Task 1 Production Schedule

Here is my production schedule for the magazine practical assignment

Red writing is for when each task should be started

      Blue writing is for when the task needs to be submitted

   

Wk. 1	Mon 24th September	Tues	Weds 26th September	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
24/9/12	Task 1-start on production schedule		Task 1 production schedule handed in and uploaded on blog. Task 2-Start work on case studies.
Wk. 2	Mon 1st October	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
1/10/12	Task 2 case studies submitted and uploaded Task 3-start preliminary task: LSC magazine
Wk. 3	Mon 8th October	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
8/10/12	Task 3 LSC magazine needs to be submitted Task 4-start audience feedback and evaluation
Wk. 4	Mon 15th October	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri 19th October	Sat	Sun
15/10/12	Task 4 audience feedback needs to be submitted Task 5-start magazine newsstand task				Task 5 magazine newsstand task needs to be uploaded on blog Task 6-start drafting and finalizing house styles, drafts and layouts
Wk. 5	Mon 22nd October	Tues 23rd October	Weds 24th October	Thurs 25th October	Fri 26th October	Sat	Sun
22/10/12	Task 6-formal pitch	(planning and shooting task 8)	(planning and shooting task 8)	Task 6 hand in drafted and finalized house styles, drafts and layouts	Task 7-audience research task (planning and shooting task 8)
Wk. 6	Mon 29th October	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri	Sat 3rd Nov	Sun
29/10/12	Task 7 audience research commences					Task 7 audience research uploaded on blog
Wk. 7	Mon 5th November	Tues	Weds	Thurs 8th November	Fri 9th November	Sat	Sun
5/11/12	Task 9 start construction			Show rough draft of construction work	Task 8 photographs need to be submitted
Wk. 8	Mon	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri 16th November	Sat	Sun
12/11/12					Upload task 9 construction to blog Task 10- start audience research – main task
Wk. 9	Mon	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri 23rd November	Sat 24th Nov	Sun
19/11/12					Task 10 audience research – main task needs to be completed	Task 11 – start final evaluation
Wk. 10	Mon	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
26/11/12
Wk.11	Mon	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
3/12/12
Wk. 12	Mon	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri 14th December	Sat	Sun
10/12/12					Task 11 needs to be uploaded to blog
Wk. 13	Mon	Tues	Weds 19th December	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
17/12/12			All foundation portfolio needs to be completed

Evaluation On File Sharing Article

 Here is my evaluation on my file sharing article;

Is the music industry fighting a losing battle? (Evaluation)

Research Skills

The research part of the process was both hard and easy.  When it came to paraphrasing that was quite difficult as when I found some paragraphs or important bits of information I would think that they were already well written so that I’d find it hard to rephrase certain things. I had used The Bbc, Guardian and BPI websites the most as I found that they had the most necessary information and they are also reliable sites. What I found challenging was find worthy material that was both relevant to the topic of the article and was recent to 2012 because the facts and figures needed to be recent or they could be inaccurate and not make any sense. I didn’t really use much information from the newsbeat article in mine however as a group we did discuss some of the points and I mentioned a few points. The independent online research was good because it enabled me to use my own initiative and find what information I thought needed to be in the article.

Sources used – Newsbeat article, Bbc website, Guardian website, Bpi website and friends.

Journalistic and writing skills

My magazine article was aimed at 16-19year olds. The colours I had chosen were neutral gender colours so not to focus on just females or just males. I had used a low lexis, as it was for younger people however I refrained from using any slang terms because I felt that this was best way to present the article, as it’s a formal format. I structured the article into paragraphs, the starting paragraph being the introduction to the topic of file sharing and the last being my opinion on file sharing. I had not used any rhetorical questions. I had used quotations, one from 50 cent, another from people I know and also some quotes from the music industry. On one of the quotes said I gave my opinion on whether I agreed with that quote or not.

InDesign

Having few existing skills from using Photoshop and publisher I was not prepared at all. Once I had been shown the InDesign layout I was completely lost although the layout is very similar to Photoshop and the process is also quite similar to that of Publisher. In my article, I had used a number of columns all of equal sizes so I had to use the ruler, I had shown a mark where the page would split to make two sides as an article in a magazine would look like, once I had added the photos needed I placed pull quotes on them, with the headline I made it mainly black but a couple of letters I had done in red to catch the readers attention, the images placement took a lot of thought but in the end I had finally found the right positioning, one on each side of the page. One weakness would be getting a big enough size picture to fit into my image box however I know that this was because we had to get images off of the internet but in the future we’ll be taking our own photographs so they’ll be up to scale, another weakness would be that I spent too long on designing the actual layout than I did putting the text in. My strength would be the whole process of designing layouts; I find it brings out my creativeness.

Web publishing skills

The web publishing side of it worked out fine, however I did have some issues when it came to firewall problems, these had stopped me from having access to certain websites which means that I could’ve missed out on important information that could’ve made my article better. When it came to setting up my blog that part was quite easy. I then uploaded my article onto my blog, which was a quick process and I will then share it to my classmates on blogger so that they can give me some online feedback.

Audience Feedback

I had asked four of my classmates to give me feedback on my article, I asked for both good and bad aspects so I could then make notes on improvements that I could use in future media assignments. These were the responses that I had received:

1.     Zeinab – The positive aspects were that she liked the title as it fits in with the theme also she liked how the picture on the left hand side of the article is colourful and stands out on the page. The negative aspects were that there was too much text, the writing was too small and I could’ve made the quote bigger.

2.     Conrad- the good aspects were that he liked the use of red, white and black as a colour scheme; he liked the image of 50 cent because of the contrast between the black and white and the colourful image on the other side. The bad aspects were that there is too much white space also there is no page numbers.

3.     Sadiyya – She said that she likes that there are two images so that it’s not focused on one person and she liked how I had highlighted some points/keywords in red, to improve the article I could add more colour.

4.     Kashif- he said that he liked the colour scheme and the layout but the font is too small and when the page is folded part of the title will not be visible.

4 targets for improveme

1. Have a colour background it looks a bit plain (too much white space)

2. Include some rhetorical questions to get the audience thinking and questioning

3. Include more facts

4. Have less text and more detailed points