Category: Creative Critical Reflection 1

My info-graphic of technology I integrated into my music magazine project:

CCR3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

CCR1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

A transferable skill I have learnt through out this process is time management, we have had to properly manage our time throughout the entire project to make sure we keep on top of everything. Our time management is one of the most important skills we have learnt to use. Time management can be transferred to any line of work and much more.

Another transferable skill we have learnt is communication skills, communication between our peers was essential during our tasks such as our photoshoots planning sheets such as our PMA’s greatly helped with the communication between work. Communication is not only important in a working environment but also in other things such as sports. Communication skills are important in almost every line of work.

A third transferable skills we have learnt is research, we had to research our target audience and to do this we had to do proper research instead of a copy and paste job. Research skills can not only be applied to media studies but also other subjects we do, in my case research is particularly useful in business studies.

I think the design of my contents page went very well, as it was the last page we did I had already picked up lots of skills throughout this project already and could put them into action on my contents page.

At this point of our project we are almost done with production, so we had picked up many new skills in many different areas such as InDesign, Photoshop, camera equipment and much more. I think the InDesign skills we have learnt throughout this experience have been the most useful, more specifically the drop down menu of different effects and text manipulation. I found the way you can utilise and manipulate all of these different effects together to ‘personalise’ your work particularly useful in making my magazine feel like it is a part of my chosen genre. These effects have a near infinite amount of ways you could use them in a combination together so you aren’t limited to what you can do with them, I found that the text manipulation was very quick and easy to pick up.

All of the different text manipulation settings.

All of the different effects, each individual setting has a page like this, this page is just for drop shadow.

In the Design and Production of our magazines we have learnt how to use the programs ‘InDesign and Photoshop.’ Learning how to use these programs can allow us to make changes to our images to make them look how we want. These design features can completely change the quality and message of an image. Without using these design programs our images wouldn’t be able to be altered and simple things such as cut the star out from the image wouldn’t be possible and we would have the entire background with the image too. There are many tools on these programs that can help us change our image or our design around the images we have taken, the effects tab has multiple effects that can be applied and manipulated to text and images. There are many other aspects of our design process that wasn’t just using the tools built into the programs. Such as our layout design was just up to how we wanted things things to be arranged we didn’t need to use special tools for that unless you were trying to add certain effects to give your page a unique feel to it.

These are the different effects that are built into InDesign, these effects can be applied to images and text. These effects have many ways they can be manipulated such as the spread, noise and opacity, etc.

These are the effects that can be used to to manipulate your text, you change the size, typeface/style, stretch/squish, capitalize, space out, change the colours and strokes, italicize, widen/thin your text. There is still more you can do with these effects and you can combine them to get the look you really want for your text.

My magazines mission statement/brand values is to provide a service to all fans of the genre at an affordable price, this service will provide news and information about any artists, changes, songs etc in the rap genre.

My studio shoot was my first time doing an actual photo shoot on my own, I learnt had to use a DSLR camera for the shoot and how to use the flash equipment to alter my image. These skills were learnt in lessons we had before the shoot that taught us how to use all of this equipment. We also had learnt about mise-en-scene before our shoot, I used mise-en-scene to completely change the message that the image conveyed, I used a champagne glass, chair and lots of jewelry, the champagne and jewelry shows the rappers wealth and the chair was used to have the rapper sat and facing certain actions. Our camera was a huge part of the mise-en scene we played around with a lot of different settings on the camera and heights at which we had the camera, but in the end I think we found the right settings and height. We took a large amount of our photos at these settings. We tried to get the positioning of our camera as center as possible and our flash equipment to cover all angles because we  didn’t want any shadows in our photo, if we had shadows around the model it could’ve been difficult in Photoshop to edit around our photo.

When I make my magazine cover I need to focus on my mise en scene and AIDA, when we did our tour poster I did not focus on these and my poster didn’t have much AIDA and nothing to encourage people to look further into the event. I wasn’t happy with the mise en  scene of the image, I didn’t like how the eye line of the star image  wasn’t looking at any of the information on the screen but was looking at the reader of the magazine.

Camera

When taking my image I need to focus on making sure my ISO, aperture and shutter speed are on the correct setting to make the image look at clear as possible, I must turn off the fluorescent lighting in the studio and make sure my camera is properly position and focused.

Mise-en scene

My model needs to be wearing the appropriate clothes to go with the genre, which I have already decided in my PMA. My lighting must be set up correctly to ensure my images don’t have any random shadow and the model is lit up. My model needs to be looking in the correct places and not just looking past the camera/away from a POI. My model needs to have the correct props in the photo shoot, this has also been decided in my PMA.

AIDA

I need to use AIDA to make the audience feel like they are apart of a group, I didn’t really use AIDA in my tour poster, I think this can help in making my magazine stand out from others.

Typeface/Fonts

My font is what is going to represent my magazine as it will almost always be the first part of my magazine that the audience will see, my font must follow conventional rap themes but at the same time it must be eye grabbing. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action. It starts when the customer first sees the product and it attracts their attention, then you must make them interested in your product, enough for them to desire it and finally they will act on these feelings and hopefully buy your product.

B&K

Blumler and Katz have 4 uses and gratification of media: entertainment and diversion, social interaction, personal identity and information/surveillance. My magazine must fit into as many of these uses and gratifications as it possibly can to give the consumers something to do with the media.

An image can communicate a meaning through various different techniques such as mise-en-scene and camera framing.

Costume can be used to show a characters status, someone like a servant or maid will not be wearing the nicest clothes compared to someone with higher wealth such as a lord who would be wearing nice clothes such as suits. Costume can also show what era the setting is in. Costume can show unity between people such as the military when they are all wearing the same uniform.

Lighting can be used to show how the model is feeling if they are sad/angry they could be pictured in a dark setting whereas a more joyful model could be pictured in a bright setting.

Acting and Proxemics can be used to show authority when a person is raised over another person it show that the person above has more power and authority over the person beneath them. How actors open themselves to each other can show how they feel about each other, if actors are very open to each other it shows that they are friendly with each other and maybe friends whereas actors who are looking away from each other/blocking each others view of them they are most likely not friendly and could even dislike each other.

Make-up and hair is similar to costume where it can show the status of someone, if someone is wealthy they will have nice hair and look good whereas a poorer person won’t have nice hair and won’t look as good as the wealthy person.

Props can be used to show what an actor is doing in the scene, without a prop the audience might not be able to tell what is happening. Without props some scenes wouldn’t be possible.

Setting can be used to show many things about the actor/model such as where they are from, what they enjoy doing, where they work etc. Setting is one of the most important features when taking photos or filming a video.

Your camera framing can be used to show how the actor/model is feeling. If a the model is feeling vulnerable the photographer could take a picture from a high angle or if they are feeling joyful they could be pictured from a medium/closeup where you would be able to see there expression to tell they are clearly happy.

• Almost everyone is a media prosumer, a prosumer is a combination of a consumer and producer.
• To be a media consumer all you have to do is something as simple as watch t.v or listen to music.
• To be a media producer you can do something as simple as post a picture or like a post.

Uses and Gratification:

• Media has four uses which are information, personal identity, integration and social interaction and entertainment.
• These four aspects can satisfy certain emotions/feelings such as if you want to escape you can watch some t.v which would be in the entertainment category.
• Many types of media such as the news can be used to gain information, other medias such as instagram or snapchat can also be used to gain information.
• Types of media such as social media’s can be used as a personal identity to represent yourself.
• Types of media such as t.v. or sports can be used for integration and social interaction, these topics give you something to talk about with friends and maybe even people you don’t know at all.
• Media such as t.v/netflix and social media can be used just for your own entertainment and nothing else.
• Many different types of media fit into more than one category of uses and gratification theory.