Component 1 was a fun and intriguing course, we researched, designed and then produced our very own magazine, it all started by researching and identifying what’s iconographic of a music magazine, we then decided on the genre we wanted to analyse and then mask. When coming to choosing my genre, I thought very carefully and came to the decision that I wanted to study the hip-hop genre, this enabled me to label my magazine ‘Burst’ and create 3 pages: a front cover, contents page and double page spread, after endless amounts of editing, correcting and finalising I have finally completed my magazine and have uploaded it to Issuu.com to get an insight as to how it would look.

The latest skills I have gained from doing this course is how to use websites such as: Emaze, Lucid charts and premier pro, I had to mainly use these websites when doing my CCR’s. Many more skills have been obtained from InDesign, for example I now have the ability to create a gold gradient for other purposes. Moreover, I now know how to wrap text around images and other text, this helped massively when placing my pulling quote in the middle of my DPS article.

The transferable skills I have gained whilst doing this course are: how to be much more organised, I gained this skill while organising my photoshoots, both the front cover photoshoot and the town photoshoot, whether this was messaging the models and telling them what to wear, or pre planning a date to use either the white room studio. I also had to do a lot of researching and planning, an example of this would be my production meeting agenda, where I had to pre-plan my costumes and decide what I believe would best stereotype a hip-hop star(s). Other ways research and planning has significantly helped me would be researching the demographic and psychographic for a particular genre of music; I was given ‘classic rock’.

This course has opened many new skills that will greatly benefit me in the future, whether it is the researching side of things or the producing itself. I am more than happy with my magazine and can safely say I’ve done my best.

This is my dragon’s den pitch, advertising my magazine, I had to answer a series of question and then record and upload.

When creating my double page spread, I considered all aspects from my front cover page and contents page and tried to relate the page to both other magazine pages. This page for me was about incorporating ideas from my other pages to create a unique and edgy spread.

Throughout the whole magazine you need similarities and differences, hence why I included a faded shape behind to text to give the audience something to recognise, I have also used the same font throughout the entire pages for the masthead as using to many different fonts can be disorientating to the viewers.  moreover I have also learnt that the use of Mise-En-Scene used within images are crucial to attracting an audience, whether it is, props, colour and lighting or costume. all these factors contribute to making your magazine as distinctive as possible.

One thing I have learnt whilst creating my double page spread was how to change the colour of words in the same text box. Furthermore I then learnt how to arrange my text and shapes so that my text was in front of my shapes. although I have not gained many new skills in InDesign I have furthered my abilities within the areas I already knew how to use, for example creating borders around my images and laying out my images and text to leave little space. 

In Photoshop I didn’t gain any new skills as I used what I knew to cut out my image, this was using the magic wand tool and the eraser tool, it took time and effort as the background was quite complicated however I powered through it and came out on top, therefore we could say I have gained more experience using tools I already knew how to use, this will only improve future assignments as I am getting better each time I use the software.

this is the steps to putting a border around a shape.

One thing I have learnt from designing my: Front cover and Contents page is how to alter the opacity of a shape, this enabled be to blend it in with the contents page to give it a distinctive look. I have also had problems with my front cover as my star was wearing glasses, so I had to use the clone stamp tool to blend in the glasses lens so the audience can’t see the background. This gave me the ability to use the clone stamp tool efficiently.

I also learnt how to edit my initial photo of Photoshop, this allowed me to edit the star onto different backgrounds and make it look more hip hop. To do this I had to use the eraser tool and the magic wand tool to successfully get a well rounded cropped star.

moreover I learnt how to resize an image in a way that does not stretch or disrupt the image, you do this by holding in shift when resizing the image.

Furthermore I learnt how to layer images and texts over each other to create an outstanding magazine. You do this by arranging your images and texts corresponding to the way you want it to look.

Over the past few weeks I have gained to the ability in which I believe enables me to go out and gather my images that will construct my star. We have been learning about many aspects of media that is going to help me achieve what I’m looking for.

• We have gained experience using the camera kit and how the flash lighting kit works, furthermore how the static light differentiates depending on the lighting we already have. This overall will help how to get a good image by using our knowledge.
• We also learnt about Richard Dyers Star Theory and his 3 areas that make up a star:

-Construction 

-Commodity 

-Ideology 

Richard Dyer believes a construction is not a real person, they’re are constructed through: Music Magazines, Magazines and Advertising. An example of this would be Miley Cyrus.

He also believes that some stars are a commodity and that they are produced to create a profit off of merchandise, such as: t-shirts and posters. Record labels know certain patterns and trends that enable them to make similar stars. this is why we get so many similar boy bands, such as: One Direction and The Wanted. 

Finally his last Theory is that stars could be an ideology this means that certain stars represent different social groups and views and therefore will create certain ideologies. As a result of this fans will often copy their style and views. An example of this I would be Beyonce as her fans share her views on woman’s independence.

Then there is the more advanced Theory which explains Meta Narrative to be a collected set of media that constructs the star in the eyes of the audience.

We then looked at how the star is represented and the 4 major traits stars have are:

• extraordinary

– this shows the star in a light as amazing and talented

• ordinary

– show’s the stars as normal people who drive cars, go shopping and FAIL EXAMS

• Present 

– this makes the audience feel as if they are with the star, this is mainly shown over social media with tweets or                   posts

• Absent 

-this is the reality and how fans will very rarely get withing touching distance of the star, this is shown at concerts            or interviews

We have also done research on the appearance of a chosen star based on our genre, this helped us when creating our Costume for our star. Mise-En-Scene will be of major importance when creating our star as it will convey his ideologies.  

So…where do I start, at the beginning of term I began by learning all the elements of Mise-En-scene and how the elements can emphasise a stories narrative in a clip, whether it’s ‘Downton Abbey’ or ‘Dovtor Who’; two clips which we have analysed and written essays about. proceeding through the term we then started to look at how to use a camera to achieve what we are looking for, we talked about and experimented with: appiture, light exposure and manual and automatic viability of the image. We then went on to learn some basic skills on two pieces of editing software; Photoshop and InDesign, we had help from Serena, we learnt how to edit backgrounds using the magic wand and how to add text. this will help when coming to create my magazine.  We have learnt about things such as masthead, plug, pug cover star and star image all conventions on a poster. We also learnt about the use of colour in a magazine cover and how each colour has its own connotation, for example the denotation of the colour red is simply it’s red whereas the connotation behind it would be:

• blood
• anger
• fire
• romance
• love
• passion