I approached these two tasks slightly differently as they were two completely different genres of society and lifestyle, which were the student life and a music magazine of any kind. Approaching the preliminary task of a school/college magazine was a lot easier as I am a student and I am surrounded by many other students so it was a lot easier to construct and process the preliminary task. In addition to this, it made it a lot easier to gather feedback and survey from, what was, essentially my target audience. Approaching the main task was a lot harder as it was a wider field of work. The word music brought a lot more ideas and areas into my head. It also required me to think more critically about the choices I made as it was no longer a student magazine aimed at students it was a music magazine aimed at its fans. Although it was harder, it was slightly easier as well as I already had the feedback from the preliminary task which helped me through the approaching and processing my main task as I knew not to make the same mistakes I did in the preliminary task.
A key area of magazine development and any type of production is the time management behind it. In order for me to keep up with my work a created a plan of the objectives I was going to do by a certain deadline and the things I needed to do in order to meet those objectives. This allowed me to be a lot more organized and tidy with my work because it changed my frame of mine to be more disciplined me throughout the course of these tasks to do things by a certain deadline. When I found myself in situations where I knew I wasn’t going to finish by a certain deadline I would leave that certain task and go back to it when I had free time on my agenda. As well as managing time, I had to manage to equipment and other resources I was using. This meant me asking permission to use the school cameras and permission to print etc. Furthermore, for the main task managing my models was needed as I needed them to pose and look like what I instructed because I am ultimately the editor of the magazine and these decisions are thought about carefully for the success of the task.
Most of my creative problems came with the preliminary task. One of the problems that occurred whilst I was developing my ideas was that my initial ideas for the front cover didn’t work and I had to go back to the drawing board and came up with a layout that was suitable for the front cover of my school/college magazine. My initial ideas loads of students dressed up as if they were in different jobs did not work as I did not have the right resources or costumes for the idea. I didn’t really have any major problems with the still photography as the photos came out at a high quality and were taken in a clear environment. One of the big problems in the main music magazine task was always linking every little detail to the main theme and genre of the music task, this was very important and was done, but was very difficult to always bare it in mind whilst constructing. There was a minor problem with some of the photos taken, and that problem was the lighting. The lighting was a minor problem in some of the pictures as when the chosen pictures for the front cover were put together on the front page it didn’t look like the picture was one as I intended it to be, instead it looked like each picture was taken in a different environments. I managed to fix the problem with some editing with desktop publishing software, however one of the photos was unfixable as the lighting looked odd compared to the rest of the images on the front page . Another idea that didn’t go together was warping 4 different faces into one. This didn’t work as it wasn’t a very suitable image to place on the front cover. I didn’t really have any problems with the printing of both tasks production as it came out at a high quality. As I trialed my work amongst my peers and teacher I was picked up on a couple of problems which was easily amended. Although for my music magazine I had to keep changing minor things to make it the best it could be. Linking back to the still photography was the limitation of locations and if I could do the tasks again I would probably vary the locations
I believe that I organized my human resources very effectively as I managed to use them to get the best possible photos. For my preliminary task the models used were very kind to let me photograph them for my coursework. For the environment pictures I had to direct the students to pose the way I wanted them to, to give the right effect for my magazine. For the images if the front cover I organized a photo shoot session with 4 models and took a medium close up of each of them and directed them appropriately to suit my ideas for the front cover. For the pictures on the contents page I got two popular and distinct characters and took a long shot of them and made them into the head boy and head girl of my magazine. I made them wear poppies as a apart of the issue month and part of the theme of the month issues which was ‘remembrance day’.
For my main task, I used one model to create a twin effect. For this I organized a photo shoot on a weekend as for the main task and my twin sister band it required the day to get together outfits and props for each of the characters ‘Sam’ and ‘Izzy’. I had to be careful not to instruct my model to pose offensively or oddly, as it wouldn’t be suitable. Although I had to sail very close to the line because they had to come across as rebels for my music magazine which was centered around punk music. Also the costumes make up and props had to be different for each of the characters as they were two different people. I got my model to pose in many different ways and I had to action match each picture with the other character so it looked natural when the pictures were placed together and so they looked like the picture was taken with both of them in the shot. The two outfits also had to be distinct as each twin has a different style. This showed that I managed my ideas around my model very carefully and decided what looked good on my model for the suitability of the shoot. For the posing I gave my model information about each character so she could incorporate her feelings and personality based on the information into the pictures.
Overall, I was very pleased with the models chosen and the way the applied those in the photo shoot. I also believe that the photo shoots went very well and were very productive. The photos also came out to a very high quality. In a nutshell, I think my managing of human resources was very organized and effective
Throughout the two tasks I found that design drafting was very important as it is always available to refer back to when you are stuck on any problems with the current layout. By having draft layouts, you can adjust the layouts and adjust problems that have been pointed out and are not part of industry conventions or magazine ‘norms’. In addition to this, my preliminary task draft layout designs were completely different from the final outcome as many changes were needed to improve. After learning the mistakes of my preliminary task I managed to stick to my draft designs for my main task quite accurately as I thought about many different designs before coming up with an actual draft layout for my music magazine.
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