Research and planning essay

How have you developed in your Research & Planning skills across the 2 years?

For the first project at the beginning of the year, we were se the task of creating a College Magazine, which we delved straight into the development without any research/planning on existing magazines/their conventions beforehand. Going in blind to creating this product allowed for a level of creativity, as I had the freedom to implement elements of my choice, rather than restricting myself to conventional design choices. However, this limited knowledge of conventions resulted in an unprofessional final outcome, and if I had a wider knowledge of conventions I would have been able to include elements I was previously unaware of the importance of.

For my second project/The main project of the year, I designed and produced a new music magazine called 'Rockstop' for the Rock music genre aimed at a target audience of white males aged 25-45. Throughout the course of this project, I developed skills in the use of conventions/Iconography to create a visually appealing product, and to allow the audience to recognise the genre of the publication.

At the beginning of this project, I had a limited knowledge of the conventions of magazines and their significance to producing an effective design. However, as I began to examine existing Music/rock magazines, I began to recognise the conventions of the genre, and magazines in genre, as well as how Imagery, Graphics and wording is used to attract my target audience to my product. This included using striking dominant images, intriguing/persuasive writing in boosts/cover lines and use of colour schemes and textures associated with the genre of the publication, based on existing products. To research the conventions of my chosen genre (rock music) I picked up a range of Rock music magazines such as UNCUT, Rocksound and NME, as well as a range of covers found on the internet such as a cover of classic rock, which my final outcome was heavily inspired by. This research helped me to establish my colour scheme of predominantly gold, black and white, as well as the type of shot and props used for my dominant image, as these closely resembled many of these products, allowing for a consumer to identify this product as part of the rock genre. While this product was still heavily influenced by existing products, overall this outcome had a higher level of creativity due to the freedom to choose the genre of music, mainly based on personal tastes, and our improved knowledge of InDesign/Photoshop and magazine conventions allowed for a much more unique and developed product.

For my second year, I developed a Film trailer, poster and magazine as part of the horror genre. By the beginning of this year, I already had a wide knowledge of the conventions of magazines, as well as how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene are used, which allowed us to have an idea of the aim of our projects, and implement the skills we have gained at a much more professional level. Overall, we have a much deeper focus on our research and planning, and developed final products influenced by the horror genre, rather than recreating an existing product with our own personal changes, as we are developing a trailer based on an unused film script rather than recreating an existing film. While you could argue that our creativity is still restricted by the script and horror conventions, in our case we altered the unconventional inclusion of a male victim and instead gave the story our own twist, by replacing this character with a more conventional female victim.

In comparison to our music magazine, there has been a much higher level of planning for our horror project, as we were required to gain permission to, and visit our filming locations, while for my magazine I only took a few shots, which were mainly taken very local to where I live. I have also viewed a wide range of horror films/trailers which I have paid much more focus to the complete product, rather than the focus on design choices when I examined my music magazines. While in our last year, I learnt why conventions are used, however this year I have looked much closer at the origins and developments of these conventions over time, and the deeper meanings/connotations of their use.

Overall, I have drastically improved as a Post-Modern Media Producer, as I am no longer simply a consumer of media products, as I have gained the ability to understand the uses of codes and conventions on a much deeper level, and am now able to implement these skills and ideas into my own works. As well as this my views on what makes something creative have been altered, as I am now aware that the act of production in its self is creative, despite being restricted to a set of conventions/inspiration from existing products, as whatever we produce is our personal take on the subject matter.