Dear Future A Level Media Student, if you are considering taking Media then there are a few things you need to know before you start. When your making your magazine you should be able to understand the conventions needed to create a successful piece of media . For example, your genre is an important factor when it comes to styling your main cover star and deciding on colour schemes and fonts for your magazine. You will need to know the three production skills: Technical, reactive and transferable. 

Furthermore, you will need many technical production skills to make good pieces of media. There are technical production skills like using posting and embedding in edublogs, creating in adobe indesign and photoshop, and using the camera. You will learn to take long shots, mid shots, close ups and different angles to tell a story with each photo. By using Photoshop, I have developed skills such as addings lens flares and other filters, Dodge and Burn, using adjustment layers, changing colours and cutting out things to add in another background (select and mask). The dodge tool is especially helpful as it gives the star a bright, lively and energetic star image that fits with the R&B genre. On Indesign, I have learnt things such as changing fonts as well as the size, colours and layout. I have also learnt how to layout a magazine properly which will help if in the future I would like to go down that path career-wise. For example, I know where to put the masthead, how to position and place the main cover star, where to put headlines and main cover lines, and where to put things like price/date/barcode. It’s important to remember to apply AIDA – Attract, Interest, Desire and Action. I used my model to attract people by dressing her in young, colourful clothing, and editing the photo in photoshop to make her jewelry brighter and flashier. I used my main cover lines to create interest on my front cover, making them big and colourful, or just a colour that would make them stand out more. I uncluded headlines to create a desire of the reader to know more, and I have included a competition of winning a CD and a Q&A which creates action. 

When getting into the creative production skills, you will learn a lot about things such as costume and makeup, as well as colour palettes, layouts, lightings and other things. After picking a theme, you have to research what the perfect costume and makeup looks like, before projecting that onto your model. I used AIDA by attracting my audience with solid colours and flashy jewelry, Interesting them by including a direction to a page showing more of the cover star which also creates a feeling of Action and Desire and to know more. When taking the photos, location and lighting is very important. Do you want a bright studio with great flash-photography? or perhaps a more scenic, natural surrounding? For example, I found that the place I had my location shoot for my contents page just did not end up going with the vibe and idea I had built up in my mind. Our location was a castle, and I wanted to convey the narrative of someone living a more luxurious and pampered lifestyle.  So, in my spare time I had my own shoot with a friend in a better location with better lighting and the pictures came out great. This had a great impact on my magazine as it went much better with my genre, and opened up more possibilities for the narrative.

Finally, you’ll need to use transferable skills such as being able to work in groups, reading and listening, collaboration, writing, presentation and time management. These are very important for when doing things such as preparing for a shoot. You have to work together with your models to come out with the best looks, props and photos you can get. Communication is very important, talk with people you think you can rely on to model, then create a group chat with all the people involved. Make sure you are prepared way before the shoot so that nobody is confused or lost. When we had to do our location shoots, me and my models all created a group chat on snapchat so that we could show each other outfit ideas and make lists of what to bring. It was really helpful, and we all ended up being very well prepared for each other’s shoots. Styling our models was much easier once we did this and we were all able to bring important props and costumes. For example, I was able to bring some leopard print trousers that were perfect for the photographers genre and my models knew to bring as much dazzling jewelry as possible. This made sure we all got some great pictures for our magazine’s and did not have any struggle in getting them. 

Now that you know all these things, you can go create your own media! As long as you use your creative and technical skills well, and communicate well with everyone and keep your blog up to date and managed well, you will do very well. Good luck in the next few years of this course.