Question 1a Research and Planning

1. Research and Planning What skills did we learn about the importance of R&P? G325: Section A: Theoretical Perspectives in Media Question 1a)

The Research & Planning within my AS preliminary magazine task, AS final magazine task and the Digipak/Poster task in A2 was vital. And the amount of R&P I did within each task had a correlation with the out come and the quality of the final product. 

Firstly, prior to and during the creation of my preliminary magazine I only partook in a very minimal amount of research&planning. I basically quickly created a school magazine in an hour or two, with only reading one blog post on the conventions of a magazine as part of the research and planning section of the coursework. This lack of R&P was evidently one of the key factors that caused the prelim magazine to lack quality and aesthetics.  

Carrying fourth the realisation of the importance of R&P in to my final magazine coursework, I spent a hugely greater amount of time doing so. For example I analysed 3 front covers, contents pages and double page spreads of existing magazines (NME, Q & Fantastic man). This gave me an idea of the conventions of existing magazines and what a 'real' magazine looks like. Thanks to this, I was able to using certain aspects and convention, such as the placement of the Masthead in the top-left hand side of the front cover, in my magazine. This made my magazine look realistic and like a 'real' magazine. Another aspect of R&P i partook in was looking at specific magazine genres, such as Indie-tronic, minimalism and dance punk. This enabled me to choose my preferred genre of 'indie-tronic'. After this I then researched in to the target audience of this genre of music, this allowed me to then go on and plan towards attracting this target audience. For example I looked at a lot of Clash magazine's work with the xx, and made sure that I included features of minimalism in order to attract my required audience.