Production Diary 11

Feedback On My Proposal

I got my parents to give me feedback on my proposal. The reason why I chose to have them give me feedback is because I trust their judgement and know they will be brutally honest with me. I took their criticisms and adapted my proposal to fit in with the improvements and make it as good as I possible.

Cover Lines

This is the word format of what will be on the front cover of my magazine. I chose to have a list of artists name to not make the front cover to crowded but to still give the audience an exclusive insight into what will be in the magazine. There is also 3 other sell lines with a short description about what will be in that specific article and hopefully this will draw the audience in to buy and read the magazine. Due to Phoenix Strong being the main article her name will be significantly bigger than the rest.

Production Diary 10

This week has been focusing on really trying to block each section of the magazine. Normally people go in a specific order of how they tackle this magazine but I am taking it as it comes. In lessons I have been really powering through to try and get the basic bits of my magazine done before I really start to refine and go into detail. Additionally at home I have been trying to find inspiration for the type of artist I want to portray in my article and throughout my magazine; this can be seen in my mood board. I have been filling in some of the blocks with placeholder pictures that I got from the internet whilst I try to narrow down and find pictures that I want in each part of my magazine.

Mood Board

This is just like my representation of genre but this is just a few pictures to convey what I think sums up the genre of indie onto a page. It portrays that I have taken into account all aspects of the genre such as clothing, music and setting. This will not only help me in the magazine overall but it helped me to decided how the model should be dressed and what other images I could use and in what other settings.

The Rule of Thirds

Production Diary 9

These few lessons I have started to really think about the text that I want to go into my magazine and I want to put that into my magazine before I start to put the images in. I have finished all the text that I want to feature in my contents page because that is the first page that I have been constructing as I had a clear picture of what I wanted in my contents page whereas the other pages I didn't have as clear image in my head.  I have spent a considerable amount of time working what articles I wanted to feature, I have looked into a variety of different magazine and what they have in their contents page and I have also looked at past students for inspiration. When I put pictures into the contents page the text may change so the pictures fit with the articles.
 My aim for the next production is to really block my magazine and get a clear structure of where things will go because I am very creative I go off on a tangent and I think I need plan before I go on any further.

Contents Page Text

This is the text that would be featured in my contents page. There isn't much text on this page because I think it should be a brief summary of what you can find and where you can find it. This page should be about enticing you into a certain place of the magazine and that is why unlike the article which should be mainly text, this should be the most aesthetically pleasing to the reader.

Production Diary 8

Social Media & Promotional Methods

This post is about explaining how I could distribute my magazine using promotional methods and social media. Both of these elements are key if you want to have a successful selling magazine and after researching and typing up what I know about them, I feel like I have a much better understanding of how to use and manipulate them to my advantage.

Proposal

My draft proposal is where I give all my intial ideas about what I want to do for my magazine and why I chose to pick those ideas. I talk about all aspects of my magazine and how it all links together. It is important I justify all my choices so I can show people that I am 100% confident in the choices I have made and the thought process behind them.

Production Diary 7

We were given the task to complete a uses and gratification model for a music magazine. This was how we take the audience into account and what the audience use a magazine for. This can found below. This really helped me because like my music magazine survey, it gave me a insight into what looks good from an audience perspective and how I can incorporate the audience whilst constructing my magazine. Now after researching into this I am able to know what audience need/get out of a magazine and put that into my magazine. We then needed to complete our draft proposal, which was basically explaining the entire research part and answering a series of questions bout idea's for your magazine. This wasn't really much help because it wasn't what the aim was for, however it was good to have all my information together so I can refer to it further down the course. The target I set myself by the next production diary was to come up with my name and complete everything outstanding in my blog. Until next time. Ellie x

Production Diary 6

Existing Names

Existing Names from Ellisse White-Oliver

I started to look into different styles of names that I could use for my magazine. The name of a magazine is soemthing the audience really pays attention, if the name isn't catchy and eye-catching, there is an unlikey chance that people will want to pick up and purchase your magazine. I have now chosen a magazine name according to the research I have conducted into it.

Uses and Gratifications Model

Here is what theorist like to call a uses and gratification theory. The reason we did this was to start looking at how a magazine benefits the audience and what makes the audience want to read it. This helped me in so many ways because now am I not only looking at what makes a good magazine but what will make my readers happy and now I have started putting that into my ideas of what I should be putting into my magazine.

Representation of Genre

Here is my representation of what I believe indie is. Hope you enjoy.What I have learnt from this is what types of elements really do represent the genre I am going for. Before researching into my genre there were set things I thought exsisted within the genre of indie but now I knoew there is so many different aspects within indie and I can start putting and applying them to my magazine ideas. Overall I believe that this has just helped me to expand my mind and really understand my genre more.

Music Magazine Survey

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y5QR9LP

Here is my survey about music magazines. The idea is so that I can get a feel for what people other than me want. This helped me because when I start collecting my responses and collating them it will become a lot easier to identify what the audience want and not just what I think makes a good magazine. I will be including more things into my magazine now like freebees whereas before I might not have thought to do that.

Business Model of NME

The Business Model of ‘NME’ 



Who publishes it? 
The publishing company for the music magazine ‘NME’ is TimeInc.UK. This has a net work of over a billion. This company is very well known but doesn't just publish this magazine, they are also know for publishing over 60 magazine such as Golf Monthly, Chat, Now, Livingect and Maurie Clare UK.

How does NME makes its money and raise more awareness? 
Obviously the company make money through selling their magazine; however there are other ways they make their money. Ways you might not have guessed. They also make money through advertising in their magazine and from sponsoring over 4 music festivals and award shows. An additional way they have increased their money is through the online store where you can buy products based around NME which includes artists that are regularly featured in their magazine. This is where their main funding comes from and what has caused the magazine to be of great success today.







How does the magazine ensure regular readership? 
Through competitions not only just in the magazine but on their website as well and a monthly subscription, NME has features that really do ensure regular readership. The competitions you can enter are based solely on what you read in the magazine and the subscription offers you things that you don’t get if you buy it off the stand. This entices readers to keep buying and reading the magazine because there is a sense of constancy. Another way in which this magazine ensure regular readership is to every month have a handful of the same features to ensure there is something that readers will known and recognize when they get the magazine however it will always be of different content.






What I have learnt from completing this buisness model was simply just about the background of the company because I think it is hard to surround your magazine around a particular magazine and not know anything about the magazine or the company itself. This has also helped me to start thinking about what companies I believe I should let distribute my magazine. With a magazine and a company comes a stigma and a certain attachtment so it is key you chose the right business to help your magazine achieve the success it deserves.

Codes and Conventions of a Music Magazine

I already have a lot of knowledge of this topic due to reasearching music magazines previously. However, this has helped me refresh my memory into what a successful magazine upholds and why it does certain things to achieve this high level of standard. This has pushed me to give great consideration about what codes and conventions I will follow in my magazine and whiich ones I will break.

Production Diary 5

I thought this week instead of a video diary, I would post a text post because I want to mix things a bit. I will most likely return back to video blogs because I find them a lot easier. This week we have been really focusing on sort of the written side of our magazine. We have been given 2 separate task to complete by the 15th (tomorrow). These task were: codes and conventions of a magazine. I chose to do the features of a cover page, contents page and articles. I chose to do the key features of each of these and how I took them from a magazine and applied them to my own ideas. Instead of doing PowerPoint, I decided to use Prezi. I wanted to expand my horizons and not stick to the same programmes all the time. 

 My 2nd task was to do a representation of your chose genre (Indie). To mix things further I decided to do a very short film on Adobe Premier. This task was just to explore how your chosen genre was shown through different mediums. I found pictures/quotes/videos and combined them all into one 4 minute video. I found using Premier quite easy and very fun because you can just play around with it and create something very different to put on your blog. 

 Also this week I got back all of my pictures from my magazine photoshoot and the behind the scenes pictures. You can see the photoshoot pictures in a PDF  and all my behind the scenes shots in a video. My magazine ideas are really coming together now.

My target for next week is start getting outdoor shots together along with some location shots with my model and some other people I have in mind.

Until tomorrow's vlog

Bye x

Photoshoot Time Lapse

This video is simply just to show the readers of the blog what goes on behind the photoshoot and that pictures just don't turn up by themselves that you have to put work in. Another reason why I posted this was just to show the time I put in. A picture was taken every 10 seconds for 2 hours, that is over 700 pictures, I wanted to capture that with a short film of behind the scenes.

Photoshoot Contact Sheet

Here we have the final result of all the pictures I took of my lovely model Alex. Here is over 207 and soon I will be eleminating pictures to try and determine what specific ones I would like for my magazine. Along with these, I want to get some more shots of her outdoors along with other people I know. This contant sheet has helped make the process of elemation much quicker than it would if I had to scan every picture.

Analysing Double Page Spread

This really helped me to understand what to put into my article because when thinking about my magazine this was what I was worried about because I didn't really know what to include in the article itself and what made it look good so by analyzing a magazine article that I have focused my ideas on and I will be adapting articles similar to this one to achieve my perfect idea of an article.

Production Diary 4

Analysing Magazine Covers

I have always been comfortable with magazine covers and what looks good and what makes me want to buy it, however by analyzing the covers in so much detail I have realized that I didn't really know the half of it and there are so many elements that I didn't even know could be included and that has helped me to make sure that every element that possible can be on my magazine cover actually is.

Production Diary 3

Final Peliminary Task Evaluation

I have now finished my preliminary task. This task was to create a front and contents page for a magazine about our school Haydon. Throughout this blog post I will be looking and evaluating different areas of my magazine and including screenshots, also talking about individual decisions I made or didn’t make to create the final 2 pages.

Before I started my magazine I looked and studied a lot of headlines to get an idea of what I wanted and how I wanted it too look and then I finally decided on a big bold headline which said ‘THE HAYDON SPOTLIGHT’ It would have been stretching across the top of the magazine and really captivating. However, when it came to creating the final piece on in design, I had to go with a different background picture therefore the title didn’t fit anymore due to the colours clashing and it just didn’t fit. I then spoke with my teacher who showed me a GQ magazine and their logo. It really fit with my design although different with my initial first designs. I believe that the logo is subtle but also in your face. I know that may not be a real thing, but the colours compared with the actual size, shape and font of the logo really draws the reader in. I chose the font and colours because they are simple yet bold and they look very arty but professional and that was key for me in my magazine. Another reason I chose them was because I wanted something that I could use throughout my magazine and they seemed to fit best. I think that is key with the audience I have, you want to be able to really grab their attention from the second they see the magazine. I also needed a strap line for my headline, I couldn’t just leave the magazine being called ‘HS’ because I did want to incorporate my initial headline so I put it in a small strap line underneath the logo so it didn’t take away from the boldness but you could still next to the actual title.

    Moving onto the background for my magazine. I firstly wanted the school stage as my background because my magazine was based on the arts and I think that fitted quite well. Clearly that isn’t what my background is. My background is of my friend Holly. The reason I chose this was for a few reason. One of them was there wasn’t a suitable picture of the school stage that I thought looked good on my magazine. One of the more important reasons was that I chose Holly compared to the other pictures is because of the positive message that the pictures. As soon as you see Holly smiling it automatically puts you in a good mood and I want this kind of positivity to flow through my magazine and reflect on the students in Haydon that read my magazine.

  I chose to put the non-important things out of the way for example my barcode because it doesn’t really do much for the magazine so I didn’t want it blocking out the real selling points such as plug lines or pictures, so I thought it would be easier to just put the barcode out of the way.

   Moving onto the plug lines, I chose to only do the three main stories within the magazine but advertise that there were more inside. The reason I chose to do 3 because they were the most interesting and if you read that on the front cover you would be enticed and want to read inside. I also didn’t want every single plug line on the front cover cluttering up the front page. I also wanted an element of surprise, so when you open the magazine you are surprised to find a whole heap of additional stories inside. The reason I chose to position the top 2 plug lines there was so it wasn’t all bunched up and they were spread apart.

With my contents page I wanted something quite basic and something that didn’t give too much away. For the background, despite my original ideas I chose to go for a plain background that matched the colours on my front page. I also chose to not have too much going on. On my front cover it was quite busy, not overly busy, but I didn’t want to crowd my contents page as well. When choosing the fonts and colours, I knew I wanted to keep constancy throughout my magazine and not stray too far away from the original colours I chose for the front cover. Additionally when choosing the images for my stories, I wanted pictures that really reflected the stories and weren’t pictures that didn’t relate. I tried to match the pictures to the story as closely as I could. Moving on to the positioning of the stories. I wanted to alternate so moving one story to the right and another to the left, I thought this was an effective way of filling up the space and made sure there weren’t any pointless gaps.

Overall I was very happy with the outcome of my final magazine and I wouldn’t change much as I believe that instinct is key and I am very proud of my first attempt at making a magazine.

Final Peliminary Task

 

Production Diary 2

Past Students Blog Review

Preliminary Design Ideas/ Production Diary 1

As you can see from the pictures below I have completed both of my perliminary design ideas for this part of the task. I really like the layout and design of my front cover. Some of this front cover wasn't planned and I completed it free hand. I believe that instinct is key and if you drew or wrote something on the page you intened it to be there, so that is why I decided not to plan everything to the last detail and I was happy that it fitted the look I was aiming for.
I think I might make a few changes to my contents page however. I will probably change it throughout the process of actaully making the final product. I am not as happy with it as I would like to be as I think it looks quite bare and empty so as I go along in the actaully making of it, it will become a lot more filled and reach a place where I am as happy with it as my front page.
When chosing the colours of my magazine, I wanted colours that could be bold and stand out but also be subtle and not too in your face. As my magazine is about the arts, I did want the colours to represent that. The arts can be subtle but they can also push limits and be out there and by chossing the boldness of the navy and the subtleness of the beige, I believe it represents what I was trying to capture.
The reason behind the name is very simple, I wanted the name of the school and something to do with performing arts and that is where the title 'Haydon Spotlight' came from. It is bold, catchy and simple. Moving on to the stories, I wanted to include stories that could include all students however catered specifically for the arts. This is why I included stories about 'canteen food that helps you focus' but also 'new exta curricular arts clubs'. Even though my magazine is quite specific, I believe covered a variety of stories.
I haven't decided on what specific fonts I want for each part of my magazine as I am hoping that it just comes naturally when I start creating it. Before I start to make the magazine however, I will look at some fonts and pick which ones I like best and which ones suit each heading.
Before I start creating the magazine, I do think I may need to go ou and collect a few more pictures, but since I first took pictures a week ago, my magazine has changed and I don't think I have as many pictures to fit my magazine as I would like.
The next step in my perliminary task is too start working my way through creating the finished product. Even though I haven't had much practise with photoshop I hope to work out bits with the help of my teacher and peers. My target for the next time I write a blog post is to have started actually peicing together parts of my magazine and to have the pictures ready to go.

Preliminary task

Our preliminary task is to create a magazine surrounding Haydon School. Once this task was set I knew that I wanted to do a magazine surrounding the creative side of Haydon. I started by taking pictures of the school and people within the school. This magazine will include subjects such as Art, Drama, Media and Music. For the front cover I wanted the stage in St Mary's Hall. In the magazine there will be articles such as 'exam results on the rise for the arts', 'new extra curriculum activites' and so on a so forth. I decided on the name 'Haydon Spotlight' as it reminds me of the performing arts and it's catchy so people will remember it. Now I have decided all of these elements, I will now begin to sketch my designs for my front cover and contents page and go into more depth as to what colours and images I want on my magazine.