Magazine Draft 2

These are re-drafts of my magazine fixing a crucial few mistakes such as spelling or grammatical errors made in the article.

Magazine Draft

Diary Entry Week 21

This week I have been going back over my magazine to make sure there are no errors I have missed to ensure that there is no way of me being able to drop marks. I found that the best way to do this would be able to get a fresh set of eyes to look at my magazine. I had them highlight any spelling, grammatical and any other errors that they could see. Once they had done this I realised there were some key issues with my magazine that I had not notice before hand. Fortunately they were all reasonably simple to correct. Once I had done this I printed out my work again and showed my final piece to a focus group of my target audience. I received all positives from the group which was a key indicator that my magazine was finally done and would be ready to be published.

Diary Entry Week 20

Today in my media lesson I managed to complete the evaluation video for my front cover very easily. I also intended to record the sound for my contents and double page spreads. I did this however the voice recorder I used distorted my voice and also the background noise over powered the actual speaking. Due to this I am going to do it at home to avoid complications. 

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Throughout the creation of my product I used a range of different hardware and software technologies in order to produce a professional looking, well-constructed magazine.

Firstly, I conducted a Photoshoot, using a Canon 55OD DSLR as I felt it was a very decent camera that gives high resolution photos, also I am most familiar with this camera as it was supplied by the school, therefore I was able to comfortably use and experiment with it. The fact this camera is digital is another helpful factor as I was able to take hundreds of photos and also check back over them, deleting those that seemed inappropriate to convey my magazines genre. I could then transfer the photos from the camera to my computer instantly, saving a lot of time. I used this camera when taking photos of my models against a white back drop, lit by interfit portrait photography lighting, in order to create the right amount of light for my photographs to appear professional and to ease the ability to cut them out on Photoshop. Another feature of this lighting was that it had trigger lighting, this means it was in sync with my camera, and therefore every time I took a photo, the lighting would flash also. This ensured my photos looked as clear and professional as possible. For this particular shoot I used an 18-55mm 4.6 aperture lens, ensuring I could capture each image in a variety of angles and sizes.
Once the photos were taken, I uploaded them to my computer. After deciding which photo’s I wanted to use on my magazine, I began to edit them. For this I used the programme Adobe Photoshop CS3. This piece of software allows users to edit, cut, change and even create images and graphics. I am quite advance with the use of this piece of software. One key feature of Photoshop is the feature of cutting out images from their background; without these it would have made my magazine appear less successful. There are a few ways you can do this, one way being the Magic Wand Tool, allowing you to attach a line to the outline of your image and then cut it out. However, I found this ineffective as my photos came out rough and bumpy, therefore decided to use Colour Range, which allows you to click on parts of the image you wish to erase and then reselect needed parts perfectly using the Mask tool. 
Another feature of Adobe Photoshop I used often was the Adjustment Layer option for photos, which I used to edit my photos further. In order to display my skills on Photoshop I also made the photos stand out from the page more by adjusting the contrast slightly. I also used it for saturation, highlighting, shadowing, hue, exposure and many other effects for photos. This was again, to ensure my photos were of the highest quality and also to highlight parts of the photo, such as my models dark clothing which made the pictures seem dull and clourless, therefore I had to tweak them to make my magazine more aesthetically pleasing, drawing in the readers attention. 
Popular sites such as Google, YouTube, Yahoo and Bing have all contributed to my knowledge of music magazines also, as I have: researched for information on particular companies; looked for inspiration on different angles and poses my models should experiment with during the photo shoot which helped me to conclude with a particular style for my magazine, I’ve found information on what the register of my article should be and so on. Lastly, Blogger has been the one of the biggest parts in the creation of my magazine, allowing me to show every stage of the production process, documenting the different stages and features I considered during the creation of my magazine.

What kind of Institution might distribute your media product and why?

In Text:
There are four main companies that form the oligopoly. These are Bauer Media, IPC Media, The National Magazine Company and Conde Naste.

Bauer Media is a large German publishing company based in Hamburg, which operates in 15 countries worldwide, publishing over 282 magazines. This company is responsible for the publishing of many magazines, including Take a Break, Empire and Kerrang. Kerrang was my main inspiration when creating my magazine; therefore I have given my magazine a number of similar features to Kerrang. Meaning Bauer Media would not gain anything by publishing my magazine, as it is too similar to Kerrang. 

IPC is one of the largest publishing companies, publishing a huge variety of magazines from men’s interest, fashion, TV guides, music and so on. They also publish NME; therefore I will not be using IPC to publish my magazine, for similar reasons to why I won’t use Bauer Media. Therefore, I will not be using IPC to publish my magazine, as they are already publishing NME magazine, which is aimed at a similar target audience to mine, meaning my magazine would have more competition. 

The National Magazine Company also contributes to making up the oligopoly. This company publishes magazines such as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Good House Keeping and so on. They appeal to over 14.9 million adults every year, as they publish over 20 magazines in the UK alone. However I would prefer not to use them as their pre-existing target audience doesn’t fit with my magazines’.

The last company that makes up the oligopoly is Conde Naste. They are a worldwide publishing company, responsible for publishing some of the most successful lifestyle magazines. They are also well known for their contribution to the fashion magazine industry, publishing magazines such as Vogue.

Therefore, I have decided I am going to use Conde Naste to help distribute my magazine. This is because I feel they will benefit from having a magazine of my sort within their company, as they do not currently publish any other metal magazines like mine, but they do appeal to a wide variety of people, therefore I will be making the variety of magazines they publish larger. It also means I will not have any strong competition within their company as my magazine will be the only main metal genre magazine in the market.

Front Cover feedback

Personally I was very happy with the outcome of my magazine front cover. However I asked some peers for feedback shown in these labels above. I have taken into account what they have said and will consider improvements due to this.

Diary Entry Week 19

Recently I have been working on my magazine evaluation. So far I have completed all of the actual evaluation. However I am going to create it into a voice over video. I have been restricted in doing so as I can only record the voice over at home however I only have Adobe Premiere at school so therefor I need to have all my voice over done at home before I can start work here. For this reason I have now started the second question in my analysis and am currently working on that until I can get home and record the rest of my work.