Production diaries 2

Production diaries 2

• 1.
  Hannah McNeill Production Diaries Week1 28/01/20 For my first week of my Final Major Project I created a short plan containing a bullet point list of what I needed to successfully complete in the first week; I needed to complete my proposal and pre-proposal, my aim was also to conduct research on at least 4 influencers that I can use as context and background knowledge related to my project, to give me a wider understanding of the topics I am including. I spent my first day of my Final Major Project by creating my pre-proposal. The first proposal I began writing was just a draft proposal and a way for me to first properly engage with the project, allowing me to put together my ideas and discover where I wanted to go with my project. Writing and planning my pre-proposal brought me a lot of clarity because it gave me the opportunity to see my ideas and to understand why I wanted to create my project and why it was important to me. I began by briefly explaining my idea in less than 20 words to get a clear idea of what I wanted to do. Then I explained why I decided to make it and what made the project important to me. There are multiple different reasons why this project is important to me and by writing them down and seeing them on paper it gave me the ability to really understand why I wanted to create a feminism/mental wellbeing fanzine. I spent an hour completing my pre-proposal explaining the small details and the thought process it took me to get to my final idea. I included a range of different details because I knew that even if it was a first draft it was still important because I would use this through my project to shape my final product. Through my project some of my potential ideas might change and therefore in my evaluation I will be able to look back and compare my first ideas with my final project and be able to explain why I changed my mind. 29/01/20 My second day of pre-production was spent researching different influencers to use as my context/background research. I decided to use my time most efficiently I needed to plan what influencers I was going to research and how it would help me further on in my project. I looked at my idea for my end product and after evaluating what skills/topics I needed to learn about I chose four different influencers. For my research, I planned on including more influencers but I thought I would start with four. The first person I researched was a photographer whose work is very established and a personal favourite of mine. I have always loved her work and found her photographs emotive and moving. Photographer Annie Leibovitz. I thought it would be extremely useful to research a photographer for my project because a massive part of the fanzine will feature photography and in order to create effective photos and conduct efficient photoshoots I need to learn about photography. I research Leibovitz in detail finding information about her past personal life and also her career. The information I found was very insightful and has already inspired me with different ways I can conduct my own photoshoots in the production stages. During researching Leibovitz I made sure that I created a bibliography of all the websites I used, using Neil’s Toolbox. This means that if I need to quote my research or I need to find the website I found information from I can go to the bibliography, saving time.
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  I then decidedthat for my second influencer I needed to widen my knowledge on mental health awareness in the media. So, I researched mental health celebrity ambassadors and discovered the charity Mind. I had already heard of the charity and was aware of the work that it does, however I didn’t know that it had multiple celebrity ambassadors, such as George Ezra and Duke McKenzie. I then further researched the charity and the two celebrities. Successfully furthering my knowledge on mental health which is integral to my project because I want to include different articles/photoshoots about mental wellbeing. I also kept a full bibliography addressing all the sources I used throughout the research. 30/01/20 After having researched two main influencers for my project I decided to take a break from background research and started conducting marketing research. I began by looking online at the Issuu.com publishing website where I can find thousands of different magazines/fanzines all with different topics. So, I visited the website and search ‘mental health fanzines’. I searched this because it is associated with the style that I want to create my fanzine around. I found a fanzine created by the Art’s Student Union about mental wellbeing, I flicked through the fanzine and saw that it contained an array of different and interesting drawings and articles so decided it would be useful for me to analyse. I then planned different qualities of the fanzine that I would analyse in order to find out as much as possible about the magazine. I chose to analyse the; colour scheme, main focus, headline, typography, image, target audience, layout. After I had analyzed the fanzine in detail I moved onto analyzing another fanzine. This time I decided to analyze a photography fanzine/magazine. On the Issuu website I discovered a portfolio/fanzine from a photographer called Imdad Barbhuyan containing a range of beautiful photography. After looking through her portfolio I decided to analyze her work because I really admired her photography and thought they I could learn from her photography skills. I analyzed the photos and then spoke about the colour scheme she applies to her photos. 31/01/20 For the final day of my first pre-production week I finished off my background/influencers work. I analyzed a feminist and actress ‘Jameela Jamil’. I researched Jameela because she is known for her hosting and radio work but is also famous for being a feminist and activist. I personally find her very inspirational and think she as a character is very interesting. I researched her through different websites and articles and I also discovered a book called ‘All feminists wear pink … and other lies’ where she has a short article published which was extremely interesting to read and useful for my research. After I had completed my research for Jameela Jamil I started researching a journalist/activist called Gloria Steinem. I researched her and her journalism career and then also researched her feminism/activism career in detail in this helped me because researching and writing about her work inspired me and gave me a wider knowledge about people’s different experiences and perspectives of feminism.
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  Hannah McNeill Week 2 04/02/20To start the week, I finished my context work by researching a journalist, Bob Woodward. Although I wasn’t planning on researching a journalist because I won’t be including many written articles as my magazine will be primarily based on photography and animation with short articles. However, I thought it was important to explore at least one journalist in order to understand more about magazines. And in case I did decide to write a long article I would know more about how to structure/write it. I don’t have a wide knowledge of different journalists, so I used Google and looked through a few different journalists and read information about them before deciding which was the most interesting and useful to analyse. It was interesting to research Woodward as his work is extremely impressive. After I had finished my research about Woodward I started making mood boards, I thought this would be a good idea because so far I have done a lot of written information, reading articles and books, therefore looking at visual elements was refreshing and also let m link all the theories and research with visual aid helping me solidify what I had learnt. Furthermore, mood boards are a good way of inspiring ideas. Then as I finished my work from last week I could properly start my second week of my project started, I began a new stage, I started conducting research, which includes primary, secondary and market production. As it is only the first week out of four I have conducted all of this research yet but I feel confident with the pace I am working at. The first aspect of my research was market research, to analyze existing products so I can appreciate different features of products that hopefully can inspire me and also shape my project. I looked through the website ISSUU to find different fanzines to analyze, I thought it would be most useful to research a mental wellbeing fanzine because in my context research it was more focused on feminism, therefore I wanted to have an even knowledge of both topics, in order to make my fanzine as effective as possible. after looking through a range of fanzines I decided to work with a fanzine called ‘Mental Wellbeing Zine’ by the Arts Student Union – London. I applied different marketing aspects that I decided would be useful to evaluate; Colour scheme, Main focus, Headline, Typography, Image, Target audience, Layout. I found it easier to plan subheadings to explore before starting to write about the fanzine aimlessly. 05/02/20 My second day into research was then spent finalizing my research about Mental Wellbeing Zine. I chose two double page spreads from the fanzine to scrutinize in detail, this was very useful to my idea development because it gave me the opportunity to look further into the aspects and qualities of the photos/animation and what they symbolized, which helped me understand the fanzine more. Then, I finished the research by completing my bibliography. Then I conducted more research about another fanzine. This time I stirred away from the topics of the fanzine – mental wellbeing and feminism – and I decided to concentrate on another important element, photography. I searched for photography portfolios/fanzines. I found a product from Imdad Barbhuyan, a publisher who wasn’t famous or even known, but just published her work to ISSUU. It was interesting researching a product that wasn’t famous or well-known compared to the celebrities I had spent the past week researching.
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  So, I analyzedher front cover and then one of her double page spreads. This was very important to my project because it personally put me at a massive advantage looking at new, unseen photographs, it allowed me to tear the photos apart explicitly. 06/02/20 After researching two fanzines earlier this week I decided to take a break from the fanzine structure and started looking at other media products that I could look at that would help influence my project. I searched ‘Feminist Theories’ into the search bar of Google, hoping to find a theory that I could interpret and apply to my work, I discovered a research journal from a Robert Jensen called ‘Men’s Lives and Feminist Theory’ I could only read the opening page but it was very insightful. The article was about how feminism impacts men’s lives about how feminism is an opportunity for men to connect with their emotions. This was a very interesting article because it showed feminism from a positive male perspective, which is sometimes rare. After taking a break from researching fanzines I decided to analyze one last fanzine, I researched a fanzine about feminism because I thought it was of my best interest for my product if I had a fanzine about the three main topics in my project in order to have the most knowledge. I found a fanzine called Girl Crush and researched it in a lot of detail, picking out the front cover and what the hidden meanings of the cover photo was, uncovering what it represented, then talking about a poem in the fanzine and its relevance. After finishing the research on the fanzine, I quickly wrote about feminism magazine front covers. I wasn’t planning on researching front covers of feminism magazines however hen I searched for feminism magazines I noticed a specific magazine that was named ‘feminist’ but was the opposite, publishing suggestive images of women, which is not the meaning of feminism at all. I wanted to write about it in my research because I felt like it was an important aspect of feminism that is often ignored. 07/02/20 I finished primary research for the moment, I think I will go back to primary research when I have more time in the next three weeks but after doing a high amount of concentrated work for the last two weeks I thought it would be more effective and to my advantage if I took a break from solid research about fanzines, feminism and mental wellbeing. I thought it would be to my advantage because I knew that soon I would start to get mental blocks and tired of the work, therefore making me un motivated. So, I started conducted some target audience research. Still need to write about: Photojournalism Feminist don’t wear pink International women’s day What have you been working on this week? What have you learned from your research so far? How will that influence your project? What else do you think you need to look at in your research? What problems have occurred during this week of research? What type of research has been mostly useful so far?
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  What problems mightyou face in your second week of research?