Skills Development Essay

A2 Media Studies

Skill Development

 

At the start of my Foundation Portfolio I had to do two Preliminary tasks. One of them was to create an advert for a new perfume that was coming out, and then we had to make a magazine that was for a college that we had either chosen or made up. The magazine included a contents page and a front cover.

In the process of making the Preliminary tasks we had to use a lot of different software that were on the computers, for example, Photoshop CS5 version which was for editing the pictures, then when we needed to put it together or to type something out, we used Microsoft Word and Publisher.

When we were making the first Preliminary task with was advertising a new perfume. This let you get to grips with the software on the computers and the basics of Photoshop, so then this would later on help you develop your skills when it came to making the college magazine.

In the process of making my college magazine I had to take a picture of my model in a medium close-up shot, include a master head, text laid out appropriately across the front cover. When I was editing my pictures I had taken I knew that this was going to help me with my skills to edit pictures efficiently to make them look professional.

For my Foundation Portfolio I create music magazine which had to include a front cover, contents page and a double page spread, you had to use at least four of your own photos that you had taken yourself.  The genre I chose for my music magazine was that it would be the same genre featured in the NME music magazine, which would be indie rock, up and coming artists and alternative.

The skills that I had received in high school I found that when I was working on Photoshop did not help me when it came to making the magazine and working out what tool to use. However the fact that we were taught the basics at the start of my A2 lessons helped me work out what to do. Photoshop was the main software I used to edit my pictures.

 At some points I found it very confusing and difficult to use for example, how to blend in some parts of the picture, or to make the picture look airbrushed. However after a little bit of help from fellow students and the teachers I soon got to grasps with the tools and which tool did what in the processing of making my magazine look as good as it can.

When I first took my pictures and went to my teacher and showed her and asked her what she thought, she immediately told me that it was not the kind of pictures that you would find in a music video and that they were more for a fashion magazine. So I went away and took another set of pictures where I used a model and used a couple of pros such as, a pair of sunglasses to cover her eyes and gave her a cigarette to give the magazine a rock and roll kind of look. The same as the college magazine, I had to include a master head, date, issue number, but also we had to include some new conventions of a magazine, bar-code, skyline and a splash.

Then next step I had to take was to pick the colour scene that I was going to do my music magazine. The colours I chose were red, black and white. I thought that picking these colours is easy to work with and there couldn’t be any clashes with the photos I took. The way I presented my colour scheme was layering them onto Photoshop, this way it was easier to choose where I wanted the appropriate colour text. The type face that I used throughout my magazine was Calisto MT Bold with font size 18. When I was editing my pictures using Photoshop I used the quick selection tool which made it so much easier to erase large parts of my pictures, this saved me a lot of time. When it came to erasing some of the images with where harder to get to, I change the size of the brush to 16 which meant I could erase parts of the picture that was unwanted. At some points of using Photoshop, I found it very confusing and difficult to use for example, how to blend in some parts of the picture where I had erased, or to make the picture look airbrushed. However I found it very difficult to make sure that the edges were smooth where I had erased part of the picture. This is when I used blur tool to smoothen out the edges to make them not look as hard and untidy.  But after a little bit of help from fellow students and the teachers I soon got to grasps with the tools and which tool did what in the processing of making my magazine look as good as it can. When I was using all of the different layers I found it easy to place things in different places and it gave my music magazine a lot of depth. When I was using the transform scale tool, this made it easier for me to make my Coverlines and some of my other texts bigger without it going pixelated. When I was making my Coverlines and my other shaped boxes, I used the rectangle tool, which made it easier for me to create a box which I could but my text in. After I had made my magazine I created a couple of questions that I would ask some people that fitted my target audience.  When I got a response, I found that most of the people in my target audience felt that it was a good magazine and that they thought that it fitted into my music magazine

The research I did before I made my music magazine to help me get inspiration and an idea on what I wanted to do.  I started to look at magazine that I felt would fit into my genre. I firstly did a LIIAR analysis of NME that was new that week. I analysed its front cover, contents page and double page spread. I was looking at what made it different from every other music video and the photos that were used in it. I did this as well looking at Kerrang and Q music magazine.