As part of our coursework we are going to be producing two media artefacts which are both going to be print. Both are going to be posted on separate pages including all the research and planning before hand and all the different edits up to the final product. To demonstrate what is expected from these I shall post the criteria which has been shown in the exam specification for a level 4 piece of work.
The two product I shall be making with my group are a film magazine review and a movie poster both for the short film we have created on the home page of the blog. This page in particular will be all the research which had been done for the magazine review and what steps I have taken to get to the final, completed product.
The first Media artifact I have produced is a Magazine review where I used a snippet from Empire Magazine to produce a professional, realistic looking article. The software used is called ' Quark Xpress'.
This software is completely new to me as I have never used it before so I decided to use my initiative and follow a step by step guide which demonstrates all the skills needed to be able to produce a magazine review. Here is the URL to the Quark Express Tutorial
This software is completely new to me as I have never used it before so I decided to use my initiative and follow a step by step guide which demonstrates all the skills needed to be able to produce a magazine review. Here is the URL to the Quark Express Tutorial
Once I had watched this i found using the programme very easy as once you know how to do one thing it is just common sense to know how to do another thing as it is similar to other types of software. This software was probably the most useful when production a magazine article because it is DTP (Desktop publishing) software which is specially made for tasks like these.
Now that I have an idea of how to use this software I am now going to look at and deconstruct and existing magazine review to see if there are any general conventions which I can find. Here is one of Empires 'In Cinemas' reviews I have also created a deconstruction of this using a presentations detailing each aspect and I shall hopefully adapt these conventions into my own review.
Now that I have an idea of how to use this software I am now going to look at and deconstruct and existing magazine review to see if there are any general conventions which I can find. Here is one of Empires 'In Cinemas' reviews I have also created a deconstruction of this using a presentations detailing each aspect and I shall hopefully adapt these conventions into my own review.
Now that I know how to use the software and have an idea of what to include I can now create my own template review just to get an idea of what my finished product could look like if I were to follow the same steps. Once i had made my first draft it was reviewed, analysed and critiques by my peers to make sure everything was aligned perfectly, the colour scheme worked, the picture was appropriate and all the information was positioned correctly. Here is a copy of my first draft. We added Laurem Ipsum which is where a programme will generate random words which you can then copy and paste into your document to give you an idea of what it will look like before you start to write out the article, to give an idea of what it would look like with text-
First Draft of Magazine Article
Once i added the laurem ipsum i could see how the columns aligned perfectly with text in them and i now know that i don't need to worry about tweaking the text boxes or images and borders around it.
From my feedback I added some improvements. Things which were picked up on were-
- Could do with something under the title like in the other reviews as there seems to be empty pace which could be filled with a quote for example. I would agree with my peers as the title on its own looks unusual as it seems out of place.
- Do some aspects look like I'm actually trying to be creative or more an error, by this they meant the banner which I had created as i decided to break the conventions of the one I had analysed and have the 'IN' bigger than the 'CINEMAS' and created a shadow on the text which I personally though looked very good and gave a more creative, personalised touch.
- Could include a verdict at the end with a rating to make it look more professional and to show that it is definitely a review without needing the text.
I altered all of these things and even added some little tweaks to make it look much more like an empire magazine review of a film by adding little ratings and quotes. Here is the improved and adapted version.
Magazine Review - Finished Product Layout
To further test my skills when using the new software we were set a new task to create a completely new product, to produce a magazine front cover. I enjoyed creating this as it meant we could be much more artistic with the layout as it was completely open depending on what pictures were chosen and what titles to include on the front. I looked at a 'Total Film Magazine' and 'Empire Magazine' and adapted elements from both of them, putting them into my own. Here are some copies of both Empire and Total Film's magazine front covers
Once analysing the front covers of a few of these magazines I then created a first draft-
The same happened as last time where the group all analysed the work and gave some improvements and mine involved the following-
- Add the price, website and a little quote bragging about empire being the largest film magazine.
- Remove the quote above the title because the title should be the main focus on the magazine
- I personally though that there was some empty spaces which could be filled with more things as the front covers are generally crammed full of headlines.
After taking all this on board I went on to improve my magazine cover and produced a final draft.
I think I was successful with both of these tasks and I enjoy tasks which involve more creative and independent aspects. I now think that I am very comfortable with using new software as I managed to create the cover on my own with very little assistance and also incorporated some Photo shop work into it therefore I think this ancillary task was a complete success.
After self assessing my ancillary task I thought I would gather some peer assessment of my work by showing people everyone's ancillary task in the media group and asking which one's they thought looked most attractive and most fitted in with the conventions of both a magazine review and a magazine front cover.
After doing this I received very mixed feedback
After self assessing my ancillary task I thought I would gather some peer assessment of my work by showing people everyone's ancillary task in the media group and asking which one's they thought looked most attractive and most fitted in with the conventions of both a magazine review and a magazine front cover.
After doing this I received very mixed feedback
Rough Draft of Review
We exhibited this rough draft to the rest our media group so that we could get some feedback. The feedback we received included minor things about the composition of the magazine review and some things missing were missing which our peers picked up on.
The first issue noticed was that there was a gap in the laurem ipsum. We weren't sure whether this was because of the way we pasted it into the document, the run around changing the lining or weather it would be fine once we had included the review.
A second problem with the review was that there was a larger gap at the bottom plot than at the top, to correct this we will just need to move the purple line up slightly to make all the composition correct.
Finally the convention which we have missed was the date at the bottom of the page. Generally there tends to be an issue date next to the page number. This will be an easy fix as we just need to include a new text box and type in a date and possibly a small title which says what the page is about, e.g. Movie Review.
Final Cut of Review
