Definitions applied to my media coursework-

• Skill development- Any work-related activity that results in enhanced skills, knowledge and aptitude to perform a specific job.
• Digital technology-Digital electronics are systems that represent signals as discrete levels, rather than as a continuous range.
• Research and Planning – Part of the pre production stage where you begin to investigate materials and sources in order to establish facts and new conclusions on the process of planning something.
• Post production- occurs in the making of motion photography and digital art.
• Media conventions- These are rules that direct how you write or shoot a media piece, they discuss various things such as angles, language, colours etc.
• Creativity: The use of the imagination or original ideas in a specific type of work.

o Skill development- In terms of my AS coursework it helped to widen my technical skills in terms of mastering Adobe Photoshop as well as other software that I had never used before like Adobe after effects. This not only helped me in the context of my coursework but has also given me skills outside of this that I can use later in life. My skill development throughout the course is evident when looking back at my preliminary task and directly comparing it to my final product.
o Digital technology- When creating my coursework I had to use various means of technology in order to make my magazine look more professional on the whole for example in the photo shoot I used an SLR camera as well as professional lighting, this aided not only in making my magazine look professional but helped me when using Photoshop to cut out my model from the background. Throughout the whole process I used many programmes like Adobe Photoshop and Premier, specifically when creating my voice over I had to use a recorder and then edit any mistakes I had made on Adobe Premier, as well as arranging the slides and adding effects to the voiceover.
o Research and planning- It was vital before doing my coursework to research and plan in order to not only help me come up with a suitable idea for my music magazine but also to help me understand the vital and generic elements of magazines on the whole. Some examples of the research I did before my coursework are similar product research and examples of planning is the first drafts of my magazine, which allowed me to see what I needed to improve. The similar product research gave me profitable ideas which influenced my own magazine whilst allowing me to see the conventions of a good magazine.
o Creativity- Though the majority of my magazine follows the generic conventions of music magazines on the whole I was able to be creative with some aspects of my magazine for example making the contents page, contents pages usually be very minimalistic, quite busy and more vivid. I believed that the layout of my contents page was much more successful in concisely portraying information while the use of individual sections divided up features making them easier to find while still allowing me to briefly introduce the feature, contents pages can often be boring as well and by making it more compact I feel I also made it more exciting. Additionally unconventionally I decided not to feature any plugs on my magazine front cover, and though plugs are successful in catching reader’s attention to important sell lines I decided against it in order not to deter any attention away from my main image, which was my primary selling point of the magazine. Though many elements of my magazine did follow common conventions of music magazines I did experiment with a range of fonts, colours, texts as well as camera angles for my photos and therefore the coursework did allow me to express individual creativity.
o Post production- This was the work I did after creating my magazine and included creating an evaluation in the form of a voice over, I used Adobe Premier to create this. In this I had to answer 7 key questions about the whole process of creating my magazine such as how my research and planning helped me and when reflecting back on my preliminary task how much did I think I had accomplished, the whole evaluation allowed me to reflect back to specific elements of my work and see how at each stage they helped me.
• Media conventions- I decided that it was necessary, in order to increase my target audience profile across a wider span, to develop the typical forms and conventions of existing Indie magazines rather than challenge them in anyway. Therefore in many ways my magazine follows a similar format to those used in existing Indie magazines such as NME however some ideas in particular I developed in order to make my magazine inimitable and personal. I followed the typical conventions of my chosen magazine genre in terms of my front cover where I used a bold, brash masthead in order to entice readers to buy my magazine, in my research I found that bold colours like vivid blues and reds where principally used therefore I adopted such colour schemes and chose my masthead to be red. I also used generic features of magazines like strap lines as well as using bold fonts and texts. My contents page however did not follow the typical conventions of contents pages, explained previously. For my double page spread I recognised the importance of having a main image that encompassed the overall stance of the genre and therefore all my image choices portray the artist in a way in which many Indie magazines portray there models, as laid back and careless which aids in encompassing the overall stance of this genre. I also stuck with media conventions by creating a double page spread with just a picture of the artist and a quote, this attracted my audience to read on.
• Production experiences outside of school- I’ve always taken an interest in the media and I created a video last year on Windows movie maker for a history project as well as watching various Photoshop tutorials two years ago to ready myself for the coursework and using the software.