1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media models?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

Final draft of review page

This is my final draft for my magazine review page. I have added an interview with Milo O'halloran, changed the layout of my text, and edited the title format. I have also enlarged the page number and put a banner at the top "Big Picture" the name of my magazine. These last adjustments make the magazine follow a few conventions but the page still has a great aspect of creativity.

Second draft of review page

This is the second draft of my review page. I have changes the layout of my text, enlarged the title "Day By Day" and put in page numbers. I thought this would be my final design and draft but after further audience feedback i became aware of a few crucial design faults. I also realised that there was a lack of text.

First Draft Of Review Page

Here is my first Draft of my Review Page I used a photograph of a passing train as the background. I decided to make the photographs dominate the page, they were screen shots mostly taken on the tube to again emphasise the urban tube theme. However I am not 100% happy with the layout and how big the "Mind The Gap" title is. The text does not look professional and there are certain details that are missing for example page numbers and page banners. 

Research and planning - new style sheet plus audience feedback

After deciding to redesign my film review page, I constructed a new style sheet. I kept a lot of the same ideas. For example the main picture and the colour scheme.
I asked a Professional graphic designer called Mia Matson her thoughts about my new design. She gave me some constructive feedback. I she said the design was very original and the title would be eye catching. She also mentioned the fact that it is not a conventional layout for a review page with one of the biggest differences being the test will not appear in columns.
After her feedback i decided to keep the text out of columns as i thing it makes the design look smoother.

Research and planning - Inspiration for review page- Little White Lies.

 

After producing my style sheet i started to construct my own magazine review page. I was not satisfied with the level of creativity i had given myself with my initial design. I started doing more research into other film magazine. I found a bi-monthly magazine called Little White Lies. It cost around £4 and has film reviews within it. The reason i was interested in this magazine was their designs. Each page has a separate layout, it is altered according to its contents. I saw a lot of potential in their designs and was inspired to create my own completely original design which breaks the codes and conventions of normal magazine review pages.After producing my style sheet i started to construct my own magazine review page. I was not satisfied with the level of creativity i had given myself with my initial design. I started doing more research into other film magazine. I found a bi-monthly magazine called Little White Lies. It cost around £4 and has film reviews within it. The reason i was interested in this magazine was their designs. Each page has a separate layout, it is altered according to its contents. I saw a lot of potential in their designs and was inspired to create my own completely original design which breaks the codes and conventions of normal magazine review pages. Some of the things that inspired me and i will be using on my review page was the colours. There is no limit to your background design and colour in this magazine. As i am free to do as I please in this review page I will take the more creative root, i am thinking to do something with a picture of a passing train that i have taken.

research and planning - style sheet for review page

My stlye sheet is closely based and inspired from the layout of the movie magazine Empire. I am Planning on keeping my design basic but executed to look like a real media model. The colour scheme I chose was blue, red and white. I kept to the rule of three, i chose these three colours to continue the London Underground theme. 

After looking at my style sheet the altercations I will make will be to change one of the screen shots as they are all based in the same location. I will also concentrate on producing a design which will be more eye catching to the reader.

research and planning - Deconstruction of empire review page

After studying more magazines i decided to look at empire in closer detail. Their film review pages caught my eye and i liked the way they were set out. I chose this this spescific page because of the main image. In order to get an understanding of how this page grabs the readers attension i am going to deconstruct it.

I took down notes on the review page. There were many film reviews in the empire and they all followed a very similar format. The photograph of Danny Trejo is taking up 3/4 of the page and is clearly the main focus point of this article. All the review pages start off with the basic information about the film, this would include the date of it's release, the certificate, director, cast, running time and a short overview of the plot. The text in this article is easily read and is in a size 11 or 12 font. The text which stands out the most on this page would be the title of the film "Machete" and the pulled quote in the bottom right. The quote's purpose is mainly a teaser instead of an insight to the film. After establishing what looks interesting on a page, i started to look at the technical side of things. For instance the gutters in between the text in order for it to be easier to read, i also studied the header and footer, the base line and the side the text was raged on. I considered the purposes for all these elements and will take them into consideration when constructing my own review page.

Research and planning - deconstruction of film review pages

When starting research on film review pages i looked at magazines which are widely known, I took into account how much they cost, the frequency of their release, their audience and what coverage of films they give. As well as deconstructing these pages i tried to look at them as an ordinary reader of the magazine for example what does my eye draw to? Although reviews are not directly advertising, the critics responses are very closely linked to the films success. I looked at these magazines in order to get a better understanding of their conventions which would lead to ideas for my own review page.

  1.The first magazine i looked at was Time Out London, it cost £2.99 and an issue is released weekly. They do not really have a specific audience but from what i think it is mostly used by tourists. Time out is made up of reviews, from restaurants to film, because of this they only really cover the main movie releases so you would not find a film like ours in there. Despite this i found it interesting to study the film reviews and it gave me a better idea of layout ideas and what to expect when reading one of these.

2.The second magazine i looked at was Sight and Sound, it cost £3.95 and comes out monthly. I found it very different from Time Out, the most obvious reason being Sight and Sound only covers films. It is funded from the BFI (british film institute) and covers all films from blockbusters to independent short films, because of this their audience is very different and is aimed at film enthusiasts. After deconstructing and studying this magazine i found it to be a lot more relevant to my film. The layout was plain and pictures were minimal, i came to the conclusion that this is because the readers of the magazine did not need to be drawn to a certain page as they would already be interested in its contents just from buying the magazine. Although this magazine was a more suitable match for our review page and film it did not inspire me when it came to the layout.

3. The third poster i looked at was my school sixth form magazine, it cost around £1 and comes out roughly twice a year. Although this is the magazine which is most likely to print my film's review, the layout is not professional and due to costs the pages are all printed out in black and white. So whilest it being probably being the most relevant magazine i will not be following it's layout patterns or conventions.