1. Q7. Looking back at your preliminary
task, what do you think you have
learnt in the progression from it to
the full product?

2. Production & planning
• I put a lot more work into the main task rather than the
preliminary. I saw the preliminary task as a ‘practise’ of
creating a magazine front cover. I took a majority of photos for
it as well so I got plenty of practise using the camera.
• The preliminary task finished a lot faster than my main task
(my main task took a few weeks to produce).
• My preliminary task required hardly any planning and I still
found it quite easy to produce as it was a simple task of
creating a school magazine cover; as soon as I heard what the
task was, I immediately knew who to use as the model (Harry)

3. Production & planning
• Seeing as it was the first time with using the camera,
it was quite obvious as you can see by the low key
lighting on the preliminary image
• With both the preliminary and main task done, it
would be appropriate to say that if I re-did the
preliminary, the shots would look a lot more
professional with good lighting
• Over the time I have tried out different flashes which
attach to the camera and with my final main image, I
think that the lighting is perfect and fits in with the
cover.

4. By looking at my preliminary task, and comparing it to my final
production, I can see how much I have learnt throughout the process
and the different/new skills that I have learnt using Photoshop.
Examples of some of the things that I
have learnt is the different fonts that I
have discovered – if you look at my final
production, you can see that I have
added drop shadows to all my text,
whilst on the preliminary task there is
not. Something else that I have learnt is
to make a photo look professional – the
lighting in the preliminary task is quite low, whereas in my final
Production the main image of ‘Kate’ looks a lot more realistic. I
also learnt how to manage my time wisely; I planned out each
stage for my final production and managed to finish it in plenty of
time. To conclude altogether, I know that I have learnt a massive
Amount of skills using Photoshop, and also the equipment that I used – for example with the
camera I learnt how to use all the different functions, and tried out different flashes with it to
see which one was the most suitable to give my images the best, most realistic look.

5. • In my feedback from question 5, Sally pointed out the fact that I
had used bright colours and that it had a good tagline (‘add pop to
your life’), she also said that it was informative about what will be
included inside the magazine (it had boxes telling the reader about
some of the stories). I wanted my magazine to stand out so I was
pleased with this comment.
• My aim was to make my magazine look like a professional pop
magazine - like we love pop and top of the pops, I think that I
achieved this from some of the feedback that I have received like
“your magazine looks like a real pop magazine”. I also used an
informal tone whilst writing my DPS and I spoke to my audience in
their form of address; I felt I did well in doing this so it appealed to
my audience
• The only problem I had was with some of the images, I found that
cutting out the background around the hair was difficult, but after
long processes, I managed to get over this problem

6. My photos I have used have followed the conventions of popular pop magazines, such as top of
the pops, like top of the pops, the main image is of a single artist, which makes her the
dominant contrast of the magazine. Also, where I have positioned the artist with the eyecatching pink background, its allowed me to make the front cover look appealing to the
audience – as with my preliminary task, the cover was very plain, with only one image and the
rest was text. My background choice goes with the house style of my magazine too. Due to my
magazine being pop, I haven’t used too many effects on my images as I want the magazine to
keep looking realistic.

7. I learnt a few things from my prelimiary contents page, for
example I learnt how to add a rectangle at the top of the
page and place text into it. As you can see I have done this
on both tasks. I also
conventionally added the
page numbers to each article
so the reader knows which
page to go to if they are
looking for a certain article.
I’ve also learnt that I need to
add more pictures on my
contents page. I did not
spend a lot of time on my
prelimiary contents page
whereas I did with my final
production.
My final production does not look anything like my preliminary task. I think that this is
because with my final production, I did a lot of research on existing pop magazines so I
gathered ideas from there; I did not do any research for my prelimiary task as I saw
this as a ‘practise’ for my final production.

8. Evaluate
• The aspect that I learnt from the preliminary task is how to
use the camera – for the preliminary I took plenty of shots
and learnt how to use the camera
• Another aspect that I learnt was how to use the magic eraser
tool to get rid of the background on the photos
• For the prelimiary task and my final production, I used boxes
on the front page on both of them
• With my preliminary, I did not use any drop shadows or any
effects on my text, however I did in my final production