The New Blog and AS Reflection...

I have created this blog to track the planning, production and analysis of my A2 task.

For this task I will need to research, plan and produce a media portfolio including a main task and two ancilliary tasks.  

I feel that I have gained experience from previous tasks that I have done so in this task I will be able to develop the skills that I have gained.

 

AS Reflection...

 

How successful was my research of real media? How could my research skills be improved?    At AS my research of real media was good as the research I did was quite in depth, but to improve I should have looked at a wider range of media products including different ways of researching them, such as hard copies of text as well as internet based research. I do however feel that after my research I had a clear knowledge of magazine conventions and understood them well.

How successful was my audience research? How could I have made my results more meaningful in order to take them into account when producing my media product?       Although I did questionnaires to give to my potential audience, I don’t think that I did enough research into my audience. I had a rough idea about the age and gender of one of my potential readers but I did not look into what their interests were which could have been helpful when creating articles. In this new task I will create questionnaires to hand out and do focus groups so that my answers are more detailed. I will also do second hand research to find out what peoples’ interests are.

How successfully did I keep my blog up to date? How could I have made better use of its multimedia capacity?    The blog was up to date most of the time, but sometimes I would rush to get certain tasks completed which meant that the quality of the work was reduced. This time I will try to get pieces of work done before the deadline so that I have time to go back and improve the work I have already done.

How successfully did I manage my time? How could I have organised my production more effectively? How could I have improved my planning and drafting process (and showing evidence of these stages for the examiner?      I feel that my time management in AS was poor and I could have used my time better than I did. Although I completed all of the essential tasks to complete the research and creation, I should have completed extra tasks that were not on the checklist, this would have meant that my time was used more wisely.

How successfully did I follow the conventions of real media? Where could I have improved? I feel that I followed the conventions of magazines well and understood all the features of a magazine cover, index page and double page spread. Improving my research of real media would have improved how successfully I followed conventions.

Which technology skills did I learn and develop? Which skills do I need to improve/learn in the future? Throughout the creation of the music magazine I learned how to use InDesign and Photoshop. The Internet was useful and taught me how to use both programs as I did not know how to use them before. I mainly watched YouTube videos for tutorials for beginners which helped a lot. I also found that just practicing with the programs was the biggest help as you can find out new tools and try everything yourself. For the next task I will just practice a lot more with the software and try things that I haven’t before.

How successful was my creation of my media text? Could I have improved or been more creative? I feel that the end result of my media product was good as I followed most of the typical conventions of a music magazine and I applied them throughout the production of it. I could have improved by being a little more creative and focusing on minor details more.

Did my text fulfil the requirements of the brief in terms of Audience, Representation, and Genre? I feel that I fulfilled the requirements of the brief well in my final product. The language in the magazine was suitable for my audience as it was direct and slightly informal so it was interesting to read. I also made the text bold so that my audience could read it easily.

How detailed was my evaluation? How could you have improved your discussion of the success of the finished product?       I feel that I carried out the evaluation of my media product well as I did not just type it, I used creative and unique ways of presenting my writing such as using Slideshare and producing spider diagrams. However I could have made the text itself more detailed.