THE A2 COURSE :)

Above is a scanned copy of my A2 handbook made by my teacher.
It looks scary from the outside, and it is in the inside :D

G324 - Advanced Portfolio A2 level 50% (Coursework) 100marks

Candidates will produce:

• A media portfolio, comprising a main and ancillary texts.
• A presentation of their research, planning and evaluation in electronic format.

The media portfolio will produced through a combination of two or more of the following media:

• Video
• Print
• Web-based
• Audio
• Games and Software

The presentation of the research, planning and evaluation may take the form of any one, or combination of two or more, of the following:

• A blog or Website
• A podcast
• A DVD with 'extras

'As you can see I have made a start on things. For the presentation of my research, planning and evaluation I have chosen to present my work on this blog. It's good for me as I am fully capable of blogging as I did it for my AS coursework.

The task allows us to work in groups of a maximum of 4 people. My group; Guiliano Rapoz, Ellie Gocher, Lewis Tillyer and myself are focused primarily on the 2nd task, which is to make a promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following separately:

• A website homepage for the film
• A film magazine front cover
• A poster for the film

The group as a whole gets on well, all of us a friends and carry individual advantages into the group. With different opinions with have combined them in a group effort to do the second task. We have an idea, which is to make a Zombie themed teaser trailer.

A2 COURSEWORK :)

My Media Exam that I did dating back a whole month ago went better than I anticipated. Gender representation came up which pleased me, as it's the easiest, but supprised me as it came up two years in a row!!!!. Section B was average as well, asking to discuss how important New Technology was. Which also went better than I expected.
CourseWork last year was a lot of work, but I did it! Looking at the A2 course though it loks like I am going to have a lot of sleepless nights :( The group work looks great and I am looking forwards to it :)

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

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When talking about social groups we need to take into consideration Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Social class and status.

Looking at my front cover and at the colours, they portray a masculine image. The image of the male model also maculates the page, however it fits into the Rock genre as there is a large ratio difference of male to females, males are stereotypically the gender of a rock group, and come to think of it, I can only think of one female Rock artist and that is Evanescence.

The model that appears on the front cover relates to the target audience as he is of similar age.

When someone mentions ethnicity, people tend to think manly about race and skin colour, however there is more to it; these include Nationality, Language, religion and culture. On my front cover I can think of three different ethnical differences. The lower banner has the band name ‘Jet’ on it, ‘Jet’ is an Australian rock band, Biffy Clyro is also mentioned and they are a Scottish band. The rest of the people on the front cover and all the other media products are English.

Social class and status wise I believe that my magazine will appeal to those of working and middle class. At £1.50 my magazine is extremely cheap value and is affordable for my predicted class. The language style is set as informal consistently throughout my production.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

My target audience for my magazine would ideally be between the ages of 13-25. My product I think will appeal to this particular age group because I feature new music artists such as Tim Mitchell and Hannah Mahoney. The images of younger artists will connect to the ages of 13-25 because it is relating to them directly.

The gender of the target audience isn’t a thing I have taken into consideration, however things like changing the model gender could have an impact on what gender buys the magazine.

In general the magazine is for people who an interest music genre of Rock and they can be of any ethnicity and race, but will have to have the ability to understand the English language.

How did you attract / address your audience?

The front cover in my production is the piece that will attract my assessed target audience, manly because it would be the first thing the audience will see of it. So I have had the task to design the front cover conveniently to attract my target audience.

First of all the colours used on the front cover (black, red & white) are suitable choices, as they have suitable connotations that represent that genre of music effectively. The well known pop magazine Q have used the exact colours for their 2010 spring edition of Lady GAGA and have used the colour because of their connotations that match with personality of Lady GAGA.

Second of all the main image plays a large roll, as it is of a new rock star, featured in a medium- close up shot looking directly at the target audience (direct mode of address). This image looks at the audience; therefore bring the eyes of the audience directly to the magazine.

The masthead “Rock Revolution” is quite large in size, therefore easily noticeable. The unique style of mastheads censors the magazine and acts as a seal of approval, as it makes the magazine professional and has an effect on the audience.

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

Publisher

This Program is a package in the Microsoft office software. It is a popular program to make presentational documents, as it is easy to create with and is a user friendly program. As soon as you open it up you are immediately asked what publication you want to create and if you want a template to follow. The templates are normal publication documents like leaflet, memorandums, letter, poster etc...

Through my school years I have always used this program when necessary. I used the program this year in Media Studies to create a group task of producing a case study leaflet on a magazine. Lewis Tillyer and I based our study on Kerrang! The second time I used it was when I created my final versions of the front cover, contents page and double page spread. I used it only to fix the documents up together because it was easy to do with this program, as the images were automatically defaulted with the square wrapping. Without this program I would have struggled to put all my final pieces together efficiently.

When using this program I had a problem that frustrated me quite a bit. I set the background to black and when I printed it out it wouldn’t show. My diagnosis on this small dilemma was that the 2003 version of publisher was confused with the 2007 version I made on my laptop and it just wasn’t able to process the command.

To overcome this problem I simply drew a box spanning the page, filled it in black then right clicked it at sent it to back of the page. This then acted as a background colour. Overall it wasn’t the end of the world and it appeared the same as it would have been.

Fireworks

Macromedia fireworks is a program that I have worked with before in previous years at Sponne in different subjects. This program is manly for manipulating images for editing purposes. This program is very expensive to buy and so I can’t afford to have it my laptop.

Fireworks can manipulate images by cutting out sections manually or with the magic wand which selects the entire colour you just clicked on. This is useful when taking away part of images. It can do more, including changing colour schemes, overlapping images and changing scale.

I used it to edit my photos by greyscaling, changing brightness levels, contrasting and cutting parts of images out.

A problem that I remember was when a saved over the original photo, I realised shortly after I didn’t mean to do that.

I overcame the problem by copying it of a backup folder I made earlier on and recovered the file, which I was then able to manipulate.

Blogger.com

This program is the electronic medium that we had the choice of doing as electronically storing our media folder of our production task. This program is designed for social interaction and is where the user can post a status for anybody to see.

This program overwhelmed me in shock of how confusing it was. It was a totally new experience for me and it took me a while to adapt. For me the hardest part was login on, mainly because you had to enter your email address every time when trying to sign in. To over come this though I ingeniously copied the address when I was on my blogger account and simply created a shortcut icon on my desktop, were I pasted the address of my blog in. This feature I did at home because the school computers restrict everybody from doing such things. This enabled me to enter my blog without any stress and continue typing up my blog.

Camera

This technology I used to take photos for my production. I am experienced with a camera as I have been open to the technology since the digital age arrived. However there were something’s new I learnt. This was to compose shots and set the camera to the close up mode. The close up button focuses on the closer objects the most and so I thought it was appropriate to set it to this setting because we were told that the shot type must by a close up to a mid shot. I had access to a tripod what helped me dearly when composing shots of myself. The tripod enable the hold in a position and in an angle.

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

Looking back at the task I have defiantly made an improvement from the first time I made a magazine. My standards in quality to detail I feel has risen dramatically; this is because I have had more experience working with the programs and have an improved understanding of the task. My ability of working with computers has had a big impact to my performance; I can work much faster when doing tasks for the second time around as I have demonstrated and have more time to perfect parts of my work.

As you can see the main image in the first magazine isn’t even edited, nor taken in focus. The masthead is all done in words giving it a shabby look; the colour doesn’t fit the genre of magazine which is a school/ college magazine.

However my final production has been composed in Microsoft publisher, in have got manipulated images, a professional looking masthead that has been made in fireworks, a colour scheme that matches the genre of rock through the connotations, a barcode, price tag, high and low banner.

In general the final production is better than the other because throughout the year I have studied magazine in a deeper depth and have applied professional concepts to recreate a music magazine out of the best of my ability.

manipulating images

Before

After



To me there are two ways of cutting images. the first is to use the magic wand tool, or you can do it maually with a lassoo tool or a rubber. the magicwand tool is definatly the best as it takes little amount of time, but it can take colours of parts you really want in the image. The manual method takes a long time but it'll go your way.

FINAL PRODUCTIONS!!!!

EDITED IMAGES

These collection of images are ones that I have edited using Macromedia Fireworks. The images have been changed to take away unnecessary parts that i dont want to appear in the final production.

MOCKUP OF LAYOUTS

The two images above are my two mock ups I have just made in Word. I have more to come but i will be positioning my elements on the final production similar to the elements on these two guideline layouts.

Contents page Layout mockup

DPS LAYOUTS MOCKUPS

photos

my magazine target audience

target audience profile

age : i4-24

gender : female or male

music interests : rock genre

i have very few specifications for my target audience because there are many types of people who listen and have an interest in Rock. for example i havent determined the social class of my target audience but i can find a relation through research.

photoshoot planning

Permission/ Contract form...

Here is a Photography contract form I made, as I have people other than myself appearing in my magazine.

Music Magazine Recipe

This is what i prepared earlier.

Here is my attempt to recreate a MOJO magazine front cover. The task was to recreate a front cover of our choice. I chose this magazine because it is a Rock genre related magazine and I am at the moment convinced to base my magazine on that genre. Doing this task has changed my ability to manipulate images and play with the lighting, positioning and shot types.

Kerrang Magazine mini case study

Lewis Tillyer and I had the task of creating a case study on the well known Kerrang magazine. This is quite convenient as I am convinced to make my Music Magazine as part of production task. The leaflet gave me more of an understanding of the Target Audience, General History, the Website available and the diversificatin and consumtion.

MASTHEAD bits&bobs

Out of the name choices I had I decided to go for Rock Revolution, manly because it sounds the best as it has alliteration to help it flow well.

Out of all the font styles aboves the first one is my favourite

Above I have experimented with different font colours and backgrounds.

I like the first one because it goes well with my colour scheme.

Codes and conventions :)

Analysis of questionnaire results.

Question 1

Out of the 32 filled in questionnaires 75% of the people who filled them in were aged between 15-16 years, the other 25% were aged 17-18 years. The purpose of this question was to warm the persons mind to get into the zone for the more difficult questions awaiting them. When I handed out the questionnaires I knew roughly the age range of about everyone, however if someone aged 19+ or 14- had filled in a questionnaire it would have been very interesting to know if their preferences were similar to my pre-estimated target audience of 15-18. It would have influenced my decision of my target audience for my final music magazine.

Question 2

In this question I asked them if they were male or female, my aim was to get the same ratio of males to females to answer my questionnaires, as it turns out 53% were and answered by male and 47% by females. I'm quite pleased with that percentage as it is important for me to get both genders opinions as I have classified both sexes as my target audience.

Question 3

In this question I asked whether they are a regular reader of music magazines. 65% said they didn’t, this result influences the idea that music magazines aren’t as popular as gossip, plus that fact that in all supermarkets there are more. I'm contemplating whether to create a hybrid almost, I could put a bit a gossip in the music magazine but only if it’s associated with music industry. In most gossip magazines famous artists such as Rihanna and Chris Brown are talked about. So creating a hybrid may boost the popularity of music magazines. I also looked at the previous results of the 6 people who said they do read them regularly, I wanted to find out if there was a link between gender and liking music magazines, however when I looked back I discovered that 3 of each gender said yes. This tells me that both genders have the same interest as each other.

Question 4

In this question I listed 19 genres of music to see what ones were the most popular. It turns out in 4^th is R’n’B, 3^RD Rock, 2^ND POP and 1^st Alternative. This gives my four music genres to choose from. In this question numerous people misinterpreted the question and gave more than one answer. This didn’t help me so I decided to not include their answers.

Question 5

This question was about colour schemes. Options 1 and 5 proved to be the most popular with 19% each. Both have similarities of both having black and dark overall appearances. I guess with dark colours it doesn’t look crazy, however it won’t grab the attention of the target audience instantly.

Question 6

this question I ask their opinion of a suitable price to give a music magazine, the most popular with 35% is £2.50, in second came option 2 (£1.50) and in 3^rd came option 3 with 28%. Due to the results I may choose the medium option of option 3 (£2) so I meet most of the target audience’s expectations.

Question 7

Here I asked whether a face of a famous artist would persuade them to buy the magazine. I understand that I have to take the picture myself so this would be hard to achieve, but I wanted to know what things makes the target audience into buying the magazine. A strong 81% said yes, to get a picture myself would be very hard but I could either mention famous artist’s names.

Question 8

I asked in this question if they knew of any music magazines of their favourite genre are available on the market. 50% each way tells me that I need to make people aware of the magazine.

Question 9 &10

This question has 6 examples of music magazine front covers, they simply had to circle their favourite. The most popular with 30% is the NNE magazine (option 2), the second overall favourite is the VICE magazine (option 5), the genres of Rock and R’n’B have been chosen as favourite and matches to question 4. The results from this will support my decision of genre of music to do maybe. The reasons why people like those magazines was because of the good looking layout, colour scheme and popular artist and looks of the artist.

Question 11

This question asks if a freebee would persuade the person to buy the magazine. 77% said yes so I now have to choose a suitable gift that would go well with the target audience and genre.

Question 12

This question may of been a little too confusing for some people as I include big words but I compromised by giving details of it by the side. The most popular with 32% is the superlative method and in second with 29% is the imperative. Either of those will work to persuade but I need to create a slogan which is a good example.

Question 13

The last question asked whether they prefer compact or spaced out layout techniques. The most popular with 84% is spaced out. I think that this is a good layout style to have to some things stand out and a have a sense of identity and readability will be very much easier.

questionnaire data handling

here i have my data from all my questionnaires. in the exell charts i was able to make a solution to add all the results up cummulativly.

above i have a guide to options are in the questions and the pie chart besides it showing the options percentages.

Analysis of Q magazine- general features

Double click to enlarge

its been four weeks!

i cant believe that its been four weeks already in the g321 course! I've learnt SO much in a small amount of time. Since the beginning i have learnt about magazine front covers, Contents, DPS (double page spreads) and types of research. in today's lesson i was just managing my answers to the 32 questionnaires i gave out. I have an easy method to mark my questionnaires and that is to number code the multiple choice answers and i will write that number in the admin column in a box.



.

These scanned images are my marked questionnaires. i did these a long time ago but i took my teachers advise to produce my final version.
My final version hopefully will be complete fairly soon, with some good questions that are too the point and help me with my target audience assessment.

Tuesday 26th January 2010

In yestodays lesson we individually matched an advert to a magazine. There were no right or wrong answers but it was down to our own interpretation in what matched what, as long as we justified why we matched them up. After the starter we went over our questionnaires to see what we need to improve on. We also categorized our questions, these categories were demographic, magazine general, music magazine, freebee ect... After this lesson I felt confidant to complete my questionnaire and to give it out to a minimum of 30 people. This homework is due back in for monday 1st february.

19/01/10

Unfortunatly today Miss McDermott had a meeting so the class had a cover lesson with set work. This set work was to hand out my questionnaire to five of my colleagues to pilot my questionnaire, those five people were only required to evaluate my questionnaire whether it be on the presentational devices or on language mistake. Once that starter exercise was done we paired up with someone to annotate a music magazine cover. I did this annotating work with Jonny Bayliss. Our homework from todays homework was to write up what we did on our blog and as you can see I have done that.
Its 23:11pm so im off to bed :)

Why am I blogging?????

The purpose of this blog is for me to evaluate my work at the end of my media project. The media project set is to make a Music Magazine. This blogging will give me the dates i did things ( in essence a bit like a diary) so Ican evaluate quite easily :) My media class at Sponne were told by our teacher (Miss McDermott) that blogging would be a fantastic method as an electronic form.

Thumbs up to OCR

OCR are pretty cool I think, allowing us to blog our tasks and activities. From now on I will be focused on updating posts of my most recent activites, like a diary. Thanks to OCR I have a much better understanding of 'blogging' now that I'm experiencing it, this also ties in well with my other AS subject ICT.

First EVER!!!! BLOG!!!!!

Hey, my name is Chris Mahoney and Im an AS student at Sponne Technology College. Im a hard working and dedicated student studying Engineering, ICT and Media. I enjoy studying at sponne, but when I'm not there I'm either at the gym :), Northampton music centre :) or at work :). I work as a waitor at Whittlebury Hotel where I meet all kinds of people. I dont know much about this Blogging lark but Im intrigued and want to know more!