Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my magazine I looked at the layouts of existing school magazines such as fusion and I realised that a lot of them were image dominated and text wasn’t a big feature for the front cover. So I incorporated this into my design and I took pictures around the school that would work well on a front cover. My main article was going to be about the finish of the exams so I decided to take a picture of students revising and then celebrating this worked well on the front cover. I then continued to look at the layout and other images were incorporated onto the front cover which was smaller stories in the magazine. I added this to my design and added outlines to it to make it stand out. I also added captions so the reader could see what the stories were about. I made my title take up the top third of the page and tried to use the rule of third which I commonly used in pictures. I continued the theme in my contents page; I decided to use a blocky format which is commonly used in magazines and fusion. This format worked well as the image to text ratio seemed even. I also used a similar text design on my contents page so they were relatable and recognisable as the same magazine which is very important; this was incorporated in a lot of the school magazines.

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

I hadn’t had much experience with cameras before this product and really enjoyed learning about the different elements of the camera. I learnt about the zoom on the front of the camera and the focus on the end, this really helped me in taking my pictures for my magazine. I used this to focus my shot and get the subject to be in complete focus I took medium close ups and close ups. I thought I should vary it so I had a good range to choose from for my magazine. I used mainly natural light as it worked well in the shot but I also took some pictures inside to see how the picture came out. For the main image I decide to use a close up shot I had taken in the natural light as the focus came out really well. I used a medium shot for my smaller images and stayed with my natural light shots. When I put my photos into Photoshop I created layers so I could move them onto my magazine. I created the title on a separate layer and dragged it above the last layer so it would be in front of the image. I added an outline to all of my pictures which was red. This made them stand out from the background picture. I then added effects onto my titles. I chose the enhance artistic section and picked an effect which I felt made the text more eye catching.