Skills Developement

Previous to starting my media course I’d taken photography at GSCE level for 2 years so I already had a basic idea of photo editing on Photoshop  along with this I also practice digital drawing at home so It meant that I learnt a large amount of Photoshop from doing that before I’d even started the course. But because of this I thought my product of doing the college magazine would turn out better than it did but it helped show me weaknesses which I could then develop and improve throughout the year. Originally my photo for the college magazine could have been taken with a better background which didn’t require me to use a banner on the side to make text easier to read. Later on in the course I learnt a lot more about taking photos that aren’t just physically appealing but suit their purpose for example I learnt how to make differences in the type of camera shot, the lighting needed and the models chosen to make it so photos work for different magazines. At the time I thought my digital skills were quite strong at the beginning of the course but throughout the year I’ve learnt a lot about lighting, shots and how to manage the digital technology to make the product more appealing. This is especially shown when I compare the college magazine to my rock music magazine. Another skill I learnt through my course was using conventions in my products to help them fit their purpose which after doing several drafts for my rock music magazine I finally got up to a standard of fitting conventions I was happy with which made it turn out more successful than if I’d try to do it at the beginning of the year. 
Not only did I become more practised with using technology to help in my work I was also able to improve on my research before beginning the actual product, the research I did was key to how much information I could use to improve my own magazine. I wasn’t very good at analysing magazine covers at the beginning of the year and it’s still something I’m not very strong at but I’ve still improved quite a large amount compared to when I first started as I’ve learnt more of the terminology but I still get some of the terms muddled up sometimes. I struggled a bit with the research as it was something I didn’t enjoy doing very much at first but once I got the hang of it then I didn’t mind it as much but I much preferred being able to work on the product itself because it allowed me to be creative. Although I started using different ways of producing my research towards the end of the year which made it more enjoyable for example ‘Prezi’s which made it feel like I wasn’t just writing large blocks of plain text. I take a lot of creative courses on side to media so being able to produce pieces of work on Photoshop fit in well with skills I’d already learned from other courses making it something I find a lot easier. As I tend to be better at producing images and pieces of work similar to that than I am writing as it’s never been a strong point of mine. Being able to choose what genre also helped me because it meant I could include bands and other things which I personally liked making it less of a task and more enjoyable. I struggled a bit with choosing fonts at the beginning of the task because of the large amount and it was hard to choose the right ones which I thought suited their purpose but I started to get the hang of it by the end of the year. 
I struggled with planning quite a bit as I prefer just being able to start on the product straight away and experiment on what works with it that way so I wasn’t very good with planning in advance at first. The planning did help me a lot as it helped me reduce the amount of choices I had for my work so I could focus on what I needed to get done for a final piece to be produced but it’s still something I don’t particularly like to do.  Meanwhile the production of the tasks turned out better then I planned when it concerned my music magazine. I originally had the problem of not being able to get the right colour scheme for my photos, the first shoot I did turned out too yellowy because of the lighting and the second was too dark because I tried to use a spotlight. In the end I managed to get it right with taking the photos in natural sunlight so it was lit well but I wish I’d used red extensions in my front cover models hair instead of blue so it’d suit the colour scheme more. 
But overall my main improvement has been to my writing as when I first started the course I struggled to be able to analyse anything and although I’m still not very strong at it now I can now analyse things a lot easier and know what to write about them but I need to relearn some more of the terminology as by the end of the year there were terms I kept forgetting. I did get some audience feedback at the beginning when I did my college magazine but by the end I was more confident getting feedback using different methods for example questionnaires and videos recording student feedback, I could have done some more for audience feedback but I never did which is something I wish I’d done better . My skills using Photoshop developed as well but my main problem was getting photos and fonts that suited the product, which granted I improved on a bit compared to the beginning of the year but I still have room for more improvement to do with these aspects of designing final products.