OCR – Level 3 Cambridge Introductory Diploma in

Media

Unit 13: Planning and Pitching a Print based Media

Product P5 Evidence

Name: Emily ThompsonCandidate Number: 6107Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic SchoolCenter Number: 64135

Set Brief - Print

Project/Brief –

Music Magazine & Promotion

Contents:

Title Slide

Feedback of Pitch – Interview 3

Feedback of Pitch – Witness Statement

4

Feedback of Pitch – Survey Monkey

5 - 7

Pitch Improvements 8 – 9

Production Plan 10

Calendar Events 11

Legal and Ethical 12 – 14

Conclusion 15

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Feedback of Pitch - Interview”

To obtain further feedback that will aid in developing the music magazine I decided to conduct a structured interview with open ended question to the head publisher. When creating and choosing these questions the key information that I wanted to find out was the strengths and weaknesses of the presentation and how I could improve. Therefore I chose questions that lead the publisher to comment on their ideas on the front cover, double page spread and any other areas they felt necessary. I recorded the interview and the added some post production editing such as sound enhancing to make the question and response clearer.

These are the seven questions that were asked in the feedback interview, I had to make sure they were easy to understand whilst also ensuring they gathered the correct information.Additional feedback was also gained from a witness statement.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Feedback of Pitch – Witness Statement”

When I was conducting the Prezi presentation I wanted to make sure that I had accurate feedback from the people who were watching it first hand, therefore the publishers that were listening filled out feedback forms. On these forms they had the opportunity to assess the different areas of the presentation such as, production plans, budget summary, target audience and final covers.

From the witness statement there were several areas that were said needed to be included in the presentation. I have therefore updated the Prezi and have now added these areas, this will ensure that the most amount of information is included.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Feedback of Pitch – Survey Monkey”

After completing my pitch to the large group of publishers I decided to send out an online survey through the website, Survey Monkey. This website enables you a variety of questions and the collates the results of your survey into graphs. At the end of the presentation I notified the people who were watching that they were going to be sent the survey link through their email, they would then have to click on this link and it would then redirect them and take them to the main survey. Once everyone had completed the survey I was able to look at the collected results. In total I had thirteen responses from the people that watched the presentation, this feedback will be useful so then I can utilise their response and improve certain areas of the presentation that may have been unclear.

When creating the Survey Monkey I wanted to make sure that all of the questions I was asking were clear and concise, then this way I would be able to get the most accurate results. I found that the best type of question to ask was multiple choice questions that had comment boxes underneath, this is so the respondent could explain their choice and create higher validity for my findings.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Feedback of Pitch – Survey Monkey”

Question One: Was all content understood from the presentation?For the first question I wanted to gain an idea of the general presentation understanding. The one comment that was recorded was “Very detailed pitch, information presented clearly and concisely”, this is reassuring as I now know that this person was happy with both the content and presentation.

Question Two: Was the appearance of the presentation suitable for its purpose? And why?I felt that by asking this question I will be able to find out a more accurate result what people exactly thought of the general appearance of the presentation. The result of this question was concluded that 100% of people agreed that the appearance of the presentation was suitable for its purpose.

Was the appearance of the presentation suitable for its purpose?

Clean and professionalAll relative in-formationFormal AttireInteresting

Question Three: In your opinion, could additional content be added to make the presentation more informational?This question focusses on the opinions of the respondents and how they feel the presentation could cover more content. A comment box was added so I can look in more detail the reasoning behind their choice. In total there were six comments, half of them confirmed that everything was covered in great detail. The other three are pictured above, these suggest that areas such as marketing and the presenters body language need to be improved.

Question Four: Finally, do you have any additional comments or feedback on the overall presentation?The purpose of this question was to find out any additional feedback from the publishers . Every person responded to this question and all had some form of praise or criticism. I have created this graph to illustrate the findings from the question.

Additional Comments0

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Detailed, Concise and ClearLess HesitationMore MarketingNone

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Feedback of Pitch – Survey Monkey”

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Pitch Improvements”

Spending Power Improvement:The final area that needed to be added was additional information on the spending power of the readers for the magazine. By looking at this I will be able to find out what they are willing to pay for that magazine by looking at their disposable income and their spending demographic.

Future Edition Improvement:Another area that said needed to be included as suggested by the witness statement was evidence of future edition ideas. On this page I included the ‘star appeal’ theory by Richard Dyer and how including popular artists it will increase the readership each month because of the number of their fans. To make this Prezi slide more interesting I included a range of artists images as a suggestion of who the magazine will feature.

Subscription Sales Improvement:This is an important area that needs to be looked at when predicting the magazines overall sales. V magazine will have an available subscription service that enables readers to stay up to date each month both online and through paper on the latest music news and events.To market the subscription sales I have decided that there will be a discounted rate for buying the magazine on a yearly basis.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Pitch Improvements”

Front Cover Corrections:From the structured interview that was conducted I used feedback from the response of the question “Do you feel as if there are any improvements that could be made to the front cover of the magazine?”. It was suggested that a glamorous skin tone should be added to the feature artist on the front. I created this glamorous skin tone on photo editing software Photoshop. Here I duplicated the layer and added the glow filter, then after this I changed the overlay type to a reduced opacity so the photo wasn’t too bright.

Another feature that was suggested for improvement was to change the style of the puff promotion. I decided to keep the original circle shape and positioning and instead change the colour scheme and text so it was similar to the rest of the magazines style, this will demonstrate better consistency. The final puff promotion style that I decided to keep on the front cover of the magazine was a simple blue and white circle, that had clear to read text but also showed the magazine recurrent font and colour scheme.

Before Feedback

After Feedback

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Production Plan”

This is a detailed production plan for the development and creation of V Magazine. Included is the sections of pre-production, production and post production. In each of these sections it has been calculated the estimated costs of the process and the staff and equipment that will be needed. The production time is over a two week period, I feel that this is appropriate as there will be over thirty members of staff working on the magazine pages with the highest quality software and equipment. Two weeks was chosen as this is the typical length of time that the original magazine of inspiration ‘Q Magazine’ has for creation.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Calendar Events”

The magazine is aimed to be published around the start of each month, after two weeks prior of production. The first issue of the magazine will be released in December, this means that other factors such as calendar events will have to be considered. Within the magazine there will be some article and image reference to the ‘Christmas’ season. Examples of this include an article that looks at the years most popular indie artists and bands. Also a small feature will be made on the top Christmas songs of all time. Both of these articles will not be heavily promoted because of the variety of religious beliefs that the readers have.There will be no conflict issues with the launch of the magazine as it is around the start of the month, therefore seasonal holidays will not affect the production and distribution of the magazine.

There will be one puff promotion on the front cover. This is a subscription promotion to gain the ‘Ben Howard exclusive free album!’. The purpose of this is to raise the number of people who will be joining the subscription service for the new year by advertising a free digital album when you subscribe. Also we will include on the page special bundles of the hard copy and digital copy for a cheaper price exclusively for the Christmas gifting season.

One area that will be highly advertised in the magazine is the upcoming years top festivals. As this will be the last magazine of the year there will be a large feature on music festivals of 2015, this will include the artists, location details and many images from the previous years. This article will be included on the cover lines on the front cover of the magazine, and will be near the centre of the magazine pages.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Legal and Ethical Issues”

An important area to include when creating the magazine is to look at the legal and ethical issues. These include copyright issues, PCC/IPSO, safe working practices and intellectual property. I have outlined all of these areas in depth in a separate word document.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Risk Assessment”

When taking and editing the images for the front cover and double page spread I had to take into consideration risk assessment. This meant that I had to look at all individual ‘safe working practices’ and how they could affect the final images.

Image Risk Assessment- Permissions:Before taking the images I needed to make sure that the artist gave their full permission to being photographed and the image being published both online and in print media. I found that the best way to gain permission was to send an email to the artist describing what they have to wear, the location and time of the shoot. I also attached a permission form which they had to sign and date and send back. By gaining permission through this method the magazine has declared proof of a signed document, this means that if there are any future legal difficulties it would not be the magazine at fault.- Area Assessment:When scouting the location for the images several area checks had to take place. This risk assessment had to be conducted to guarantee both the artist and the people who are taking the images are safe. Areas that should be looked at are possible hazards such as uneven ground levels, running water, heights and weather conditions. Evidence of a permission letter that

was sent and signed to the artist.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Risk Assessment”

Software Risk Assessment- Resizing an Image:When editing the images that I had taken on location I wanted to keep a professional high image quality. This meant that I looked into different ways of guaranteeing that the final images would have no evidence of resizing pixilation. I found that the most useful method of resizing images whilst also keeping the original high quality pixel size was to use the ‘Transform Tool’ on Adobe Photoshop. This technique is when resizing the image to hold down the ‘Shift’ key on the keyboard. The purpose of this tool is to keep the dimensions of the image the same so they are not stretched and distorted which can in turn affect the pixel quality.- Eyedropper Tool:To maintain consistency throughout V Magazine I wanted to make sure that all of the colours were the same. On Adobe Photoshop is the ‘Eyedropper Tool’ that helps choose and find a colour of an object, then you have the opportunity to save the chosen colour into a swatches palette. This meant that every time I created a new text or object to be inserted into the magazine pages, to find the magazines colour I had to go into my ‘Saved Swatches’ palette and choose the colour I wanted to use. This sped up the colour choosing process as well as keeping a professional standard for the magazine.

Naming the Colour Swatch The Colour Picker and Eyedropper Tool Symbol on the ‘Tools Panel’

Using the ‘Transform Tool’ to resize and image. Before and after.

Unit 13 – Planning and Pitching – “Conclusion”

In this learning outcome I looked further into the feedback that I received once I had presented my pitch. This meant in depth analysing of the suggested improvements and how they will affect the production of the magazine. I gained feedback through several forms this included a structured, recorded interview, witness statements and an online survey (Survey Monkey) that was sent to everyone who listened to the presentation.

I felt that I needed to look more in detail at the answers that I received from the Survey Monkey results, therefore I decided to create graphs that represented the results that had been collated. This meant that it was easier to view what were the strengths and weaknesses of the presentation.

Additionally I felt it very important to look in detail at the legal and ethical issues surrounding planning and producing an indie music magazine.