MS2 Evaluative Report
Initially I was unsure on what type of production that I was going to do, either a moving image production or still image. I choose to do a still image because I felt that I wasn’t good at making moving image – I just got too stressed when making previous ones which are also on this blog in earlier posts and the repetitiveness of having to reshot things also got me more stressed. So deciding on a still image production where I could be more creative and imaginative was chosen.
A04
Research into existing texts was concentrated more on moving image rather than still image; this is purely because I was unsure on what I was going to do. The genre of the texts that I researched into were mainly Horror and Thriller texts, with image analysis of trailers for ‘The Dark Knight’ film poster, moving image trailer for ‘Jeepers Creepers’, Trailer analysis of ‘The Exorcist’. Poster analysis of ‘The Hills have Eyes.’ The reason why these texts are specific to Horror and Thriller is because I was under the impression that the production we made had to be based on either Horror, Thriller or Documentary, it wasn’t made clear that if we did a magazine then the ‘genre’ of the magazine could be on any, like music, photography magazine etc.
Research was done into my ideal target audience, this involved creating a questionnaire and asking people to fill it out helping me to get an idea of what my target audience are more interested in advertising wise for a film for example. Here is an example of the questionnaire that I made for research into moving image texts:
Here is an example of some of the results that I obtained from doing the questionnaire into moving image texts:
I found out that my target audience were more attracted to movie trailers rather than an opening or a magazine on a topic. I also found out that people preferred different texts from the genre that they specified in Question 1 – this gave me an insight into what my target audience like in horror texts for example because this was voted the most popular in this questionnaire, with more specific scenes that involve gore, special effects and a storyline with twists and turns.
Here is an example of a questionnaire that I made in order to find out what people like about magazines and what attracts them, who are a target audience, into buying them.
From asking people to complete this questionnaire that is focused on magazines, I found out more information about what attracts people to a magazine and also into buying it and also ones that they already faithfully buy – brand loyalty – since they have brought a magazine from a certain brand before they might have become loyal to that magazine brand and have come into the habit of buying new issues when they are released in shops. I found information out about the popularity of magazines – what specific genre of magazines that my target audience buy; it turns out that magazines that are about sport were generally more popular with my target audience and that gardening magazines weren’t brought by my target audience at all. Game, Music and Gossip magazines were also popular so I know what sort of information attracts a older teenager into buying them in particular; brighter colours and similar colour schemes to the topic of the magazine are particularly attractive to my target audience. I also found out information about the types of colour schemes that are specific to certain genres of magazines, for example magazines that are about games feature colours that are specific to the ‘main’ game that they are reviewing with a picture of a scene or character or piece of artwork on the cover – I adopted this idea in my actual production. Information about the types of images that are generally found on the front covers of magazines that my target audience buy, most of the images are of a larger size and none use small images at all. There are only a couple of issues of magazines that use a mixture of image sizes, medium sized images and images that cover the whole of the page. From doing this research questionnaire I now had an idea of what sort of content to include on my magazine when I come to make it.
All this research affected my Pre Production piece greatly since I became aware of what is conventional of certain genres of magazines regarding their colour schemes and image sizes, from this I could now go about creating my pre-production piece with an idea of where to start and what image sizes and colours to use in order to appeal most to my target audience.
A02
I think that the strengths of my final production piece involve the use of the lens flare that you can see going over the ‘Silver Screen Block Busters’ title of the magazine on the front cover, I think that it is an unconventional feature of my magazine and is something that I think makes it fairly unique and stands out against its competitors who could be reviewing the same film so it needs to be different from other magazines who could be using conventional methods – mine needs to have unconventional features.
The colour scheme suits the theme of the magazine – space- which recurs throughout the magazine offering some continuity to it. I think that the colours are good and are conventional of certain magazines that use darker backgrounds with the white font colour, although the gold font colour for the titles is something that I haven’t particularly seen in magazines but I am unsure of whether this is conventional or not of some magazines.
The background image on the front cover of a space theme is also very eye catching, my plan was to just start off making something and then make up a made up movie name and plot around it, I already had Sci-Fi theme in mine and so I started off by drawing that out and went on from their taking inspiration for themes from my imagination and ideas for the plot of the film and also some other visual content with a friend who attends another school who became interested in what I was doing and the idea that I had for the made up movie and design of the magazine. (Please note that he had no influence in actually creating the magazine, I used Photoshop purely by myself and since he attends another college and is doing subjects that aren’t related to media at all; BTEC Music, Drama and Art)
I think that the use of the triangular image on the double page spread and the clapper board on both the front cover and contents page are interesting as well because they are unconventional and address the issue of standing out from competitors. The slight overlay on the Clapper Board on the front cover which makes the background behind it visible is also interesting and something that I haven’t seen on a magazine cover before.( Example shown below of transparency)
I think that my production is weak in the department of image content and manipulation, I feel as though the concentration across the whole of the course has been on moving image productions rather than still image, and we have had no tuition in the art of Photoshop from a media student’s point of view regarding image manipulation, being confused about what could be done for a magazine was evident and I thought that we had to do a magazine on the 3 topics that was the focus for moving image. From my very first use of Photoshop which was in an earlier post on this blog – which was awful – I think that I have progressed a lot thanks to help from my ICT teacher.
Some technical skills that I have used are the use of the options that you can choose a layer to look like in Photoshop:
I have used these options to help create some of the effects that are in the different pieces of the production and they are quite good to use technically. I also used some special effects things that are in the Filter Gallery such as Lens Flare which is under the Render Section of this gallery; I used this on the Free Poster bit on the front cover for example. For the rest I used the paintbrushes that you can get on Photoshop and used them to create the rest of the visual content such as the background and the triangular shape on the double page spread. I also created the film reel tape in Photoshop as well and included this on the contents page to include some more visual content and to help tell the target audience that they are the main features of this magazine issue.
The background on the contents page, behind the clapper board could’ve been made more interesting, possibly use some other paintbrushes instead of the one I choose and the fill of the background black. Although these colours could still appeal to the target audience of the magazine – older teenagers.
When we look at the magazine you connote that the theme of the movie that it is reviewing and the magazine itself is Sci-Fi because of the Space scenario on the background of the front cover and double page spread. The connotations of the name of the magazine are of movies since we associate ‘Silver Screen’ with big Hollywood films.
