Question 6:

What have you learn't about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the beginnning of the Media Studies course I found it creating a magazine slightly difficult as I had no previous knowledge of how to make a magazine. Therefore I had researched images of College and Music magazines using a search engine, by doing this it enabled me to have a an idea of how to layout my magazines to a Professional Standard.

In the beginning of the AS year I was given the task of creating a College Magazine. In order to find information about which genre my target audience would prefer I decided to distribute a Survey to thirty Students within the College campus.This enabled me to gain information that helped to create graphs that would be vital to my final decision into what genre I would have done.

By creating this survey and disturbing it manually I could get people from within my target audience's age range to answer the questionnaire within a controled time frame that I could then retrieve easily. Another aspect that I found essential that the survey was multiple choice this made it slightly easier when I was creating the graphs in the Excel Software. During the Pre Production Stage of my music magazine product I have used a variety of different Software such as PhotoShop CS3 to create my Post Production Products. Whilst making my College Magazine I found PhotoShop to be hard to use as I had to come to grips with a new Software that I had not used before. However during the process of using PhotoShop I have gained knowledge of how to use the different tools and was able to manipulate my products until I was satisfied with the outcome. 


Throughout the course I feel that the strengths I have gained have been vital to the post production products I have created. By using an Olympus E-450 Camera I was able to take high definition photographs. I have also learn't how to manipulate the photographs that I have taken on photoshop. For my photographs I have not taken them in a Studio as the locations I had chosen were Offsite so I was unable to use a Soft box to make the photographs look professional lit. 


To achieve my creative goals I had to modify my models appearance slightly in order to do this I had to make her skin look flawless I modified her face slightly, as I selected the Spot healing tool to remove any blemishes therefore illiminating any imperfections. By doing this I was able to make her skin look flawless also by changing the balance and contrast I was able to make the photograph look brighter. I have learn't that to when photographing a model it is vital to make sure that they are the main focus of the photograph. Another aspect that is important is the camera angle that you use can portray several different meanings for example a low angle shot can insinuate that the model is superior to the viewer. Also that the lighting is essential to the image your putting across to the audience. An example of this would be the use of High Key Lighting is used to make the celebrity look completely flawless and attractive this therefore increases the magazines profit as it sells more copies.

To achieve a better quality photograph I had to import the photograph from my desktop. I was then able to make the various modifications I found necessary in order to attract my target audience. An example of this would be the fact that I have used an attractive teenage girl on the Front Cover Page I felt this would attract a wider majority of the male audience to buying this product.

After importing the photograph I have decided to use I then had to download appropriate fonts to go with my image. I found the PhotoShop had an unimpressive selection of Font options to be limiting as they were quite dull and I believe that my audience would not be impressed at all by them. Due to this factor I decided to use fonts I had download from the font website called Dafont.