Skills Development Essay

A2 Media Studies

Skill Development Evaluation Essay

Before starting my AS Media course, I completed an introductory task which included designing and presenting a college front cover. As I began this task I felt that I struggled with the digital technology process, i.e. using Photoshop. My knowledge of Photoshop was not at all advanced at the beginning of the course, however I felt this introductory task enabled me to gain an understanding of the basic skills I would need to begin the initial task.

After this I progressed onto making the cover of a music magazine. I also had to create a contents page and double page spread to complete the task. This enabled me to further discover and gain a knowledge and understanding of a range of digital processes. To create the music magazine I thought about the genre of music I wanted the magazine to be based on and researched into what the codes and conventions of this typical genre were. I studied different music magazines and took into consideration the planning and ideas that went behind each one. As with the introductory task from before, I had to take the necessary photographs relevant to each piece within the media text and magazine myself. As the genre I chose was R’n’B I began to think about the relevant conventions significant to this genre. I thought about the type of model I would need for the cover and the costume that was stereotypically viewed as R’n’B. My skills developed in the Photography aspect of the task as I learnt how to Photograph differently and more professionally. For example, I made my model seem dominant by photographing her from a low angle.

After taking the photographs for my music magazine I uploaded these to Photoshop and learnt how to crop the picture and convert to black and white. I learnt skills such as changing the levels and intensity of the photograph. I began to experiment with Photoshop in my spare time and discovered techniques such as layering photographs on top of each other and fading photographs into the page, even though I had not seen this in existing music magazines I decided to use this technique in my own magazine as I felt it looked effective. I also learnt how to place photographs behind texts and titles as they would look in an existing music magazine.

I began thinking about where to place each photograph and also aligning it against the text correctly. My research and planning became important when planning the contents page for my music magazine, as I discovered that most of the music magazines of this particular genre had similar contents pages. This pushed me into thinking creatively about how I could stick to the conventions of this genre and what I had seen stereotypically in existing music magazines, but also how I could add my own twist and make my music magazine different so that the public would be more inclined to choose my magazine over others if it was on a store shelf for example.

The part of the music magazine that I initially found difficult was coming up with a title or name for my music magazine. I wanted something eye-catching and bold that stood out and made the reader want to buy it. After I had come up with a list of names I found that it wasn’t actually finding the title of the music magazine that was the difficult part but how it was presented on the front  cover. As I had discovered during the research and planning process stereotypically music magazines have a colour scheme which they stick to throughout the front cover and contents page. I decided to choose black, white and red as this was eye-catching. I also chose to put my model in these colours when thinking about costume so that not too much attention was taken away from other parts of the page. After focusing on the title, which also fitted in with the colour scheme I found it a lot easier to create text on Photoshop . I began to align my text and headers in the conventional manners of an R’n’B music magazine.

By the time I had edited my photographs in Photoshop and fitted them around the page I       felt fairly confident in completing the text. I had to think creatively about the story I was putting into the magazine on the double page spread and the main topics I wanted to focus on in the magazine. For this, I again took inspiration from more existing music magazines with the same genre (R’n’B). I also looked at what size font was stereotypically used. This stayed consistent through each page of the magazine. I then looked at where to place headings and topics on the front cover which would give an insight to the reader as to what was actually in the magazine, I used different fonts and font styles for this using the experience I had gained whilst creating the college magazine.

After completing the research, planning and 3 tasks for the music magazine including the front cover, contents page and double page spread; I then completed the post production task i.e evaluating my music magazine. The allowed me to think and generate ideas as to what my strong points were and how I could have improved the magazine. Because I had done significant research before completing the magazine I was able to learn about the correct codes and conventions of this specific genre and fulfil the task. I felt that the magazine was a success and would have been presentable to be used as a real British R’n’B music magazine.

Overall, I feel I have developed a range of skills throughout my AS Media course. I can hopefully include these in my A2 studies were I will be carrying out the research and planning of Music Videos followed by constructing a Music Video of my own. After using technology such as Photoshop I know feel confident to use other types of digital technology during my A2 Studies.