Evaluation Activity 7

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back at my preliminary task I can see that through the process of making my magazine I have developed many skills, which has made my final design much better. The quality of my images are not as good as I didn’t have much experience whereas for my final, I practiced a lot to make sure that I had the best photos for my product. Since completing the final magazine a have learnt how to use Photoshop and have a much greater knowledge. I needed a good knowledge of how to use Photoshop to create a professional looking magazine. The quality of my preliminary was very poor as the text was not aligned and their placing did not look like a high quality magazine. The amount I had written was very little which means that I have improved on my knowledge of what is included in a magazine. After my preliminary I was able to get some feedback from my teachers and peers which was very constructive and has helped me know what I can do to improve my magazine a large amount. When designing my preliminary I had a lack of knowledge of how to use Photoshop and how to lay out each page. When comparing my preliminary and final piece there is a clear difference as I have improved it a lot to make my product look of a high quality that my audience will want to read.

I can see massive improvements with my preliminary and final product with not only the layout but also with the camerawork and the quality of the lighting and angles in my photos. I first have notice a huge difference in the lighting of my photos. In my preliminary they are very dark which means I have not used the lighting properly and can create a gloomy effect on my magazine. My audience would not want to see pictures with no colour as this is not what you would expect in a pop magazine. The grey background was not good in my preliminary as although it brings out my pictures and is similar to some other pop magazine covers, it is the wrong colour or mise-en-scene for my magazine. The photos also were of bad quality as the model is not making any eye contact with the camera which doesn’t attract to my audience. The font I have used is quite childish and not professional. It is not what you would expect to see in a pop magazine as it has no relation to music whereas in my final, the ‘M’ in my cover is in italic and looks like a musical note so it is clear that my magazine is related to pop.

My cover has clearly changed due to the different font and colours I have used. M y final cover page looked much better than my preliminary. This could be because I have had more practice with Photoshop and have developed skills to make my images and pages better, I have however kept the minimalistic look to my cover. For my contents page, it has drastically changed compared to my preliminary. This is because I have included more text and aligned them in the correct way. I have used a variety of similar fonts instead of just using one. I have also changed the colour scheme in my pages to make them look more bright and look like a pop magazine. My preliminary just included block colours and didn’t look very creative, it wasn’t clear to my audience that it is a pop magazine.

One thing that I cannot compare is my double page spread as I didn’t complete on in my preliminary task. However, I have learnt a lot of skills form when I started my prelim task to when I finished my final product. I have improved on my creativity and the way I have laid out each page, my final product looks more like a pop magazine with the brighter colour scheme; I have included red in each page so that they link to each other and have the vibrant tones that conventional pop magazines have. I feel that my cover page will stand out more on the shelf than my prelim would as it is brighter and the model is making eye contact with the camera. Throughout this process I have learnt a lot of skills with the camera and lighting as the pictures in my cover page are much brighter and the angel of each image looks more sophisticated and professional than my preliminary task.  Overall, I believe the main progression I have made from my prelim task to my final product is I have developed an ability to use various software programmes and different technologies and with all my research, I have understood how a magazine is created and the features and conventions that make magazines appealing to an audience.

Cover page layers

Cover page layers from AbbiDhabi

Contents page layers

Contents page layers from AbbiDhabi

Double page spread layers

Double page spread layers from AbbiDhabi

Test Photgraphs

For my final magazine I took some test shots to experiment with the lighting and the poses that the models will do. I considered my target audience with what the model would wear and what her make up style would be like. The clothes are quite casual and what most teens would wear and her make is quite natural which is uncommon in a pop magazine as it is usually vibrant. Here are a few of my test shots and pictures i used in my final product.

Interview double page spread

How does it feel to be famous, it must be a massive difference?

Some days it seems surreal and we are in this fantasy world, we can’t believe we have come so far. At first this band was more of a hobby, something fun to do. We posted things online and it got so many likes and subscribers, we went viral. It all happened so fast but now we are here and we are loving it all; making music, pleasing our fans. However, it can get quite overwhelming with the paparazzi and as this all happens at once, it can start to become quite hard for us to concentrate on performing well because we are so stressed from everything else. We try to just ignore all the difficulties that come with being famous but sometimes they are tense and can result in us not giving our best in shows and gigs.

How did you two meet? How long did it take to form the band?

We met in college, we were in the same music class and we were sat next to each other, our professor set a project where we had to create a song and then sing it, so as we were next to each other, we got paired up and we chose to do half the song each and after about a year, we had done a few projects together and decided to carry on with it outside of school. We started uploading videos on YouTube and vine and almost immediately we got loads of comments and likes, it took a few weeks of uploading many more videos for us to decide to form a band and for people to recognise us.

Can we expect anything else from you this year? Any gigs or tours?                                        

We have a few gigs; at the O2 arena in London and some in Birmingham and Leeds. We haven’t yet organised any tours for this year but there will definitely be some next year that will hopefully be abroad so places like France, Italy and exotic places like that that we feel our music will be enjoyable to the people. We are currently writing some songs for our next album as we loved making our first album. However, the theme for this next album is quite different, we hope that you will like it as it has unique qualities and a beat that anyone can dance and sing along to.

Did you expect your album to become this popular?                                               

Honestly, no not really, we loved writing it and thought it would be one of those ‘one off’ albums that not a lot of people would like or want to hear more of. We’re really excited to write more music and get back into the recording studio to make music for all of our fans to enoy. Our fame was not predicted and we are very grateful for all of our fans supporting us and making this dream of ours come true.

What inspired you to become musicians?

Well we both have our different idols that inspired us to follow our dreams of becoming musicians. We both found an interest in artists like Rhianna and Shawn Mendes, their music and love of it inspired us to write songs. It also helped that both our families loved music, they encouraged us and gave us the support to make this happen, they booked singing lessons for us both after a few music projects at school as at that time, we found that our voices worked so well together, the lessons helped us develop our own voices and learn how to combine our voices to make it sound even better.

What advice would you give to young people who wish to pursue their dreams in becoming a pop star?

We think it is important to have dream and definitely go for it. Keep practicing and when you get more confident start making yourself known on social media by creating accounts or YouTube by downloading some videos that focus on your music to get your name out there! Try collaborating with other aspiring pop stars, this can get you more fans as you both can share music and their fans will then know you. Find someone with a different style of music to you and make it sound great so that it creates more of a unique style that most people might like. We would also recommend going to some classes to make your voice sound even better, this can also help you develop new skills as you sing. We did this to find out how our voices matched and how to make our harmonies sound really good.

Where do you get your inspiration and ideas for writing your songs?

Most of the time the songs are from an experience that has happened; they tell a story or express a variety of emotions we feel. It can be very hard to come up with the right lyrics that convey the message we want to give to our audience, our first album was a lot of fun to write and so the songs turned out to be fun, happy that is easily danced a long to. Now that we have been recognised for our music we want to give a message to our fans to never give up on your dreams and also many more messages that each of our songs tell through our lyrics in our new album. Our new album contains a variety of music that can be portrayed to be happy and also songs that make fans think about how they are living their lives and what mistakes can easily be made. Some of the lyrics were so easily come up with but it took a while to get the right message across, however some of the lyrics were really hard and we’d get stuck easily. If we ever got stuck on our lyrics we would walk away and do some fun activity like, playing a game of basketball or go to the cinema, these would distract us which made it easier for us to concentrate which made it easier for us to think but it is a lengthy process.

Where do you see yourselves in 5 years? Do you think you will ever split/ take a break?

Hopefully we will still be writing our music because we love it so much. We aim to have written many more songs and albums that maybe some could be in the top 10 hits. It would be amazing if we could do collaborate with other artists and combine our music to create something amazing that our fans will love. To be able to go on tour would just be incredible, to visit other countries and perform on stage to let others hear our music, and maybe in 10 years we would love to go on a world tour and let a variety of people hear our music. It would be upsetting if we did split, but I think that we may go on a break just to find out what it would be like to be a solo and express the music that each other would like to show people by ourselves, the break would not last long as we would never stop singing together.

Draft Evaluation Question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

The genre of my magazine is pop therefore I have used some styles that have been included in other pop themed magazines. The font I used for the masthead suited the style of my magazine; it was called ‘Elephant’ and is bold and eye catching to the reader, it is also slightly similar to some fonts that you see on other pop magazines like ‘Billboard’. It is big and bold however they use different colours in the holes of some of the letters to make the title stand out, I have not done this as I did not like this idea. I have added a red colour to my magazine to make the magazine pop out more and the colour red links in with my cover as the model is wearing a red jumper, this makes all my ages tie together. The ‘M’ in ‘Melody’ was in italic so that it looked like a music note, following the conventions of a music magazine. The name of my magazine fits in well with my style as it makes the reader instantly think about music. I feel that my magazine hasn’t followed some of the conventions as my double page spread isn’t as vibrant as eye-catching as other pop magazines, however my contents page has some features that are similar to pop magazines like Billboard and Q which makes it clear that the theme of my magazine is pop. My models are dressed in a casual outfit which is unconventional for my magazine as it is not similar to other types of pop magazines and their make-up is a subtle look but it should’ve been vibrant for the reader so that they recognise that my magazine is about pop music. The mise-en-scene in my photos is not like a pop magazine as there is a tedious white background in all of them. This makes my magazine look less like a pop magazine as they don’t look eye-catching or interesting to the reader. I have chosen to use colour in my photographs as this makes them pop more and it fits the style of a pop magazine, one of my models wears a red jumper so I have included this colour throughout my magazine pages which links them together.