Category: Component 1

So How Did It Go?

I have now finished the creation of my magazine ‘Metallum’ and have thus completed component one of my media A Level. My magazine was based on the genre of my choice, being metal, and included photographs that I had taken myself, meaning I had to understand how to make my mise-en-scene successful and suitable for my genre. I also had to learn about the demographics and psychographics of my target audience and how I could create a product that will appeal to these types of people in the most effective way.

Completing the project involved many different aspects, including learning how to use different types of software and hardware, learning how to take a photograph that conveys the star image and story I want to tell, and understanding how to design a magazine to meet the expected conventions. These aspects gave me transferable skills that will help me in future media components and my life post education, such as better time management skills, communication skills, team work skills, and technical skills.

I am overall happy with the outcome of my completed magazine as I believe it represents my genre of metal well through the use of my mise-en-scene and page design and will catch the attention of my intended target audience. The creative freedom has been very enjoyable and I found that using different software and becoming comfortable with them has helped my computer skills and I am glad to have gain all of the skills that I now have.

Draft 6

The feedback I was given after my fifth draft didn’t give me many things to improve on so to make my sixth draft better I worked on making the integration better, meaning I changed the quote on the front cover to match a quote from my article and removed her last name to match the name of the article in my double page spread. I also changed the design slightly on the contents page to the caption fit on the black boxes better without being different sizes.

Final Points to Improve Upon

  • DPS- Add a comma after the however in the second paragraph
  • DPS- Either add a widget to the second paragraph or remove the widgets from all the others
  • DPS- Change the page number to 5 and 6
  • Contents- Make the page number of the contents page match the new page number
  • Contents- Remove ‘the’ from ‘the BABYMETAL’
  • Contents- See if the main proper nouns that are capitalized would look good in colour
  • Contents- Make the quote from Scott Truesdell easier to read
  • Contents- See how inserts 7 and 13 look with a white border
  • Front- Add another cover line saying something like ‘more on’ or ‘inside’ above the cover lines at the bottom

Adverts

Although the adverts will not be marked, to make my magazine more conventional I have chosen two adverts that I believe would appeal to my target audience of a male in his thirties of the socio-economic class ABC1.

My first advert is for a model of motorcycle. I have chosen this as motorcycles have a similar target audience to that of my magazine, also being of a similar age range to my target audience as to be able to afford this item they will have to be well into their careers so it is a good advert for my more mature audience.

My second advert is advertising the music festival Download, which is a festival that supports mainly metal bands so would be of interest to people reading a metal genre focused magazine.

Draft 5

For the changes for my fifth draft, I mainly focused  on meeting the feedback I had for my contents page as I felt there were a lot of things I could do better. The biggest change I made was the main star of the page as I felt all of the images I used from the shoot of the model I previously used had bad lighting and you couldn’t see her eyes. Acting upon feedback I consistently got, I gave the inserts at the bottom of the page captions so people know what the image is about. I also changed the font of ‘Contents’ as it was the same as ‘Tiegan’ on the front cover which could be misleading to an audience.

I then added in the article I wrote into my double page spread and decided to move the quote to the left side page.

Peer Feedback

After completing my fifth draft of my magazine I got a peer to give me final feedback on this penultimate draft so I can make sure my final draft is as good as it can be. They mainly gave me positive feedback, complementing my variety of shots, my mise-en-scene, and integration of fonts and text.

Feedback On Article

I created my first draft using the plan that I had made previously and tried to re create the style of a biography that was used in the article about James Lavelle that I had analysed.

Peer Voice Memo

To help me be sure that my article makes sense and doesn’t have grammatical errors, I got a peer to read it out for me. I found that this was especially useful to help me hear how long a sentence is and decide whether it should be shortened down if it turns out to be quite a mouthful.

I then had them analyse the language that I have used.

Targets For Improvement

  • Include punctuation in some areas where it’s missing
  • Describe her emotions more and how she feels at points in her life it’s lacking in some areas
  • Add more to describe her future developments

Article Idea Development

The demographic that I am targeting for my article is a male in his thirties. To appeal to this demographic, I will write my article in a rather mature tone (not a question and answer style for example) in third person without the presence of the journalist. I will keep the information relevant to that person’s interests by making the information I put in the biography about Tiegan’s music career and include information about bands and experiences she’s had to get to where she is.

To start my article, I will briefly explain who Tiegan is to an audience who may not know her to create an interest in her life and try to entice them in to read the rest of the article. A topic that I have found to be currently trending in my genre is ‘best albums’ so I will include a section about all the albums she has released in her time of being a metal star.