Friday 21st Essay

Before starting the two year media course I believed I had a wide knowledge and knew the basis of the subject, however over the first year I came to realise there was a lot more depth and meaning to the subject than I first had initially anticipated. The four main used conventions over a broad stretch of media which I found difficult to grasp at the beginning of the year including cinematography, editing, mise en scene and sound are now what I feel is basic knowledge and to me is now easily understood in comparison to a year ago, as they were new aspects which I had never before heard of therefore I had to learn and understand them to create my own media products. I now show a clear understanding of these terms when analysing texts such as films, television programmes and music videos. At secondary school I had previously studied media at GCSE level for a number of weeks however my initial thoughts of the course where much different to the A-Level course as I immediately gaged a strong interest in this course especially towards the practical side of the course as I was eager to learn new skills such as creating a magazine.

Over the first year of the course I developed a wider range of skills in relation to using new and old technology such as cameras and computers as well as developing a better knowledge of software such as photo shop which allowed me to create a number of magazine covers until I eventually produced my final course work piece. Beginning with the college magazine I not only needed to understand what stereotypical conventions should be used in that genre of magazine but to research into a range of existing college magazines, analyse them and put all my new found knowledge into making my own college magazine as I had little idea to what was expected on the magazine such as colour schemes, headlines, images & size of images etc.

As I also study English Language at A-Level as well as media studies the link between the two subjects does have its benefits, as I began to build up my knowledge within English Language I was able to add my writing skills to my final draft of all my magazines ensuring that I related the language to the target audience for example ,  as a college magazine the main target audience would be teenagers aged from 16-19 therefore I looked into stereotypical language which is often associated with teenagers such as slang and text talk to appeal more to them. However if I was to create a magazine for a more mature audience my language should be more sophisticated and  appealing more to their age range.

For my foundation portfolio I created a music magazine with a specific genre mine being alternative/indie, I had to produce a front cover, contents page and double page spread using typical conventions used in the majority of media products which already exist. As I was now more aware of how to use software such as photo shop after a tutorial which gave a step by step guide to editing images gave me much more confidence to produce an image for my music magazines front cover contents page and double page spread. After researching into existing media products with the same or similar genre to the magazine I was wanting to create I began to understand what typical conventions I should add to my own front cover to start with such as a catchy either 3 or 4 letter  masthead which should take up a quarter of the top left of the front cover often capitalised to stand out well on the page.  Through producing draft after draft in my foundation portfolio project enabled me to see any errors or aspects which I could improve on whilst allowing myself enough time to do so, for example the quality of the image on my front cover was of a poor quality however after learning and using photo shop more often my image developed into a much more professional looking image which was expected for the magazine.      

Overall I am now able to analyse a media text whether it be a soap opera, advertisement, police drama etc… and determining the different genres shown in certain clips such as ethnicity, disability, age and so on, through writing essays on a clip we was shown on a weekly basis generally improved my understanding and knowledge of the exam side of the course giving me confidence to put all I have learnt into the exam.  Similarly to the exam work the coursework side again was about practice to achieve the grade you wanted through producing work and asking others such as classmates to take a survey of how they felt your product looked as well as the teacher to inform me of changes and improvements I could make such as layout, style, font, colour and general presentation.  I am now much more confident to pursue onto the next stage of the course opposed to a few months ago after researching and making a start to my A2 blog where I chosen and looked into which song and artist I am going to use for my video as well as researching into their background and genre, therefore I am really looking forward to creating my A2 portfolio.