Final Cuts

Evaluation Question 7

From Prelim Task to Final Product

I have certainly advanced from the prelim task, I do believe that the main thing that I have improved on is my construction in layout. At the start of learning all of the new skills needed, I could remember how to use them fine. The difficult part as combining some of them, also working quickly with them was very hard to get to grips with. In the end I ended up making three magazine covers, so for the third one I managed to make that in under one hour. Experience with these tools eventually got stuck in. Over time I began comparing my work to proffesional work, I tried to adapt throughout the whole proccess and change to make my own work look as professional as possible. During the proccess I was looking to make my work a lot more brighter and able to stand out. I feel that I have learned how to effectively use photoshop at amatuer level, If I were told to hop on and make a brand new magazine from scratch, I'm sure that I would have little trouble in using the tools. Allignment was something that I find important for the front cover. Between the Images and text I find that I always allign the text and images and the farthest side on either side of the front cover. I found that due to the fact that I took a while getting to grips with the software and having to restart my work a couple of times did pull me back with my time management, and I do believe that I handeled it well. I certainly think again if I were to start again I would certainly manage my time a lot better.

Evaluation Question 6

I feel that I have learned how to effectively use photoshop at amatuer level, If I were told to hop on and make a brand new magazine from scratch, I'm sure that I would have little trouble in using the tools. Allignment was something that I find important for the front cover. Between the Images and text I find that I always allign the text and images and the farthest side on either side of the front cover. I found that due to the fact that I took a while getting to grips with the software and having to restart my work a couple of times did pull me back with my time management, and I do believe that I handeled it well. I certainly think again if I were to start again I would certainly manage my time a lot better.

The Hardware that I used in this creative project include:
iMac
Canon SLR Camera

Evaluation Question 5

During the creation of my product, we were instructed to be given feedback from four different people each giving their own perspective to would I could do to change and improve my final product.
For my Final product, clearly I had to make some changes from my initial design. Most of these changes cam along as I was creating the layout, this changed quite a bit from the rough cut. The where-abouts of my picture were obviously important, and on my rough cut I positioned my main image in the centre of the page, however on my final product I have changed it so it is now on the right hand side of the page. I also altered my font for every mast head on the following pages:
Cover Page
Contents
Double Page Spread
I had changed these fonts to a more filled out bold font. I took into account what people had to say about the colours in my magazine, or rather lack of them. Due to the fact that initially I had only placed the colours Black,White and Blue in their. Now I have added orange and a lighter shade of blue.
The other critism that I recieved was my picture, and the fact that It did not look proffesional enough, my image at the time was a snapshot of a local band named "No Fun" Later on in the magazine I did an article on their lead guitarist.

Evaluation Question 4

http://www.glogster.com/jackhodgson/evaluation-question-4/g-6ljr29rbfj7f8vsuaspg4a0

Here you will find my answer to question 4.

Evaluation Question 3 - What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Product

 The Stages that I would go through in order to successfully distribute my product to complete it would go in this order.

1. The first stage is Pre-Production, in this stage planning would begin and the final deadline would be told to all people involved in order for the product to be finished on time.
The second stage of this whole process is Production, this is where all of the people involved, e.g. the writers, would go off out and gather all of the stories to include in the final product, then they would write up their stories, also the photographers would gather up all of their images taken.
The third stage is where all of the editors will gather up everything given by all the parties involved such as the photographers and the writers, and make their last adjustments to edit this into the final product.

2. One of the main distributers of magazines is Bauer Media, I would choose them to distribute my magazine as they already have a lot of experience selling the type of genre that my magazine is. They also have a whole lot of experience in selling magazines around the world, so I predict that it would not be a hard job distributing my product as it falls under two of their target audiences.

3. Seeing as though they already sell on a similar genre like my magazine, they will know know what to do with mine in order to distribute it, they will be rather familiar with mine. I do believe that my magazine would fall under the same genre of magazines as Kerrang and Metal hammer, mine will hopefully pick up that target audience, I will have to alter some aspects in my magazine in order to avoid having my magazine exactly the same as others that I took inspiration off.

4. I would advertise my product by maybe pairing it up with other product that would relate to my target audience. Thing such as skating events like The X-Games, and maybe some metal gigs featuring A Day To Remember and Rise Against.

5. I would definitely use Web 2.0 to its fullest advantages, maybe by advertising some sell lines on Twitter or any other social media sites I could get a direct link to its website, and put a subscription feature online. I would again pair it up with skate events and metal/punk gigs by saying "I will give a free copy of this if you buy two or more tickets" I will ask Apple to help with my distribution process by placing an online article on there. These methods will defiantly get too the people who spend a lot of their time on their laptops.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation question 2

View more presentations from JackHodgson.

Evaluation Question 1

Magazine Title
For this I wanted to introduce a very bold font, make the colouring a bright colour which fades into dark. I also wanted to give it a sort of gritty look.
Mise-En-Scene
For my model, I made him wear his hoodie, with the Airwalk name on the front. Due to my aim of reaching out to a skating scene audience, Airwalk is a popular clothing brand for skating. For the contents page I brought along 3 fellow students who share the same music taste as me and also skateboard.
Long Black hair also strengthened my decision to include these three.
Written Content
Due to the fact that I was going for the skating scene, I realised that punk music was a popular genre listened by this scene. So for my double page spread article , I decided to create an article with lead guitarist out of a local punk rock band "No Fun" Giving an inside look on all of his years in the music business. I tried to push the punk and heavy metal genre across by putting a darker side to the magaine in fonts and colours. I think the article really did help along with conveying the punk scene in the magazine.
I found that in all of the professional magazines that articles played a huge part in them. Also in the magazines like kerrang and NME, the more heavy genre of music conveyed had images almost reaching out to you.

Preliminary

Rough Cut

Magazine Alterations

From my original front cover design, I have altered a few things in the layout to make it work and look more appealing. I have mainly changed things at the bottom of the front cover, and swapped things around from the contents page onto the front cover.

Flatplan

Magazine progress

Here you can see the my first session at making my front cover, I decided to change a few things from the layout. The colour scheme has stayed from my original plans.

Here you can see my final session from editing my front cover, I improvised by adding a circle shape just right of the mast head to fill in the space. The only thing left for me to do is to add my main image to complete this front cover.

Here is the first draft of my front cover.

Here is my Final front cover along side the contents page.

Here is my final product, I here show my double page spread.

Final Article

Article for Print Products

In this week’s special edition of Skate, we have an up and coming band from the town of Newton Aycliffe. We are interviewing the band ‘No Fun’ they formed in the year 1995, due to the break up of the major successful band ‘Grasshoppers’ this tribute band formed. Aiming their music around popular artists such as:

·      The Sex Pistols

·      The Clash

·      The Damned

·      Stiff Little Fingers

·      The Buzzcocks

·      The Ramones

Grasshoppers were a band formed in 1986, going on for 9 solid years. They managed to gain a record deal, due to their popular success with four years of local gigs, they were eventually noticed. They managed to produce a total amount of 3 CD’s and two singles, eventually they declined in popularity and decided to break-up. Now ‘No Fun’ is increasing in popularity year in year out, with their venue sizes increasing over time we wondered if they were going to start and produce their own material again. With only half of the former band remaining (Lead guitarist and Lead Vocals) No Fun went on to recruiting new members, now 17 years later we’re speaking to the Lead Guitarist from the band David Hodgson. We asked him a series of questions to gather some more information about the band.

Q) Do you think over the coming years your band will begin to make its own material?

A) We are certainly thinking about it, after my past experience with the Grasshoppers, I know what it is like to be involved in that sort of band. I would like it to happen because it is a great experience for everyone.

Q) Was there any particular reason for your former bands break-up?

A) I think the main reason was certain band member were beginning to get bored, some of the members had been in bands for around 20 years before I even joined, so in time they did get bored of the concept.

Q) If you do begin to make your own material, would you consider going back to a tribute band at the end of your career?

A) I think I would yes, just because it feels like a huge break doing this. Playing the songs I grew up listening to and the ones I enjoy playing the most.

Q) Would you say it is better to have a tribute band than one, which produces its own music?

A) In some aspects yes, due to the fact that you draw audiences in who know what they are going to listen too. With cover bands you could say that you have a more secure knowledge that you will get a certain number of people who will show up.

Progress Update

6 Weeks till Easter
4 weeks of this will be spent on construction


Monday 5th March --> Rough cuts of final product.
Monday 19th --> Friday 30th March - Working on 7 evaluation questions.
Monday 16th April - Completed Portfolio hand-in


Write action plan for how you intend to meet dead lines
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I intend to organise TWO set dates with people in order to get my photographs taken.
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Within the next two weeks I will have to complete: Page Layout, Write my Article, Take My photographs.

Print - Planning my Article

Planning my article

For my article I am going to be doing a mixture of two introductions, I will be mixing together the description type introduction and the interview introduction.

I will set up my description section by just going through the basis of the band, where and how it started etc. Then I will lead onto an interview going into these things in a lot more detail.

Primary Audience Research

I conducted some primary audience research in order to:
Find out what appeals to my Target Audience
To discover any flaws or potential improvements that could be made
To identify and gaps in the target audience and make stylistic changes to my product in order to increase profit.

Videos of suggested improvements.

My questions asked:

1) What is the first thing that draws your attention?

2) What would you change about the layout?

3) Is the font of the mast head to your liking?

4) What do you like about this Front Cover

5) Is it apparent what genre of music is presented?

6) What does this magazine do well?

Answers:

1) The questions have drawn answers such as, the picture is big, the eye contact draws your attention to the main picture straight away. Also, the mast head was also a popular choice for the thing that drew your attention. 

2) From all of the people that answered my questions, they have said that they would not change the layout of any of the front covers, due to the fact that is differs from all of the other magazine covers.

3) With all of the replies from this question it is quite apparant that the people liked the mast head in this front cover, they said it stands out brilliantly and links with the main image very well.
4)With all of the replies from this question it is quite apparant that the people who answered did find the front cover to their liking, they especially liked the kerrang front cover with the band A Day To Remember on the front, the fact that the picture is reaching out to you and overlapping the title of the magazine appealed to everyone.
5) Three people said that the genre was apparent, however one person did say that they though it was a punk genre for the kerrang front cover. It was in fact a heavy metal genre with the band A Day to Remember on the cover. So the three people who did say that it is a heavy metal genre.

Research into similar products

Research into similar products on Prezi

Image analysis and proposition

 Here we have a picture of Metallica, the first thing that has drawn my attention is the eye line of all of the band members. We can see that the lead singer is on the right, his eye line is in the top third, although the rule of seeing everyone left to right, he  is also placed closest to the camera. Everyone is the picture is looking in the distance, wearing sunglasses so it gives a sort of mystery to whether or not we can see if they are looking at us. Meanwhile everyone else is in the middle of the screen, so it looks like they were positioned for the most important member of the band closest to the screen.

Jimi Hendrix - Here we can see his eye line is in the top third, however he is smiling. So he gives off the impression that he is not trying to come off as powerful in this photo. Also, he is not central in the frame, his body is not even facing the camera. He is merely enjoying his guitar as we can see from his body language and facial expressions.

Peer Assessments on Flat Plan

Today we peer assessed each others print products.
Here are some improvements for my product:
Add more colours to create a less dull effect, I am thinking of adding some Red and maybe some Blue, however I do not want this to appear like I am aiming at a different type of target audience.
Another improvement suggested was to increase the size of the picture on the DPS, i am thinking of overlapping the image with the text, so the image will almost be a whole page.

Research into institutions that distribute similar products

Research into institutions that distribute similar products

http://www.mediauk.com/owners/88/bauer-media - 19th January 2012 - Here I have provided a list to all of the magazines that are owned by Bauer Media, and associated with Kerrang.

http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/ - 19th January 2012 - Here is the owner top all of the magazines.

Bauer Media own over 10 different magazines, both mainstream and niche; here are some examples of their magazines:

Kerrang

Q

FHM

Empire

Zoo

Birdwatching(Niche)

Improve your coarse fishing (Niche)

Spirit and Destiny(Niche)

Q1) Identify any other music magazines they publish. Explain why one distributor would publish more than one music magazine.

a) Distributers have the mentality that if you sell a bigger variety than one music magazine, you will gain a much larger audience, each liking different genres of music, and maybe some who will like a lot of types of music.

Q2) Why might this company be interested in adding your magazine to their list of titles? They wouldn't want another magazine that targets similar content at the same audience as one of their existing titles. So, is your magazine sufficiently different from the music magazines published by this distributor? In what ways?

a) This company may take interest into my magazine for the sole reason that it is different than everyone elses, however attracting a large number of different audiences. Mine would gather many different genres of magazines, but not in a way where it would appear that it has all been clamped together, it will all fit and coincide with every other type of music. Bringing everyone together.

Media Coursework

 For this task i have chosen the print option rather than the short two minute films option.