Question 4: So… How did you integrate technologies (software, hardware and online) in this project?

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So… How is it going?

In the process of creating, researching, and portraying my intended narrative the work of my music magazine, I have learnt and developed many new transferrable skills. For example the skills I have learnt are:

  •  Teamwork-  I learnt to work effectively in a group to achieve our goals for our magazine. I enhanced this skill when receiving and giving feedback to peers, as well as being involved with shoots as I was their models and they were mine. From this I had to listen to what star image they wanted me to portray through my modelling for their own music magazine.
  • Leadership-  I had to show initiative and leadership abilities. Such as, for my magazine shoots, I had to tell my peers what positions and personality I wanted them to portray through their modelling. As well as being independent and organizing clothes that I wanted them to wear to create my success star image.
  • Time management/Organisation-  Essentially, I learnt how to manage and prioritise my workload and time effectively. This was a very important skill for me because I aimed to stay on top of my work by reaching all deadlines and have been successful doing so. I achieved this by prioritising tasks which can only be done in at school to do in my lesson, then in my independent study time using the time to complete articles and essays, as well as, writing about my work.
  • Communication- I’ve learnt to talk to my teacher and peers if I need their opinions in the process of creating my magazine. For example, during the production I asked my peers and teacher for their feedback in order to improve my magazine to make it as successful as possible.

 

Design Skills 2

From completing my drafts for my pop music magazine. I’ve learnt many new design skills and production techniques in the process of improving my drafts to make them successful.  Although there were still some skills I would of loved to perfect, I am still happy with the ones I have developed as I believe they are adding to my magazine and making it as best as possible. I used many tools from the image below including:

  • Rectangle frame tool which helped me to place my images and make them fit this frame proportionally to be the right size for my magazine.
  • Text tool that allowed me to include all my text in the right places.
  • Polygon tool which I used to add shapes to my magazine in empty areas in order to add detail.
  • Line tool that I used to separate some text on the contents page in particular and to add detail to some titles on my cover.

A new tool I used to add some features to my magazine was the rectangle tool (shown in image above). I used this to make certain areas that looked empty on my magazine more interesting to fill the space. In these rectangle boxes I included quotes and captions to make them more bold to the reader. To make these boxes look more subtle I turned the opacity of them down so the images underneath were still visible, which made them fit in as they looked apart of the shot.

A skill that would of been good to develop would be how to remove shadows from the models faces. This is because from my original shoot I had an image that I wanted to use for my front cover, however there was a shadow on the model’s neck and face from the jacket she was wearing. Even after trying many methods to remove it because there was too many shades in that area that I had to match, I was not successful on making it look perfect and decided to use another image. But I am still pleased with the image I used for my front cover as it portrays the star image successfully, similarly to the image I originally chose.

Overall, I believe that all my new skills and techniques have helped me in the productions of my magazine. From these skills I have managed to create my successful star image of confident models and portrayed the music genre of pop to my target audience.

Design Skills 1

From creating my front cover for my magazine and starting to design my double page spread, I have taught myself many new skills using Photoshop and InDesign to begin to create a successful magazine. From learning these skills I have created my magazine to fit my genre and portray it effectively however I would of liked to learn some more complex skills as well.

Some examples of new skills I have made on Photoshop include:

  • Selection Tools

This tool helped me when making my front cover so I could remove the background from my image and create a new one without the model being affected. This means I could create a new background to fit my genre of pop and attracting my target audience.

  • Retouching tools

Both these tools enabled me to clear any blemishes/imperfections on my model to give her the perfect star image being youthful, and lively.

These tools helped me to perfect my image by enhancing some features of my models to help give her that young energetic, bubbly star image.

 

So… I am ready to photograph my star

Mission Statement

‘Simply Pop is one of the top magazines for those who have a love of pop music. It’s a fresh and interesting magazine written for teenage girls that see everything to do with pop as a part of their life. We provide our readers with the chance to keep up to date with all the chart music and artists that interest them. This magazine will recognize the great success of pop artists, and celebrate the fact that pop music is one of the most popular music genres today. Our big objective is to engage our audience with the magazine and include the artists that they love and recognize to ensure our audience has a sense of belonging and interest.

My Brand Values

The aim for Simply Pop is to create confidence for young teenage girls through music and interviews with popular stars who teenagers may relate to. We interview young artists to inspire the younger generation to become more fearless and work hard. Also by providing the readers with the chance to keep up to date with all the chart music and artists that interest them aiming to keep on top of trends and feature the popular artists that are looked up to most recently.

I learned about…

  • Mise En Scene is an essential element of how meaning is made in Media.  Every costume, hair style, lighting state, location, prop, accessory, posture, gesture, facial expression is there for a reason – to tell a story, convey an idea and an image. The essential components for Mis-en-scene are:
    • Costume
    • Lighting
    • Acting
    • Make up/Hair
    • Props
    • Setting
  • The Reception Theory is written by Stuart Hall and describes where ideologies meet, meaning is made:
    • Producers Ideology (encodes)
    • Audience’s (decodes)

    Music which is:

    • Preferred- audience accepts the values
    • Negotiated- audience accepts some of the values
    • Oppositional- the audience rejects the values

    I will encode all the elements my audience wants to see on the cover as they will then decode it in order to make my magazine perfect for the target audience and not be the opposite to what they are looking for, therefore not being successful.

  • When learning to use a DSLR camera I learnt how to produce a successful photograph by manually controlling the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I took practice photos for a music magazine by keeping in mind the composition and positioning of my photos, by trying out different angles. We learnt that the camera is analysed by the framing and movement. Framing is the camera’s distance from the subject or camera’s angle in relation to the subject. Examples of distance is extreme longshot, medium longshot, midshot, close ups. There a multiple types of shot which have specific functions within a TV or a programme. In terms of movement we tried out methods of pan, tilt, zoom, and ped.

I will use all of my knowledge to create a successful photo shoot where my model is using mise-en scene to portray her character of a female fearless star. My knowledge from my camera will help me to create the perfect lighting using flash photography as well as the settings:

  1. Select M on the dial
  2. ISO = 100 (400 max)
  3. Aperture (f stop) F8.0
  4. Shutter Speed 1/160

This will give me the best lighting focused on my model as well as manually using the focus on my model.

So… I’m ready to make some media!

From researching and looking into ideas regarding camera, mise-en-scene, layout, typography, AIDA, Bulmler and Katz, I know that including all these elements will create a successful music magazine for me in the future.  Also through practicing using different software such as InDesign and Photoshop which I can now successfully use and create many different types of designs from. Another element, I have learnt is the process behind producing the magazine and how each component links to make the magazine effective, for example the use of targeting a specific audience and creating the magazine around that audience.

The components I need to think about when making my own music magazine are:

  • Mise En Scene is an essential element of how meaning is made in Media.  Every costume, hair style, lighting state, location, prop, accessory, posture, gesture, facial expression is there for a reason – to tell a story, convey an idea and an image. The essential components for Mis-en-scene are:
    • Costume
    • Lighting
    • Acting
    • Make up/Hair
    • Props
    • Setting
  • Image composition and page layout think about composition and how the eye moves around the page, also how does the image integrate with the design elements on the page?
  • Typography there are basic typography rules that you will need to know and basic colour combinations too – red on green?  too many fonts not from the same family? serif or san serif?
  • AIDA– attract the audience, engage their interest, create desire, call to action

 

 

 

So… How can an image communicate meaning?

Since studying the different elements of media so far I’ve seen how camera framing and mise-en-scene can represent individuals, groups, events or places. We studied two videos and looked into both the camera framing and the use of mise-en- scene which were combined for representing the elements. We looked at a scene from Downton Abbey to see the different uses of Mise-en-scene and created an essay to analyse each element which helped develop our understanding and consideration for how important these aspects are.

Mise En Scene is an essential element of how meaning is made in Media.  Every costume, hair style, lighting state, location, prop, accessory, posture, gesture, facial expression is there for a reason – to tell a story, convey an idea and an image. The essential components for Mis-en-scene are:

  • Costume
  • Lighting
  • Acting
  • Make up/Hair
  • Props
  • Setting

I discovered how important these elements were when portraying the individuals, groups, events or places because without them the emotion and story would be hard to follow and unclear to the audience. Each of these aspects work together to portray the intended narrative, such as if the character was smiling and in bright clothing it would have the connotations of a happy individual. However if the character was dressed in dull clothing and within a dark environment, as an audience we would assume the character is sad. From studying this and seeing how effective mise-en-scene is, I’ve seen how they all link to create a successful story and represent the characters as well as conveying the setting and place.

The camera framing is also essential when representing the individuals and event to convey the intended narrative of the scene. Examples of these angles, distances along with their roles are:

  • an extreme close up of a tear stained eyes could underline a character’s sadness and vulnerability.
  • an extreme long shot of a man standing alone on a deserted beach might portray his isolation and solitude.
  • a two shot of a two people, with one in the foreground looking away from the camera and the other slightly out of focus in the background could add an enigmatic, mysterious feel to the scene as well

These elements portray that it is important to plan and keep in mind different angles and distances because it helps to represent different meanings to the audience. This also clearly shows the denotations as well as the connotations to the audience from the camera framing to portray a clear story and narrative to the audience.

 

 

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