How did the convetions of real media texts inspire you to use new media technologies to create the style of product you achieved.

When creating my music magazine for my foundation portfolio I extensively researched current music magazines before beginning the creation of my product. Looking at magazines with similar genres such as smash, clash and indie allowed me to get a good idea of the conventions. I did the same with my music video for my advanced portfolio, so researching real media texts allowed me to get the right idea on how to create a music video for my indie video. My biggest inspiration for my magazine was clash magazine.

The conventions of my music magazine where like clash magazines I had a big banner header with burst, in the colour red and blue which portrayed the link with my pop/indie genre. I also had a main image on the front which I feel I styled well and thought about a focus point in the image to draw the reader in which also was in colour scheme of my music magazine cherry red. I placed a gold chain with red love letters into the girl’s mouth and made her pose and this made a good image I also chose all the clothes which my model wore.

I used ‘da font’ to find the right font that I was looking for and then I manipulated in onto photo shop to burst out of the page which again linked in with my title ‘burst’ I could do this because I had now had quite a lot of practice using the software and it was beginning to become easier.

With my advanced portfolio music poster and digipak, I also looked at many other music posters and digipak on the market. These allowed me to view the conventions I needed to rein act to make mine effective, they also gave me ideas and inspiration. My poster and digipak are light grey with a burst of lots of colour squeezed into font which is plain and bold, I did this because I feel it fit my genre and that it would intrigue the audience to have a look and buy it. I think I used a few conventions from posters and digipak but I did not use a main image of the artist to attract people I, instead used my intriguing font with colour in it which I think worked really well also.

I was inspired by the quote ‘The making of the new and the rearranging of the old’ (Bentley 1997) as this is what I have done across all three projects talked about above.

Describe how you have developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contrivuted to your creatibe decision making.

In year 12 for my AS production, I was given the task to create a music magazine with a front cover, contents page and a double page spread. In year 13 for A2 production I was given the task to create a music video and a digipak and poster. To start working on these products I needed to do some pre- production research on similar products that I could reference in my work so that I could be creative when creating my own.

Digital technologies have had a huge influence on media production over the last few years since I've started studying I have learnt a lot about the benefits of using all these different media technologies. They in turn have had a massive impact on the quality of my finished products

For my As work I had to produce the magazine, it was my first time in using programs such as Photoshop but by creating a preliminary magazine this let me explore Photoshop further and I was then able to maximise my skills to be able to complete my actual coursework magazine. I also used websites such as NME, Google and clash to be able to see how my music magazine should have turned out. Whilst trying to find a magazine convention to follow I was able to deconstruct them in terms of their key conventions and add them to my magazine. When we started the course at AS we created something called Blogger, I have had no previous experience of blogger prior to this. I relied heavily on Blogger over both years of my A Level. I used it to record all of my research, planning and progress as I went along. At A2, I had developed an awareness of blogger and new technologies such as prezi, animoto and final cut pro which gave me the opportunity to be more creative in showing my work on my Blog.

 One of the key areas I developed my skills in was Photoshop. at the beginning of AS I had never used it before and so found it very challenging when it came to creating my pre-liminary magazine. You can see I had hardly any skills of Photoshop. However now my abilities in Photoshop are far more advanced and the creation of my A2 ancillary products appear drastically more professional. You can see this because I gained 20/20 from both my digipak and poster.

Final Cut Pro is the software I used to edit my music video. I had gained a small amount of experience on this after creating an animatic of my storyboard at the start of A2 however putting together my video footage was a slow process. After completing my draft video, I had become more time efficient; this allowed me to be more creative in my second draft as I could use tools on the software, such as adding overlaps of different shots, which let my creativity expand.

In conclusion, technological skills contribute greatly to the extent and variation in creative ideas, as they broaden your mind to the possibilities. However skills themselves do not instantly make you a creative person, but can be applied to allow creative vision.

Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers. in yourown experience, how has you creativity developed through using digitaltechnnology to complete your coursework productions?

The development in digital technology has allowed consumers of these specific technologies to become producers of their own original pieces. In my experience of creating a school magazine front cover and contents page and a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread, draft digipak, digipak and a music video. My creativity had developed greatly with the use of various digital technologies used in new and different ways.


In my preliminary task I knew little about how to make my magazine look as professional and high quality as possible, I did not include any special effects in images and did not take into consideration things such as lighting, positioning, location and mise en scene of my images. When I decided to make my magazine I had to do a lot of research before I could even start, this was good because I didn’t want my magazine to be no good, I took all the conventions of my favourite magazines into account, this was because I know these methods work and are pleasing to the eye for an audience. NME was my main inspiration because it is a personal favourite and I am also included in my target audience. You would need to find the perfect model for your front cover and know how they needed to be dressed and also how they needed to be presented on the cover. so i feel that i styled my model very well to create the perfect magazine. However in my main task I learnt that these aspects of images were very important to the overall effect of the magazine. One way in which I improved my images was to mind map ideas about what aspects would look best and keep to the correct genre of my magazine. I used a digital camera in both tasks but improved the images in my music magazine by taking into consideration the most important aspects of images. Such as bright lighting, costume and I also used post-production on my image fixer on my laptop to create the very best look for all my images.

In the school magazine I chose to use just the PC, however in the music magazine I was able to use a pen drive to quickly swap between PC and laptop as there was a wider range of software on the laptop. On the laptop I was also able to easily change the colours and layout of the magazine so that I could test what looked best and fitted with the original indie genre. Another advantage of this is that I was able to email work across and get opinions on what needs improving.

A media convention that technology played a big part in its production was my digipak for my created artist. Using technology I was able to research existing digipaks and album covers that were of bands and artists that’s music was a similar genre. I was able find images of album covers using Google search engine and with seconds I had inspiration from existing album covers I could re-create. The main technology that was pivotal in the production of my Digipak was Photoshop. Using Photoshop I was able create the exact product I had planned and I could edit photos and fonts to get the exact theme I wanted. The idea of Photoshop is that creating and editing has become a lot simpler and can be done by almost anyone who owns it. This is a great example of how technology has ‘Turned Media consumers into Media producers.

The use of technology was vital throughout my whole coursework as all my research was found on Internet sites. I got information and images off the Internet and then uploaded them onto Blogger which was the site we used to track our planning and research for the coursework.

Inspire us to get started on being creative

1.“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” — Edward de Bono

2. “There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”  — Martha Graham

3. “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” — Theodore Levitt

4. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”  — Charles Brower

5. “When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity.” –  Linda Naiman

6. “The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” — Alan Alda

7. “It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” — Edward de Bono

8. “A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely . . . but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude . . .” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

9. “Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” — William James

10. “The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things-ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that it will happen.” — Carl Ally