g325 as coursework analysis
- 1. Geeta Gohil
- 2. Geeta Gohil • As a media student, I am up to date with technology. Therefore, I’ve been creating posts for my coursework through at least one of the following programmes/softwares listed: Slideshare Prezi http://prezi.com/ Vimeo Flickr YouTube Scribd • Digital technology has become a major factor into my coursework, whether it’s software's which I’ve never used before, or whether it’s equipment I have used, Digital Technology has been beneficial for me into succeeding in producing my AS Coursework. • Adobe Inn Design, Adobe Photoshop CS6 were the 2 main software's which I used throughout the process of my AS coursework, I already knew how to work Photoshop due to working on it previously. With Adobe Photoshop. The image manipulation program allowed meto manipulate graphics necessary for the magazine. E.g. crop tools such as Marquee (magic wand), Lassos, and colour converters such as Red Eye Corrector, Colour Variations, Colour Dropper, Dodge and Burn, text tools, picture boxes, shape tools, photograph manipulation, layers etc • Inn Design was a new software, it was easy and quick to learn all the basics of using it, once I got the hang of that, I knew how to work the software. • With the skills of using digital technology applications and software's has become beneficial to be as this can make the process of my A2 coursework quicker, as I am familiar with these software's and how they run, furthermore I will get a professional finished look from these software's. • In Photoshop I was confident in editing images and how to make them look professional and perfect enough. With Inn Design, even though it was similar to Photoshop, the basics of learning how to set up a page, font, text, adding images were new to me. During my AS coursework, I made a school magazine which was my preliminary task in order to build those skills and somehow try to refine them slowly. When starting my AS coursework, my skills refined and improved as I went along.
- 3. • What are the pros and cons of the software and hardware you used at AS in terms of skills development? There are many pros and cons of the software and hardware I have used at AS, in terms of skill development, my editing skills for imagery had improved a vast amount, this is through practising, watching tutorials and self-teaching myself. With the help of the internet, It was beneficial for me to refine my skills and polish them. However, the cons of the software and hardware I used at AS were that I found it difficult to take images from the digital camera as I was very fussy with the pictures and I wanted them to be perfect in which lead to me taking over 500 images in 1 photo shoot. • During the production of the magazine, I have gained and improved my skills into using technologies and software’s, these include – Adobe InDesign CS6, Photoshop, Scribd, Slideshare, Blogger, Dafont.com, Prezi and photography and camera skills. Furthermore I've also had the chance to use professional equipment in order to get high quality images for my media product, which includes the cannon SLR camera, the lighting folding umbrellas and spotlights. With each of these software’s, websites, and equipment, I've had the chance to show my creativity in which I want to put into my media product. • Before beginning this project, I was familiar with Photoshop and how it works, giving me a great advantage to be able to start straight away in editing images for my project. In GCSE I was taught all the basic skills of Photoshop and I learnt few intermediate skills in which I applied to my GCSE project. When it came to this project, many tools which I was familiar to, came in handy when editing images from this project. I usedtools ranging from the spot healing tool, burn tool, patch tool, to different effects like ‘Contrast/Brightness’ to ‘Colour Range’ which was very handy in cutting the background of the image. So my confidence in using Photoshop boosted more in order to show my skills more into my magazine. InDesign is a much more professional pragma to make magazine quickly and similar media products. InDesign is a software in which you can make templates which you can input into each page all at once, known as master pages, to ensure the pages looked constant and had a flow to it. Furthermore InDesign has allowed me to focus more on the content rather than messing around with text boxes and shapes; the software has simple quick tricks which were very beneficial. • As the main thing about the article pages the text, to make sure it was constant, In InDesign you can have the ability with the text box to extend them and put them in columns and then copy and paste the article into the text box at once. I’ve posted a tutorialon how to do this certain skill on my blog. Text Wrap was also an easy way to get the text around the image. It allows you to select the picture and then text automatically fits around the picture, also you can change the distance of the text wrap if you don’t want thetext right next to the edge of the image. Each tool I’ve used has made my magazine to look professional and have a finished look. Many top magazine companies are very familiar to this software due to the simple tools which are very effective. The end results of making my magazine were very good and consider using it in later project ahead. My favourite feature of this software has to be the colour swatches and the paragraph styles, in which I can save my own style of font and then in one click I can use it when adding another text. The colour swatch enabled me to save colours which have been used for my magazine, and then once used, it’s easy for me to access and make sure the magazine has a smooth look to it and keep the house style constant. Other technologies I’ve used throughout this project are Scribd, blogger, Slideshare, Prezi and dafont.com. Geeta Gohil
- 4. Geeta Gohil • Scribd has allowed doing my work on Microsoft word and PowerPoint and then uploading it as a blog post via embedding them. This allows me to share my work easily with other users. Once it becomes a blog post, there is a neat presentation of the work which can be viewed in the blog page. • Slideshare is also another website, similar to Scribd; it can allow me to upload power points and word documents, embed them on my blog and share it. It's another great website into uploading planning ideas for my magazine. • Blogger is one of the main places where I can put all my work to present it. I have developed even more skills into presenting my work. I have learned how to label posts and follow other people’s work and teacher’s blogs. Blogging can help me keep up-to-date on what work I've done and what work I need to complete. • Whilst working on my media product I have used Dafont.com to help enhance my final product as it allowed me to download any different and more exciting fonts making my product look more professional. Prezi has allowed me to create different and appealing presentation which could be blogged and be easily access to present. Prezi was a great website to use as once I've embedded my work onto my blog and I need to edit it, I had to worries but to go on Prezi and edit it and it would automatically update the Prezi which has been embedded on the blog. • Equipment wise, I did my photo shoot using a Canon 55OD DSLR, I am familiar with the camera as I’ve used it for pervious tasks and projects, I knew the functions of the camera very well. As the camera is digital, I got the chance to look back at images at see which ones were good and bad, also giving a quick preview after taking the picture was beneficial to see how the image came out, furthermore the images taken by this camera were high definition and clear. As I was using a 16GB memory card, which stores approximately 4,000 images, I knew that the capacity of the card was more than enough for me, and resulted in taking over 250 images of my photo shoot. After the shoot, I could easily and quickly transfer my images onto the computer by using a SD card USB Reader. • I also got access to lights and a white backdrop for my studio photoshoot which improved the images itself so that it could have a better high quality. The white backdrop also made the images easy to edit without having any difficulties. The lights are used for professional shoots which will provide high quality and professional looking images which I took due to the equipment. The lights were easy to adjust, and I was shown by one of the media teachers on how to adjust them.
- 5. Geeta Gohil Creativity• For me, creativity comes from the atmosphere and the surroundings your in, furthermore it comes from where your most interested in. • We get creative by thinking on how we could improve, change or remove something, and by being creative these ideas expand into our mind and then it’s when we need to note everything down. In my AS coursework, there was a lot of creativity towards planning, research and actually constructing my magazine. With my coursework, the way I laid out the title of the article, I believe was creative as I didn’t really follow the conventions of a normal magazine and how they would typically place it. Furthermore, the whole magazine was a reative piece as it was all about finding a music genre and making up everything from scratch which boosted out ideas on what we wanted to do. The pros in being creative and incorporating them into my coursework is that, we can do anything however we were limited for it in AS, due to it being a music magazine, I believe the only way to be creative was to be inspired by existing similar products which are well known. Did the technology enhance your creativity or not? I believe that technology somehow enhanced my creativity as I improvised with my creativity and ideas while editing as I was experimenting and was quite satisfied with it. Thanks to technology, I was able to boost my creativity and think of new things which I wouldn’t have thought if I was drawing or sketching out the ideas. Was this original or did you add something extra to an original media text? The coursework pieces are all original and made up by myself. When writing the article, there was a chance to think outside the box and be imaginative when writing. Would you take any creative skills into future projects or have you been influenced to engage these skills in any other projects? I will definitely take these creative skills into future projects such as A2 and into my independent work. I will definitely be original however I like getting ideas and them incorporating them with other ideas with a slight twist of what I want which would make the idea creative and suitable.
- 6. Research and Planning Geeta Gohil • There were many research and planning tasks which were carried out in order to reach at a position in which we were clear about what I was definitely going to produce. • Primary Research such as questionnaire was taken place where I asked people to answer my questions about music magazines via Survey Monkey, audience feedback was another research I got so I could improve my work. Audience Feedback was also another vital research I conduct, as being part of a target audience, I was able to understand what they liked and disliked about the product which I believes was a great advantage for me as when it came to my AS coursework, I made many few tweaks such as colours, texts and images. • Furthermore the Internet, existing magazines were also a big help into basics ideas layout and design. • The advantages of research and planning side of the AS Coursework o believe were: The research was accessible, useful and accurate however they were time consuming as they would take as long as a week to create and run the idea. • The disadvantages of research and planning were that there were so many tasks to complete, in order to understand what I was doing. Carrying On, when it came to research and planning, my ideas would change which would mean it would affect my research and planning side of the course – making it more time consuming. • I organised myself by using all software's are presenting them by posting it on my blog through labels making it more easy for people to access certain posts.
- 7. Post Production Geeta Gohil • I started off first by researching into existing music magazines • getting a rough idea on what I wanted to do • Researched more in depth about the industry • Analysed similar products • Researched into masthead and names that exist, Key concepts of a music magazine and analysis of different types of pages. • Planning included: Proposal, mood board, Name ideas, image ideas, colour scheme ideas, props and costumes, promotional methods and new media, equipment, cover lines and subheading for contents page, model release and contact sheets of images which have been selected and may appear in the final piece of work. • Photoshoot – used Photoshop to edit the images which was very time consuming. • Started constructing everything together in order to build up the magazine using Inn Design