Dark Tech

The double page spread article:

'Fallen star’ this is the name that she is now known by, as millions of people now happily listen to her music. But it wasn’t always like this for the young singer, with a talent for computers as well as with her own voice, she used to practise in a small studio at her secondary school, and her talent was only heard by one of her friends that happily helped her with some of the techy side of the music. She makes a total of 10 songs in this way but again these songs were only for their ears and their ears only. But on this one day one of her other friend heard their music and suggested that she should try her luck on the X-Factor, so true to her friend, she went on the next auditions for the show. Not only did she win the show but she also got herself a 10-year contract with the high lighters. Now seven of her very own tracks are in the charts and three of those tracks are in the top ten.

How was life out on the stage?

It’s very different to what I’m use to but it was still fun. I’s just hard for me as not only do I make my own music electronically but I’m on my own when I am out there on the stage. But it was nice to see who many people were out there that wanted to listen to me.

How did you take to performing on stage?

I handle it a lot better than what I thought that I would. It was strange to be up there. But I guess that was because when I did it on X - factor I didn’t care about the out come, but now people are there coz they like my music and I just need to keep everyone happy.

Do you think that you bit off more than you can chew with making your own backing track as well as singing over the top of them?

Well yeah, there have been a few late nights lately, but half the fun is making the music and making every thing fit in together. But just like with everything, there will be a draw back or two, but you just have to keep going.

There has been lots of good and bad feedback about your music, how do you feel about that?

I don’t really might about it that much. I mean, I known from the beginning that not everyone would like my work, and to be truthful a lot more people like my music then I first thought they would. So for me anyway it’s a bonus that they are saying good thing.

What do you if your songs go wrong?

Well that depends on how badly it has gone wrong. Because if I can fix it then I do, but if it is something that I can’t fix or if I don’t know what is wrong with them, then it is a different story. The last song that I tried to make just didn’t sound right, and I tried changing it a couple of times but it still just wasn’t working so I scraped it. But the other two songs (Shooting down, and falling for no reason) that I made before then, just needed a little change to the bass line and the guitar solo and then they were both fine.

Do your emotions get in the way of you making or singing your songs?

They did get in the way towards the beginning of everything, but now that I am starting to get use to it, they are not making it so difficult. Though learning to work round that sort of thing is only half of it.

Evaluation - conclusion

I think that ‘Dark Tech’ is great at attracting its chosen audience and both sides of it too. I also think that it was a great success because it looks professional. And it has a creative design that took a long time to put together, but it still helped it to look good.

Evaluation - Q7

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

 With the covers, after completing the preliminary task I analysed some real magazines and learned more about the code and the conventions that make a magazine look like a magazine. Also I had more time to plan what I wanted to do with ‘Dark Tech’ (the main task), and this helped to make it look better.

In the preliminary task I knew about the codes and conventions, but it wasn’t until after I analysed the five different magazines. So when it come to making ‘Dark Tech’ I knew how to use the codes and conventions, not just what they are. And I also learnt what doesn’t work, for example, having the cover lines too long and also having them written right across the page.

I learnt more about the effects and other tools that I used for ‘Dark Tech’ that I did know about when working on the preliminary task for example, the blood splatter. Also with ‘Dark Tech’ I had more planning time and I used it to work out what I was going to do and what genre I was going to aim for. Then I had more time to make ‘Dark Tech’ so I used this time to let my creativity to run wild and then I made it work so that it helped make the magazine look like a real; music magazine. I was able to be more organised with how I made ‘Dark Tech’ as well as how the cover looked at the end of it.

The magazine cover that I made for the preliminary task unlike ‘Dark Tech’ doesn’t have a bar code or a price, but as it was a college magazine it didn’t need these things. But it also did have the issue date or the web site of the college; ‘Dark Tech’ does have these things. ‘Dark Tech’ has a selling line and it uses a different image for the background of the cover, this made it easier to get the magazine to appeal to the right audience.

I feel that I have made some progress from the preliminary task to ‘Dark Task’, because ‘Dark Tech’ look as if it could be a normally, professional magazine that people would buy. But at the same time, the preliminary task was to make a college magazine and my product at that time fitted the purpose that it was made for, but as they both have different purposes and where made to appeal to different uses, then it is harder to see if I have improved when making ‘Dark Tech’.

With the contents pages, again analysing the five magazines helped when it came to making ‘Dark Tech’s contents page look professional. And I used the planning time to try out different ideas that I had of the contents page of ‘Dark Tech’, and I tried a few different ways of applying the ideas to the contents page until I found one that worked with the genre.

I thought about the target audience, where they were in the world at that age and what sort of things that both types of people were in to and I tried to reflect this in ‘Dark Tech’. I used Photoshop to adapt the colours of an image that I then used as the background of the contents page; I made it a deep electric blue so that it would appeal to both sides of the genre. And I added the ripped paper in the top left hand corner of the page for two reasons. One, was so the text of the contents lines were easy to read. The other was so that it helped reflect the Gothic side of the genre as they like to use scrap paper to take notes of some things.

I really like the background of the preliminary task, contents page but the colour of the text that I used for it is hard to read which stops it from looking as professional as ‘Dark Tech’s contents page. The preliminary task, contents page doesn’t have the masthead in the right top corner like what most magazines do but ‘Dark Tech’ does. They both also have the title of the page (contents page, which I like the font used in ‘Dark Tech’ more than the one that I used in the preliminary task) in the top left corner, but only ‘Dark Tech’ has the issue date under it. The contents lines of ‘Dark Tech’ look like they are in more of a column than the ones in the preliminary task that just go across the whole page. They both have a page number and they are in the same font as the title. They both have images of other article that are in the magazines but, ‘Dark Tech’ has page numbers that go with the images to tell the reader what page to look at for the article.

I think that I have improved a lot between the two magazine’s content pages, as the preliminary task was missing many of the codes and conventions that are needed.

With the double page spread, the preliminary task didn’t need a double page spread so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I think that it looks professional and that the article fits its purpose.