SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
Last year
doing AS Media I created a Foundation Portfolio which included creating a
college front cover and a music magazine.
College magazine
Firstly I started off with
researching and looking at some already established magazines, in particular an
American college one. I then labelled the magazine with all the conventions
that we had learned the previous lesson, things such as ‘mast head’ ‘subtitle’
‘small feature’ and many more. This really helped with understanding how a
magazine front cover is put together and what designs work best. We’d had a
lesson to teach us how to work Photoshop and about the basic editing
techniques. This was essential for the next part of creating my own college
magazine front cover, as I then took several photos for the main image of the
front cover, which then I had to edit on Photoshop to make it look more
professional and eye-catching to the audience. With the skills I had before the
Photoshop lesson I wouldn’t have been able to do this to the level I did, but
with the skills I had learned in that lesson I was able to edit a photo to a
good standard; which was a crucial part of my front cover been successful.
Throughout creating the college magazine my Photoshop knowledge got better and
I was a lot more confident when using it, this was extremely helpful for future
tasks in the course. For the final part of the college magazine task I wrote an
evaluation to sum up and explain my decisions throughout making the front
cover.
Music magazine
With the experience from
the college magazine task I knew the first thing to do was look at existing
music magazine’s like ‘NME’ as they are a highly successful music magazine and
it ended up influencing me for my own music magazine. I analysed a few music
magazines to understand more about the meaning and why they did things in such
ways, also about targeting the audience. Doing this helped me analyse my own
finish music magazine and help me LIIAR analyse it thoroughly and correctly and
explain the conventions.
One important skill I
learnt during the process of making my music magazine was how to manipulate a
photo on Photoshop. This is where you take an original image and the person in
the image, if they have any blemishes on their skin or if you want make the
person slightly slimmer than you can by using a few tools on Photoshop. It’s an
important skill to have especially with this task because the main image on a
music magazine has to be attractive and eye-catching to the audience, and the
stereotypical music artist is attractive and has the perfect body. I not only
made a music magazine front cover but also a contents page and a double page
spread. I had 3 different original images for each of these, my Photoshop
skills and knowledge of the music magazines have helped me create a
professional looking music magazine that looks similar to those that are bought
and sold in the shops. Without having them skills I don’t believe my music
magazine would have been to a good of a standard and correctly done, so I think
the skills I learnt were highly important.
Before I started the AS
media course I didn’t really have many skills. I have learnt what planning and
research needs to be done before you can start your own task, because like the
music magazine you needed know what worked effectively and what didn’t, how to
target your audience and what age range for your audience would be appropriate.
One big skill I learnt was that planning definitely needs doing before you
start the real thing, because you find yourself making it up as you go along
and then the final piece doesn’t look as good as it would with thought and
planning done before hand. I learnt this when doing the college magazine task,
as I only took one original image which I thought I liked and was going to use
but then later came to find that the image didn’t really work well with the
rest of the design for the cover. Which then meant I had to back track and take
more photos which I could experiment with. Learning this lesson then meant I
didn’t make the same mistake when doing the music magazine.
I had some skills when it
came to creativity as I did ‘Creative and Media’ for GCSE, which involved been
very creative to come up with ideas for projects. So when it came to the music
magazine I felt like I had quite a few ideas that would look good and work
well. I would say my skill to be creative has definitely developed throughout
the tasks we have been given. My Digital
Technology skills, I would say have developed massively, I didn’t really know
how to use the equipment properly when I first started the course, but with the
tasks it meant we had to use them and learn how to use them in the correct way.
I think improving all
these skills have benefitted my year during the course and my work definitely.
Without the skills I gained last year my work wouldn’t have been to a good
standard and I would have really struggled with the course and not enjoyed it
half as much.
