Evaluation

Thanks to the snow days last week, we're not enforcing the deadline of last Friday. We do need all the work by the end of this week. I am glad to see so many of you have finished. However, looking at the evaluations that have been done, all of them can benefit from some more work. There are two things that you must have in mind. Firstly you must explicitly answer the 7 questions. Secondly you must use IT cleverly. The examiner's report says: "blogged evaluations at their best made good use of the format, with links, embedded video, screengrabs, comparative images (their own/real magazines/film stills) and links to PowerPoint presentations (often on slideshare)". The seven questions are:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

Mr. Strathdene

Link to Subject spec

Here is a link to the OCR Media Studies specification. It is a PDF document. On pages 67 - 68 are headings for different sections of your evalation. On the pages before are the mark schemes for the project and for the research. Make sure you can tick all the boxes!

http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/type/gce/amlw/media_studies/index.aspx

What are the purposes of a music magazine?

List created by Mr Kenny's class:

To inform the audience about new artists / upcoming events
To promote celebrities / musicians / artists
To advertise products (music and related lifestyle products)
To entertain the audience
To promote the magazine itself – to sell more copies!

Developing and challenging these conventional purposes . . .

To provide local music information? Eg. Drowned in Sound
To provide responsive information about music? Drowned in Sound
To provide in-depth, intellectualised coverage of ‘pop’ music? Eg. Pitchfork Media
To provide independent coverage of music? Eg. The Quietus

Screen grabs

It can be a good idea, while you're working on your magazines, to take screen grabs occasionally so that you can show your magazine as it changes and comment on the edits that you make.

Prelim Task

Mr. Strathdene and Ms. Brooks' class, please take note of Mr. Kenny's post below. After Monday's class, your school magazine should be finished and you should be moving all your efforts onto the music magazine.

Prelim Task - School Magazine - Hand In

Mr Kenny's students:

- You need to have your final front cover and contents page completed and posted on your blog by Friday 13th November.

- You also need to have your blog completely up to date with all of your supporting research and experiments with photographs, text and layout on Photoshop.

Next week, you will write one further blog post to complete the project. This will be a detailed evaluation of your front cover and supporting evidence.

Looking forward to seeing your final pieces!

Year 12 Media Studies Foundation Portfolio

Plan for Magazine

When you have concluded your research (worth 20 marks) – at least six blog posts including your assessment of survey data you have collected, you can move onto writing and posting the plan for your own magazine. In this you need to include:

Outline:
Name?
Genre of music?
Why have you chosen to do this? Refer to your research data as part of your justification.
Audience: who is it targeted at? Why?
Institutions: large publishing/media company (emap, IPC) or independent production. What might be the advantages of your chosen institutional background?

Design:

Comment on your initial ideas for:
Fonts (type/size, one or many)
Page layout/design
This is the ‘look’ of the magazine – explain how you will achieve it

Content

What are your ideas for your front page, contents page and double page spread? These don’t have to be too specific at this stage – just make sure you get ideas down. Where will you take pictures? Use of technology/ICT?

Language

Will you have a house style? An idiolect that will be shared and give ‘ownership’ of the magazine for your target audience can be a good idea – what will yours be?

Probably enough to be going on with for now…