myself to make that top of my magazine look more busy. It seemed plain and i only wanted a small image there to fill space. I was going to put the main magazine logo and the title contents next to the image so i needed to make sure that it wouldn’t take too much space.

7.I needed to fill the opposite side of my martial pose image. I went on Google and searched the pose for a suitable image to put on the other side. I fount this cartoon one from a game “street fighter” that i use to play and thought it would be a nice touch to the magazine to add more humor and depth to it.

8.To add more humor i copied the blast coming for the cartoon mans hands and flipped it and changed the colour. Makes it look like we are fighting.

9.I added my content title and made it stand out by putting an outer glow on it to increase the visibility against the background. I used the opposite colour of the background as the outer glow to maximize the visibility.

10.I sorted out what articles i was going to have in my magazine and then wrote it in the space i left in the blue box. same with the contents title i made the writing the opposite colour to the blue box to increase visibility. That text didn’t take as much room as i expected and couldn’t make the text any bigger otherwise it would over power the page.

11.I decided to put more Japanese text in my work so i translated my page information and placed it underneath the original text. I needed to make the English stand out more so i put a outer-glow to the text and made it bold and larger than the Japanese text. I choose a outer-glow of red to make the text bolder and brighter.

12.I decided to change the place for my original image and place a banner there instead. I was going to put the magazines main logo in there to show that it was connected to the main cover with more than just the colour scheme.

13.I re-sized the logo on the main cover to fit in the banner i made. It didn’t take away any detail to the logo which was good otherwise i would have had to make the logo again at that size. Which would be very time-consuming.

14.I inserted my final planed image and fount it did not take up all the room i intended. I re-scaled the image to take up some more room and i still was not happy. i choose the keep the background of the image to make it more like an image and not just Tom jumping in mid-air.

15.I inserted one more image of a ninja just to fill the gap left in the page. The page is not completely filled but then not empty. I think i have a nice amount of images left in my magazine. In my question it said that i needed more images on the page and more ninjas so i hit 2 birds with one stone and the additional images are ninjas. This is my final content page and nothing has been changed past this point. I did do a few little things to make the image look better such as improving brightness and contrast with each section of the image.

Production Log – 23rd November

Today i added more images to my cover page and my contents page. I edited my main image to remove little errors that were slighty notisable when looked closly. I also added a few images i got from the internet of ninjas to added a more oriental feel to the magazine. On my contents page i still have one more image to add and left space for this iamge and possible a few more.

Production Log – 9th Novemeber

Today i made a few changes in ideas and i started to personalize my layout and design with some nice features. On the main page i finished making my rising sun design (which will be faded under the main image), i extended the sun beams across the page and i fused all the layers so they will all be eventually colored when i fade them. I also included some Japanese text under my English text to give it an oriental feel to it. On my context page i changed all the colour to relate to my cover and i changed the font of the text and also placed some Japanese text behind the main text but instead it being a translation of the English text i typed up all the main styles of Japanese martial arts and put it in the background slightly faded. I am going to have to change some of the text on my cover page as i go along because i haven’t finalized what i am going to write in the side text bar.

Old Cover                                                   New Image

Old Content                                               New Content

Production Log – 2nd of November

Today as a group we all worked on the base layout of our magazine. We took influence of our design from a popular sports magazine Four Four Two. We used the main title in a traditional way on top of the page, for the context of which is inside we’re using a side text bar. We are going to place the date and the price to the bottom left side of the magazine title and place the bar code to the bottom right of the page so that the attention of the main image isn’t at all effected. We are keeping very traditional to the layout and going to add a more individual feel to the magazine through our own special features such as the logo or the image or even down to the font of the text.

I have made some changes to my mock magazine cover design to meet these new changes to our original magazine layout. My feature logo idea is not going to be affected in anyway i will just had to re-scale and change the placement of it to meet the new layout design.

This is the basic design of my magazine design. I am going to add smaller detail like the date and price at a later that. Now i am just deciding on the sizes and shapes of my title and the desired size and idea of my final photo and how it is going to sit in the magazine. My next task is to take that image and insert it in the proper position and clean up any impurities that are left.

Production log – 19th of October

Today i continued to make my template covers but this time i but it into context of my magazine idea by basing it on my college i am creating. Within the group i am working in i am making a magazine special about Martial Arts. I have made a base logo idea for my magazine as well as a specific logo to Martial Arts. Within our group we are all working on a group magazine and all are making an idea of our logos and once we have looked at all the logo ideas we will choose one to use.

The image i have uploaded is my base for my magazine and will be changed and improved over a period of time. I will be uploading it at every step of creation.

This is still at the beginning stages and i have uploaded it just to show you the possible logo ideas that i am creating.
My groups logo ideas are also posted on their blogs. They can be fount at; http://mace26.wordpress.com http://jbaker123.wordpress.com http://gibson10.wordpress.com

Kidulthood Essay

This film is a teenage drama that addresses the “struggles” that modern day teenagers have to deal with. It is quiet a recent film and sold well nation wide. It focus’ on the cultural and social lives of a group of teenagers living in London and it shows what a typical day for these teenagers.

The film is influenced hugely on modern day stereotypes of teenagers and it was clearly not written by someone of that age due to the use of the extreme over exaggeration that the writer had made within the story and the dialogue it does. The typical stereotype of a teenager going out to get drunk and high is shown to an extreme in this film. A good example of this over exaggeration would be the scene in which one girl character finds out she is pregnant but still takes cocaine and drinks alcohol shortly after finding out and her excuse of this is “i’mma get rid of it anyway”. This is a disgustingly misleading because i doubt any teenager is that disrespectful to their own body to do that. This shows the grossly ignorance of the writer and how he wanted to give out a negative view on teenagers and how they don’t even care. Although he had done negative scenes to lower the view on teenagers he did have a few scenes in which he shows them as a good person. E.g. The beginning of the film we see a young girl hang herself as a result of intense bullying, later in the film her brother goes out to hunt down the person who did this to her. This may not be a great example but it does show the writer did want to address that teenagers do respect one another.

Another way that teenagers are addressed through out this film is that they don’t care for anyone but themselves and that they are ignorant and have no moral respect for adults. This is shown through scenes like the shop robbery scene, where a teenager goes to buy alcohol (at around mid-day) and is rejected so he just steals them anyway and assaults the shop keeper. This gives the impression that teenagers will do anything to get drink and have no respect and don’t think of the consequences of their actions. This is not the case for most typical teenagers. Sure they will have a drink on occasion, but it is unlikely they will assault someone in order to get it. This scene is a very powerful statement of the morals of teenagers and gives a clear indication of what “stereotypical” teenagers do.

The writer does show some good sides to the teenagers as-well although it is shown through a negative. It shows individual short scenes of characters in-which they show how they are feeling. But they only last a short while un-till they join the rest of the group. This shows that they put a front face on to hide their true feelings and when around others act like nothing is wrong. E.g. The scene were the pregnant teenager goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror and is rubbing her stomach. She begins to cry and punch her stomach as an attempt to get rid of the baby, but when the door knocks she dries her tears and walks out like nothing had just happened and she was fine. This is a very positive statement for teenagers because it shows that the teenagers clearly do have some feelings and morals and not just robots. Although it was addressed through a negative saying that they have a fount face to hide their feelings it does show that teenagers do care about what they do.

Another issue the writer hits is the issue of racism. Yes there is racism in the world but in these film it is EXTREMELY over exaggerated. The scene were a black teenager is trying to get a cab but they keep driving pasted is to show that people are racist to the black teenagers. Although in some cases this is true it is not as obvious as this film displays. Another scene would be that when 3 black teenagers enter a shop and they are accused of shop lifting but they never did steal anything. These 2 scenes are very over exaggerated in the fact that this kind of stuff does happen but not all the time.
Different is wrong. That is how teenagers (in this film) see things. Example of that is in the opening few minutes where a girl is violently beaten because her dresses different and because she is still a virgin. This shows the gross stereotype that most teenagers are one sided and follow the group and that most teenage girls are sluts. This is probably the worse case of over exaggeration through-out the whole movie because to say that a girl should be beaten because she is not a virgin would never happen in real life. there are many different negative stereotypes of teenagers and many social groups and to say otherwise is very ignorant.

This film gives a huge over exaggeration to a typical teenagers life and only focuses on one social group. This film only cuts the surface of a teenager’s life. This film is hugely influenced by mis-leading media and ignorant stereotypes that should be not used to look at a teenager’s life.

By Harvey Neary.

Production Log 12th October

Today, due to Andreas’ illness. Renier taught us today and we were given a more in depth tutorial to Photo-shop. This 20 step lesson gave me all the necessary skills i need for basic Photo-shop knowledge so i can finally tick off my S.M.A.R.T target of getting basic Photo-Shop training. I followed the guidelines set out by the 20 step program and produced a thrid Magazine cover as a practice. This Cover i started completely from scratch although i did use resources on the internet, it is still done internally by me.

Production Log – 5th October

I started making a mock magazine print to practice my Photo-shop skills and get familiar to the layout of a basic and typical magazine.

First magazine attempt

The first image was one of my original photos when i first started to use Photo-shop but i began to change it into a magazine. I changed the colour of the walls and the surrounding areas of the band and added some fade around them to make them stand out more, I also changed the colour of the center street and background of the band to black and white to add more of an impact to the colour change of the walls. I then put in a well known magazine logo (Kerrang) to the top and also some headlines and sub text to begin the process of changing an image to a magazine style. Unfortunately this image does follow a few magazine templates but not a typical size and shape so i stopped working on this one and began working on a second one.

The second image is a more realistic magazine layout and design. Although i haven’t put more detail such as a bar code or price i have laid out the image in a more magazine style being a A4 size and the typical placement of images and text. I have only changed this image slightly but it has more of a meaning. I included a faded image of the well known guitarist Matt Bellamy above my original image of him to represent the rise of his band muse. I planned to have shuttle images with a meaning put  into my magazine designs and will not give away any clues to what it is or what it means . You will have to see for yourself.