AS Media Studies Coursework Blog

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at my preliminary task, and after making comparison to my final media product I can assume that I had made a huge progress and many improvements. Mainly, I have learnt about Photoshop and conventions of media products i.e. magazines. All of this different techniques which I learnt are seen by my images and final product, whereas looking back at my first drafts and my first tasks I can easily say that I gain large knowledge about using the conventions needed to create a media product, and how to use different type of media programs, (distributions) such as Photoshop, Prezi, Blogger and GoAnimate. Mentioned above programmes I had used while I was creating my product in order to use something else rather than just written information’s.

Regarding, my music magazine which is completely different to how my college magazine is looked. My initial submissions of both front covers, could be easily compared to each other, however, at the final stage of which I am now I couldn’t make any comparison between them two. Also, as I had learnt about using the conventions of mainstream music magazine, my media product definitely changed since my first draft. I have learnt to use a lot of technologies from the process of constructing my media product.

When I had began creating my music magazine I felt that I am a beginner, I doesn’t felt sure about what I was doing. Through the process of creating my media product, at this stage I feel more adequate and better-equipped when is coming to use the Photoshop or any other techniques.

Beginning from the simples tools like quick selection tool or erase tool, which allowing selecting the areas of a picture or image that are unneeded or are crashing the planning effect. Also, those tools helps when the image or picture have a mistake on it, in form of accidental object then the quick selection tool allows to grab relevant section of the picture and leaves the other area untouched. Whereas the erase tool is allowing to delete unneeded area. Moreover, I had learnt another useful tool, which is called blur. This tool allows altering a section of the image and makes to become pout of focus, what influencing on the rest area of image by making its more stands out.

Besides, I had also learnt about the transformation tool, which has many different subsections that all of them are transforming and altering the image in order to create a different effect. The rotate tool allows rotating the image, and also the skew tool is allowing to lean or bend an object in different ways. It is helpful tool as is giving to the picture different perspective. The perspective tool gives the image zoom in and out look, while distort tool allows to bend the image and push it in any direction. The numeric tool, allows in setting precise transform numbers, and is supportive when the images have specific requirements of the certain amount of size. The character tool is one of the most necessary one which I had to leant while I was creating my media product, because its allows to make a changes for font and layout issues. This tool is an essential for creating music magazine as I had added many images and a lot of text and font, such as the masthead, main coverlines, subheading, and without this tool, I wouldn’t be able to appeal and even attract my target readers. Other tool which help me in creating my media product and which I had learnt, is the layer style which is an option available in the Photoshop. This is simply a kind of tool which allowing to blend the particular layers. This option has different styles like drop shadow, stroke and colour overlays. This option is important in creating appealing and attracting image as is allowing to make some sort of manipulation to the appearance of the picture and to do anything with its colour change to alter the texture.

I had used this knowledge while I was finishing my final product, and I had provided some of the drafts and final products of my preliminary task (college magazine) and music magazine.

Front Covers