NOTEmusic
Time Management
When I first started to create my magazine, I used a grid to define specific targets that I needed to focus on with the deadlines that I had set myself. I decided to create small deadlines for myself so that I would be able to stay on task without falling behind. There wasn't a great deal of time to do each section so I needed to make sure that what I was producing, it was done well. However, not everything went completely to plan. As I will describe in more detail further below, there were some deadlines that I did not meet. When I first set each deadline, I thought that I would be able to meet each one with ease, I didn't think clearly enough. On majority of the deadlines I had set, I did manage to do them rather on time, or earlier than I set myself too. On the other hand however, some tasks took more effort with preparation and therefore longer to complete than others. As you can see towards the right, there is the plan that I set my deadlines to. Below I have written about the deadlines in greater detail with reasons why I did or did not meet the deadline and how it affected the process further along.
As you can see to the right, that is my time management table for the upcoming months. It is divided up into four different months as by April, everything should be completed with the coursework. As I have said previously, there were deadlines that I did meet with ease, and others that made me fall behind slightly on that specific task. There are different colours on the grid which all mean various things. The pink/purple meant there was a bank holiday, the blue showed the weekends in the months, red showed when college was closed from half terms and Easter holidays, and finally the white showed when college was open like usual. As I didn't reach some of the deadlines, I stayed in the Media computer room at breaks and lunch times to hopefully catch up on some of the work so I wouldn't fall behind on the next deadline that needed to be completed.
In January, I reached each deadline rather early, or just on the final date. A reason why this was is because it was a month full of researching and planning the production. With the research, I had an idea from the start of the type of music magazine that I wanted to create. The part which took the longest was the background research from specific magazines and looking into the types of magazines that I would like to have a similar layout to. I also needed to do a survey of my target audience to find out what specifically they are interested in.
February was a month of starting the production process, which I knew that would take the longest of the whole process. At the start of the month, the production process for me was mainly setting the pages up to the correct sizes and knowing what content I was going to involve. This month was also the start of the photo-shoots that I needed to take place which consisted of the girl on the front cover and the main story. After the pictures were taken, I started to edit a few of them on Photoshop and use them on whichever pages that they belonged to. Some of the pictures that were editing didn't end up being used as I wanted to edit a few then have a variety of potential images that I could use.
In March, this month was full of production work and the chance to really continue with the editing. As I had done the photo-shoots in February, I had all the pictures that I needed and had already started to edit some of them. When I mention editing, it mainly consists of changing the brightness and contrast levels to get the quality and colours to the level that I desire. Aside from the editing of the images, I started to play around with how I was going to place the text around it. As before this process, I already created a basic block layout design of what each of my pages could look like. They each had similarities from my inspiration choices of real magazines. I would be confident in saying that they layout of text on the front cover page took the longest for me. I wasn't sure which style would suit the genre of the magazine yet still appeal to my target audience. The contents page also took quite a while as I needed to come up with a list of possible pages inside the magazine, but have them to relate to a music indie genre. Although, the double page spread for me was a quicker process than I first imagined. At first I struggled to come up with an idea but when I remembered that I want an issue to be relatable to the audience, the questions and answers that I made up paired nicely with each other. As the audience is teenagers, I wanted to have the interview quite informal and something that was able to flow along well without. However, I didn't have all of the month to complete the work as halfway through March; I went to Los Angeles with the Media department for a whole week.
April was the final month I had to complete the wholo music magazine coursework. I completed a lot of the production work in March so I only really needed to tweak a few parts and start my evaluation questions. Towards the end of March is when I started to look into the seven questions, so I had an idea of what I was going to be faced with. Once I got an idea of the questions, things started to fall into place. There were some issues with needing to think what format/website I would post the questions on as I wanted to be creative with the evaluation. Halfway through the month of April is when I needed to be finished with everything including the blog, practical copies of the magazines, and finally the evaluation questions. As it is clear to see on the deadline grid, the start of April was the Easter Holidays which meant that the college would be closed, which includes having access to the equipment in Media Studies. On one of the days which college was open for people to do work, I took the opportunity and started the questions. I had already missed a week in March due to the Los Angeles trip which was mentioned previously.