Production Log #4 - Feedback and Survey Results

30th September 2013
This week, both lessons were  catch up lessons. We got the chance to update up our blogs, improve our work and catch up on any other work we were lacking on behind. 
I started off by getting feedback of the proposal from my peers Fiona and Alina. I thought of including this is in my blog in a different way, so I thought I would use Voki, as it would be a funky media source to use to listen to my feedback. After I got feedack from my peers, I went on to do another task which was editing my preliminary evaluation. I included more detail into what went well and what I could do better in my task.After I completed this task, I went on to creating a powerpoint based on my survey results. This survey was conducted so that I could get ideas on what I would want my magazine to be based on. I print screened each results and their data onto powerpoint and analysed on what I found out and how I will apply each of these results into my own magazine. 

Proposal Improvements From Fiona

As well as getting positive comments of how successfull I wrote my proposal. I also got improvemtns which were vital. I took in consideration of the improvements as it meant that I was improving my work.

Proposal Feedback From Fiona

I received detailed feedback from one of my peers Fiona. She told me specifically on what I included well into my proposal . There were many successful key elements which I included which build up into my proposal. The positive feedback from Fiona showed my weaknesses and strengths in writing my proposal.

This voki can aid my final product as the as I am planning my magazine, I have to follow the proposal. With the help from peers I can understand more about how successful my magazine can be with views of my peers. 

Target Audience

Target Audience

This task is to help me recognise my target audience and have general information about them. This can help me understand who I am making the final product for. With the more information about the target audience, then it's easier for me to include features in which would easily interest the target audience.

Double Page Analysis

Double Page Analysis

This is another task part of researching on the different music magazines which exist and how they attract their readers. Each magazine has a different style in portraying a feature or an exclusive article. They commonly take up a double page(s) in which they both look visually appealing to read and the text not being daunting to read. This task can aid in my final product as I have now got ideas on how I want to produce my double page spread with inspiration from these double page spreads.  

Preliminary Task Video

For this task, I recorded the pages of my preliminary task via Cam Studio. After many attempts I got the video to work, as I did many mistakes which included the mouse hovering over the region of where I was recording. After recording both videos, I then decided to upload them to YouTube as viewers can get easy access to watching the video. I made sure that my videos were unlisted and that no one can have the ability to post comments. I may use Camstudio more often in other tasks.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

For my preliminary task I am going evaluate the front cover and contents page which I created on new software. For my cover I chose the same colours as the school (navy blue, yellow and white) so that when it comes to selling the magazine to the students and teachers it would easily be recognised as a Haydon school product. The font I have used is a mixture; the masthead has a slight classic look to it however the sell lines have a simple look to it. Furthermore, the masthead has got 3 different colours in which 2 are the Haydon school colours. The main image of the front cover is of the new school building in which it has been the most talked about topic, so I thought I would have the new building on my front cover so that the reader (students and teachers) can get more information about it. Furthermore the sell lines are spread around the page so that they can have more focus on the front cover. There is an image of 'cakes' which supports the sell line of 'double delight', as it denotes the new exciting, irresistible food in the canteen, it also promotes the canteens food so that it would encourage the students more to eat in school.
For the contents page, I decided to include an image in the background instead of using a solid colour background which would not be as appealing to the readers. Each contents page line has a number on the left of it to guide the reader. The contents lines are in red and capitalized so it can stand out from the page. I included a social media section as it is most likely that students use social media more and it is a great way of finding out extra information about this magazine and to get in contact for valid reasons like opinions on the magazine, articles to feature etc…
The good thing about my magazine is that I have shown my skills through this task. I like the way I have set the contents page out with an image in the background being transparent. I like the way how I have used different colours for the sell lines for the front cover.
I believe that I have met the criteria for the preliminary task and have successfully created a school magazine however there are many things I could have done different. I could have used more professional images and locations around the school site, I used my phone which has a fairly low quality. I could have made the layout of the front cover and the contents page much neater as on the front cover, everything is scattered around the page so it looks very busy. I could have included less sell lines and keep it simple.
When Ii comes to doing the real task, I will make sure I use the new skills which I have learnt from my preliminary task for my actual task. I will also make sure that some elements of the magazine are presented much neater than the preliminary task.

Production Log #3 - Writing a Proposal

23rd/24th September 2013I began the first step of the coursework which was writing a proposal. Firstly, as a class we discussed about what a proposal is and what it needs to include. I found out that I need to talk about my target audience, my ideas on what my magazine will look like, what will feature on the front cover, contents page and double page spread, promotional methods, new media and what genre of music I am thinking of picking. Continuing, I also had to talk about how I would launch my magazine. I was struggling in the beginning when writing up the proposal, so I decided to write down in note form on ideas that I had to create my magazine.
While doing the proposal I was gaining more ideas for my magazine which was great. The proposal has got information on what my magazine will be called, the colour scheme, and what will be inside the magazine. These are my ideas which I have included in the proposal. I had a look at few blogs from last year’s AS group, and I saw that their proposal all includes information about their target audience and their rough ideas on their magazine they will create. This guided me into writing my own proposal. After I finished my proposal, I thought of going to my survey which I created last lesson to find out views from my target audience. I analysed the results I got and took those results in consider when writing up the proposal.

Proposal

My magazine will be based on the music genre R&B/Urban. I have chosen this genre as I believe that R&B is a very successful  music genre with big well known artists it the charts. R&B includes sub genres of Hip-Hop, Soul and Rap. My magazine will be issued monthly.
I have chosen my magazine to be monthly as monthly magazines are more sophisticated and have more in depth information than weekly magazines which has got short, easy to read articles for the reader. As my magazine will be a monthly magazine, I will be including more in depth articles, reviews and interactive pages for my target audience.

My target audience ranges from female to male aged 16-30. They are young adults which go to school,doing their GCSE’s, A-Levels, or are in University or have started to have a career. They fit in the social categoryof C1 C2 D E. The target audience would read this magazine for information and entertainment/escapism. Magazines are a big hit when it comesto reading about what is going on in the music industry (news, reviews on events.) It can also build their personal identity, to identify people, situations, issues in the text which is similar to the reader, also by reading the magazine they are building their personal relationship with the magazine and the people around them who also read the magazine as they have the same common interest as the other readers, and it would also be a controversial topic for them to talk about, making the name of the magazine being spread out and havemore readers reading it. My audience are mainstreamers, and individualists. They go with the flow however they want to show the world that they are different.
My target audience will have a strong relationship with the magazine via social media. As my target audience are young they are usually up to date the current technology and social network, this is an advantage to the music magazine to have it’s word spread out across the nation. As my target audience are young adults, their dislikes and likes needs to be encountered so that if they do see something featured which they would like it's guaranteed that they will be interested and buy the magazine. 
There will be a Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and Instagram pages of the magazine which is a good way to promote the magazine to engage more readers also it's a great way for the target audience to get updates and information quickly through social networks as well as staying in touch with the magazine. Social Media Networks are a great source for interaction between all readers and the magazine.

For the first launch of the magazine, I will do the best in giving out freebies, promotions and special editions of the magazine so that it can give a good first impression to the target audience and the industry. This will also give them high hopes for the next upcoming issues.
Freebies are vital when it comes to launching your first every issue. I am going to include a freebie for my target audience as I believe it would encourage them get the magazine and satisfy their expectations of my magazine. Every month there will different freebies like free downloads (Song/Music Video) which can be accessed from the magazines website via mobiles, The QR codes will be a great source for the readers to download these freebies as it's quick and easy to access. There will also be posters, physical copies of signed CD’s and more. Freebies will also boost the sales of the magazine.

Promoting the magazine is vital if I want the magazine to do successful in the industry. The type of promotions I could do for my magazine is have a launch party in which my target audience can access by entering a competition via Twitter. There will be TV adverts, Radio Adverts and even posters around to promote this new magazine. As my magazine is R&B, i thought of having KISS FM to promote my magazine so that their listeners can buy my magazine which would be a great advantage. The artist that will feature on the front cover of the magazine will promote the magazines as well as themselves of the front cover, which is also another great way of promoting us and the artist. Other artists that will feature in the magazine can promote themselves in the magazine on their social media pages.

From a Survey which I conducted, I have found that my target audience would read an R&B magazine furthermore I found out that social media is the best source of interacting with other readers as well as the magazine themselves. I asked them on their opinions on having a dedicated page of the readers and their views on the magazine. There will be images of fans from instagram, tweets from the readers who tag #MelodyMag and more interactive assets. 
Main Article - It will be a formal and direct interview, however it will be a short interview as there will be more information about the new artist. The interview will just briefly introduce the artist to the audience so that the readers will get to know them. There will questions by readers/fans for the artists, this is another easy way of getting the reader to the buy the magazine and read their question.
Reviews - there will reviews on recent released albums, gigs and single. This is so that readers can have a brief read of the current music. 

Regular features will include My magazine will have the pages of; 1 main article of the cover model, small articles of fewother artists/bands, Album of the week, and few reviews of current songs, gigs and albums. This makes thereader get excited and want to read about it. The album of the week page will consists of basic facts about thealbum, like how long it took to make, the songs featured in it, and release date etc… This makes the reader engage into the music magazine as they are finding more information about certain thing. There will be special issues for Christmas and Halloween. Competition and giveaways will be featured in each issue for instance - winning a pair of tickets to 'sold out' show.
The name of my magazine will be a symbolic or a music term which will relate to R&B.The Masthead of my magazine which I will create will be called ‘Melody’ as it suits thetheme of R&B theme. It’s also short, catchy, simple and meaningful. This type of music genre has a tuneful

harmony and melody. The masthead also straight away will give the genre of music to the reader, makingthem easily recognise what music magazine it is. It will have a black shadow and the colour of the mastheadwill be purple with an effect of bevel

The colours used for my magazine will be dark but bold colours: Blue, Purple, White and Black. They are dull but relatable colours. These colours are also unisex colours, as my magazine is appealed to both male and female readers.

The purpose of writing a proposal is so that I can put down all my ideas of what I would like my magazine to be like. This is very beneficial for me when it comes to making my final product, as I can use the proposal as a reference to what I have decided to include in my final product and whether or not i've been following them.

Preliminary Task

Contents Page Research

Contents Page Analysis

In this research task, I analysed 3 contents page from 3 different music magazines. Q Magazine, Billboard and NME. Each magazine have a different layout, colour scheme and images and how they can be effective in drawing the readers attention. Analysing these contents can aid in my final product as I know understand in what my contents page of my music magazine needs to consist of in order to portray the certain musical genre of my magazine.

Production Log #2 - Producing My Preliminary Task

16th September 2013
In today's double lesson I completed my preliminary task, which was to create a front cover and contents page of the school's magazine. 
I went on Adobe InDesign and opened up my document as I continued to edit the pages. On the front cover I made many changes which include changing the name of the magazine to 'The Haydon Zine'. I decided this to be the name of the magazine as it's easy to recognise as well as being a catchy name which is suitable for the theme and genre of the magazine. I thought of using the Haydon colour scheme which consist of navy blue, white and gold. I adjusted the sizes of the words with 'Haydon' being the biggest and centred in the middle. 

I carried on with the front page by adding sell lines, all of the sell lines are linked about Haydon. The sell lines took me about 5 minutes to include however I had issues in placing them in the front cover as some letters would camaflouge into the main image or it would cover the main image however this's issue was solved by changing colours or just adjusting the sizes. Some sell lines have images to support it so that the front cover has just more the one image and more focus to other well lines instead of the main headline. I then continued in creating my contents page, I placed an image of a jigsaw puzzle which shows a Haydon school value, I made the image slightly transparent. 
The contents page lines include articles about the school's current construction going on, the new canteen and careers which also includes the students and the teachers views on them, information on the new system of the schools and results day for a-level and gcse students.  This task took me a while to do as I didn't get to finish it off in class so I had to complete it in my free time. With each contents page line there is an image and a page number in the bottom right corner of the image. 
I believe that today's lesson was a successfull lesson as I got a lot of work done and gaining more confidence in using InDesign.

Front Cover Research

The purpose of this research task is to look into existing music magazine covers. I analysed 3 covers; 'Q Magazine', 'Kerrang!' and 'NME'. Each of these magazine are different and unique in their own way. Kerrang! is a Rock magazine whereas NME and Q are multi-genre magazines. This research can aid my final product as it gave me ideas on how my front cover will look like, giving me inspiration on features which can be adapted and included to my final product final cover. 

Production Log #1 - Preliminary Task

11th September 2013

Today I started to create my preliminary task. I went around the school to take few images so I can use them on the magazine. I have decided to have the new building on the front cover as it shows the massive difference of Haydon School this year, it’s also is a controversial topic around school amongst the teachers and new students, so why not use this as the main sell line of the magazine.

I will be using Adobe Inn Design to produce the front cover and contents page. It’s my first time I am using Adobe Inn Design to create a school magazine as my preliminary task. The software itself looks very complicated however I got through the first step quite easily as it was just setting up the page.

For this task I had many ideas in my head, however I was struggling with a name but at the end I got a good name which I was satisfied with.

In my next lessons I am going to be carrying on in creating the front cover of the task also I will be creating a contents page.

Preliminary Task Ideas

Preliminary Task Ideas

Course Overview - AS Media

The course introduces students to Media through a mixture of theoretical study and practical work
The department follows the OCR specification. A link to the sylabus can be found here
Coursework (50%): Unit G321 – Students will produce a piece of practical work consisting of a new Music Magazine. Student will display all work on personal blogs and will evaluate their work using a range of multi-media methods.
Exam: Unit (50%) G322 – Students will be required to analyse a moving image text (TV Drama) as well as a question based on the study of the film industry.

TV DRAMA

In the exam, students will view an ‘unseen’ moving image extract of a TV dramawith one compulsory question dealing with textual analysis of various technical aspects of the languages and conventions of moving image media. Candidates will be asked to link this analysis with a discussion of some aspect of representation within the sequence.
In this section of the course, student will be taught about how TV dramas communicate meaning to their audiences and will be introduced to the concept of SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS.  Students are required to demonstrate textual analysis of all of the following technical areas of moving image language and conventions in relation to the unseen extract:

• Camera Angle, Shot, Movement and Composition
• Mise-en-Scène
• Editing
• Sound

The issues students are required to discuss include: Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Sexuality Class and status, Physical ability/disability, Regional identity

FILM INDUSTRY
Candidates will be taught to  understand and discuss the processes of production, distribution, marketing and exchange in relation to the FILM INDUSTRY. In addition, candidates should be familiar with:

• the issues raised by media ownership in the film industry;
• the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing;
• the technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange;
• the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences;
• the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences;
• the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by international or global institutions;
• the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour.

This unit is taught through a series of recent case studies from both Hollywood and UK cienma as well as through student guided independant research. 

MUSIC MAGAZINES
The purpose of this unit is firstly to assess candidates’ ability to plan and construct media products using appropriate technical and creative skills; secondly to assess candidates’ application of knowledge and understanding in evaluating their own work, showing how meanings and responses are created; and finally to assess candidates’ ability to undertake, apply and present appropriate research. The unit requires candidates to engage with contemporary media technologies, giving them the opportunity for development of skills in these technologies. These technologies include BLOGS, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP, ADOBE INDESIGN and ADOBE PREMIERE.
Students follow the print option and are required to produce the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.
All images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate