6. What have you learned about new technologies and software from the process of creating your media product?

Through the process of creating my music magazine I was introduced to a range of helpful technologies and software that helped ensure I had a media rich blog and professional looking final media product.

I used various different forms of technologies and software including Photoshop, Blogger, Prezi, Slideshare etc. I accessed all these through an Apple Mac and took my images using a Canon camera.

I used an Apple Mac computer to access websites and software such as Blogger. I created my blog and whole media product on a Mac using the internet to access blogger and various software such as Photoshop. The Mac allowed me to easily access Photoshop, Blogger, Prezi and Slideshare which all contributed to the creation of my product. The Mac also contributed to the creation of my magazine being successful as it is a popular, high quality product with a fast speed and good reputation. Creating my product on a Mac allowed me to become more familiar with the way the computer worked and improved my knowledge and skills involving using computers. I could also transfer these skills into my others subjects including Photography as using the Macs to access Photoshop is a key part of Photography as well as Media. I now know how to use the controls of the Mac and save my work safely in various places on the Mac including my Apple Home.

Blogger is a popular website and is a convenient way of organising my work. I used blogger to organise my research and planning and to present my final product and evaluation. I had never used blogger before I started AS Media therefore I had to learn how to use the site. I learned how to create posts and embed videos, images, Slideshares and Prezi’s. Blogger enabled me to present my research and planning in media rich ways allowing me to use codes from sites such as Prezi to make my work created on websites visible on my blog. It is also possible to edit previous posts which allows me to review my research and planning and make improvements to posts. It also allows me to save drafts allowing me to work on posts over time rather than posting an incomplete post. I also learnt how to customize my blog to make it look appealing and interesting rather than having a plain design.

I created all elements of my magazine using Adobe Photoshop. I began using Photoshop in my other subjects such as Photography therefore I knew the basics however using Photoshop on a regular basis helped me develop my skills and learn how to use the software to its full potential and create a product as professional looking as possible. I used a lot of various different tools when creating my product such as…• The ruler tool to ensure the measurements

for my double page spread were appropriate.

• The free transform tool to scale and rotate images

• How to add shapes such as rectangles using the rectangle tool and right clicking this tool for more basic shapes.

• The crop tool to crop images to ensure they fit appropriately on the page.

I used these tools along with many others to ensure my product looked as similar to existing magazines as possible.

The majority of my images in my magazine were shot using a Canon EOS 100D. I study Photography along side Media therefore I already owned a high quality camera. Using a camera of a high quality ensured my images were the best possible quality and well focused. This ensured I did not have to make many adjustments to my images. The editing I did complete was for effect and to make the images more interesting. I also learned a lot about camera angles, shots and lighting which was useful when it came to taking my images. I often used close up and medium shots to ensure the models facial expression was visable in order to express the personality of the artist in the image.This would make the image appeal more to the target audience.

I used the presentation creating website Prezi in order to present elements of my research and planning in a media rich way. Prezi allows you to create presentations in an interesting way. It has a range of different templates to choose from and allows you to brainstorm ideas creatively. The templates all have different designs and colours to make your work look interesting. I presented a lot of my research and planning using Prezi as it is an alternative to simple presentation creating software such as Powerpoint.

For the majority of the fonts used on my product I downloaded from the website – Dafont.com. It is a website which includes thousands of different styled fonts. I decided to choose rough looking, broken fonts in order to link with the Rock genre of my magazine. I looked on Dafont.com to find a font similar to Kerrang’s for my masthead. I successfully found a broken font under the name of ‘Ruptured Sans’. Using this website enabled me to view different fonts and gave me a choice. It also included more fonts than Photoshop could supply. To use the fonts, I clicked the download option then the font would appear in the Photoshop font list. It was useful that Dafont.com linked to Photoshop therefore I was able to easier use the fonts from the website in the Photoshop software.

I used the website Animoto as a different way to present ideas. Animoto is a presentation website which allows you to create 30 second videos. I used Animoto to put together a presentation to present images of hair and make-up ideas. It includes different effects and transitions to make the presentation more interesting. It also includes the option to include music over your presentation. It was easy to use however I did not use this website as often as Slideshare or Prezi as this website limited the amount of information I could include to due the 30 second time limit on videos.

Slideshare is another presentation website which allows you to create presentations. Slideshare tranfers presentations created on Powerpoint into slides which is a useful and interesting way of presenting a Powerpoint. It was also easy to embed Slideshare into posts on Blogger as it included the option to ‘embed’ and linked it to Blogger.