Production Review Week 2

When looking back at my schedule, I set out this week in my lessons to:

a) The first lesson of the week I will finish up the front cover, and make sure it is set out the way I want it to look. Because of the work done on it in the previous week it should be ready to go, and at this point I will get some feedback from my target audience in the group.

b) The second lesson of this week I will start creating my Cities article in InDesign, and placing in the text and images, and working out the layout and where I want things to be placed

c) This lesson will be a continuation of the previous one, where I will still be working on my second DPS. By this point I should have a general idea of where I want things to be placed, thus I will start putting in the kicker and headline, as well as mini-headlines per section, and really begin to place colour and font into the layout, and begin putting the main sections of the article together

d) Project Monitoring & Continuation: For this lesson I will be evaluating what I have achieved during this week, and the previous week in terms of production, and sort of round up where I am in the process of making the magazine. I will also use my target audience to see what they think of what I have created so far


This week, in terms of following my schedule hasn’t been entirely successful, as although I have completed some things, I haven’t with some of the others that I set out. 

In terms of what I have achieved successfully this week: 

On Monday, in my frees I did gain feedback on my front cover from my target audience, as I asked a couple of students who aren’t in my media lesson what they thought of it, and what they think could be changed. This was good, as they weren’t looking at it from the point of view of a media student, so their feedback was honest and helpful. Both students said that they thought the front cover looked effective and young, which was really great, and they both liked it. Their only criticism was that it just needs a bit more space filling in the top right third of the page, and I totally agree with this view. Therefore although I am not currently returning to my front cover I will be in the coming weeks, after some of my other production is out of the way, and this is when I can begin to make the changes. So in terms of what I set out to do in the Tuesday lesson, this was successful as I actually did it on the Monday, so it then freed up the Tuesday lesson to start production on the York article. 

So, because I did what I wanted to do on Tuesday on Monday, in my first media lesson of the week I started creating my York DPS in InDesign. I really began with simply setting up the page I needed, using a magazine and ruler to gain the measurements I wanted to use. I then began by creating the background, using a brochure I found in the York City Picturehouse as inspiration. I also began to see where the text and images would go, so in terms of this lesson it was really successful, because I had done what I set out to do for this lesson, which set the ball rolling for the rest of the week to continue with production.

 

These are some of the images I have included into the York article. The one on the left is the 'before' and the one on the right is the 'after'. 

In both my Wednesday lesson and Thursday lesson I continued with the production of this DPS page, as well as coming into media in my free lesson time and this really moved the production forward, as by today, the end of this week, my DPS, as you can see below, is in a nearly complete state.This was because as well as working out the layout, I edited the images I wanted to use, with only one left to place in which will be finished off next week. I think the reason for the good progress was that I focused a lot of time into getting this DPS into a state where it was nearly finished by the end of the week, and because I had my fonts and colour scheme already selected, this made it easier to know what I was doing essentially. 

As you can see from my DPS I just need to place the final parts in on the bottom of the third page, but this will be done in the coming week. Overall I am pretty happy with it and will most likely return to it towards the end of production. 

However there are two issues at the end of this week. One is that I have missed the lesson today due to being ill, thus I couldn’t gain target audience feedback on my DPS. But I am not too worried about this as I can simply do that in my free time next week, however this mass concentration on the York DPS meant meeting my homework schedule was not all that successful and in some areas I need to catch up. 

This is what I wanted to gain from my homework this week: 

a) For this homework I will have the draft I wrote for my Cuts Crisis article checked over and then I could make the changes I need to it, and continue editing it up

b) For my second homework I will aim to collect all my research and findings in York, and begin to fully/properly write up the various sections which will be going into the article

c) For my third homework I will start to look at my design for the contents page, and really re-create the flat plan, as at this point I know that I want to change design of the contents page

Out of all these things I have only completed my second homework, and this was due to me starting my York article, so I needed to write up the different sections and look over my findings. This has been almost entirely completed, with one small section left to write so I am happy with this homework, but I didn’t complete the other two. I am yet to have my Cuts Crisis article checked, and because of this I am behind in completing the writing of that. But, what I aim to do is get it looked at next week when I begin production on that DPS so whilst I am designing the page, the article is being marked. I have also not looked at a contents page at all, and this is something I really need to factor into my time, as I am currently without any real idea of what I want from my contents page. So this weekend I am going to look for a few ideas on the internet, and when it comes to producing one I have the ideas and research ready to go. 

So, this week has been in some ways really successful in that another vital part of production is nearly finished, however I need to get back on track with the homework’s I have set myself to do.