Research and Planning: Camera Shots

These are my Camera Shots research with descriptions and pictures.

Research and Planning: Completed College Magazine and Evaluation.

My completed College Magazine cover. I downloaded a new font for my masthead called Bandung Hardcore from www.dafont.com and I used it for my headings as well, to make my masthead stand out I made the font a lot larger than the rest about 100pt and the headings varied in size but mainly stayed in the 18-24pt. I then used a font that already existed called Century Schoolbook for the rest of my text which was around 12-14pt. I added the barcode image in from the internet and made a white rectangle to go behind the image so it would stand out against the black background. I edited the masthead so there was some colours featured on the college logo i.e. the college colour scheme so it didn't really stick to the three colour rule but when I did my audience research they said that they would like to keep the college colour scheme so I wanted to incorporate that which included around four/five colours. I edited my photo in a separate file and cut the background out and added it onto my front cover, which I think looks ok but the actual picture itself could have been better i.e. better lighting and situation etc but I wanted to keep the picture of a student because that is what the audience wanted. I then altered where my stories were so they were easily visable and stood out against the picture.

My completed College Magazine contents page. I again used the same fonts so it was in-keeping but I used InDesign on this instead of Photoshop which I found quite easy to use and helpful with my margins etc. I split the page into two so I had equal margins and everything would fit on. The fonts I used were similar for the stories (12-14pt) and the headings (18-24pt) and the main title (92pt) but to make the page stand out I altered positions and font sizes, so it ranges from (18-30pt) which I think looks effective. I didn't use many other colours on this page only because I wanted to keep it clean. I used two photographs that I took, and I think that the lighting on the second picture needed to be improved but because of the area it was in it was quite dark. 

I like the contents page because I think it's something different and stands out. But I think my photographs need a lot of work looking at lighting and situations and maybe more editing. I think that for a college magazine I have an appropriate amount of stories on both the contents and cover because too many can put a reader off. I think that you can tell that both pages are from the same magazine due to the fonts and colours and the overall style of the layout. My cover follows most of the rules about a magazine; a masthead, slugline, date and issue number, barcode and price and on this particular one, a medium close-up image of a student. But I have bypassed the three colour rule a little because I wanted to keep the college colour scheme which includes more than three colours anyway and I needed the white writing to stand out against the black background.

Research and Planning: Photographs for the Magazine.

These are the photographs I took for my magazine, I used the two from around College and one of Alice for my cover.

Research and Planning: College Magazine Draft.

These are my hand-drawn drafts of my College Magazine, contents & cover.

Research and Planning: College Magazine Progress.

I used InDesign to create my contents page, which I will add photos onto in the next lesson.

Research and Planning: College Magazine Progress.

This is my College Magazine so far, I will continue to work on it until it's finished.

Research and Planning: Practice Fonts.

I went onto the website www.dafont.com and downloaded three fonts to suit the three titles we were given: Death Metal, Popcorn and Popworld, as examples of different mastheads.

Research and Planning: Audience Research

My target audience is the students within the college.
We found from our audience research;
-That people would like stories involving students or about student experiences.
-The most that our audience would be willing to pay would be £2 and the least they would pay would be 80p.
-All of the people we asked would want to see actual students from the college on the front cover.
-They all said that they would like the college colour scheme to stay throughout the  magazine.
-And all said that they want the magazine to focus on the social aspects of college rather than the work side.

Research and Planning: Medium Close Up

These are examples of medium close up shots, found on the internet. A medium close up is a shot of the head and shoulders.

Research and Planning: College Magazine Analysis.

Masthead 'College Lifestyle' appeals to the audience, because it's not just the work side of college it's mainly focusing on the social side.
Picture of a Student holding textbooks: Law, Society. Appeals to the college audience, he's young looks like a genuine student, dressed casually\laidback.
Relevant, current stories that students would be interested in i.e. 'Why We Love Blackberry' 'College Couture' and 'Thank God it's Friday's'
 It seems to be an American magazine as it talks about 'Spring Break' so the target audience would probably ages from around 17-19. 
Typical magazine sticks to the three colour scheme, Black, Yellow and White although one article is placed in a pink splat to make it stand out, which is obviously a big article so it catches the students attention.
 Typical Magazine features: barcode and price, slugline, issue number and date.

Research and Planning: InDesign Trial

- I saved a review of The Inbetweeners Movie in a Microsoft Word document and a picture from the movie as a JPEG.
- I then opened up an A4 sheet in InDesign which had margin guides on it, I then added some column guidelines in.
- I then went into File, Place and uploaded my review and placed it into one of the columns, and resized it so it was separated into two columns and fit inside them.
- I then placed the image into the document and altered it so it fit above my text, I scaled it down by altering the frame and then selecting Fit Contents to Frame.
- I then added a title by adding a Text box, I altered the font and colour using the swatches box to the right.
- I then changed the background colour by drawing a rectangle to fit the page and then altered the colour by selecting it on the swatches, and then went to arrange and send to back so the rectangle was acting as a background.

Research and Planning: Film Poster

I saved two images; one of Simon Cowell and one of an Ugly Betty poster. I opened both of them in Photoshop and then used the lasso tool to draw around Simon Cowell's face and cut him out, I then dragged his face onto the poster and used the scale tool to alter the shape so it fit onto the face of Ugly Betty.

Research and Planning: Photoshop Challenge

- I opened Photoshop and clicked File, New and changed the size to A4.
-Then pressed the Text button and typed in 'AS Media Studies' and changed the font to 'Century Gothic' and size 24 font.
-I changed the colour of the text to red by highlighting the text and changing the colour in the box to red and then selected the text and moved it to the centre.
-I changed the background to blue by highlighting the background layer and clicking on the fill bucket tool and changing the colour to blue.
-I gave the text a drop shadow by going to 'Layer' and then 'Layer Style' and then selecting drop shadow.
-I saved a picture from the internet and moved it onto the desktop and then dropped it into Photoshop and used the move tool to move the picture into my A4 piece.
-I then used the brush tool with a low opacity to change the colour of her hair from blonde to brown.
-I then selected the rectangle tool and drew a rectangle and then moved that layer to behind the image so it looks like a border.

Research and Planning: Skin Tutorial

I used the spot healing brush tool to cover her blemishes, I then use the duplicate layer tool to add another layer on top of this one, then on the 'background copy' I filtered it so it had the smart blur, I then altered the opacity to give her a more dewy skin tone. I then started adding extra things onto her, like eye shadow, which I used the brush tool for and just added a darker shade of grey to make her eyes stand out more: I altered the opacity of the colour so that it didn't look so solid. I used the brush tool again to add some blush onto her cheeks, I kept the opacity at a low level and kept the colour close to her skin tone. I also used the same tool to alter the colour of her lips. I then used the same brush tool but made it bigger so I could get a bigger area cover like her hair which I added a pink tint on top of, I kept the opacity at a low level for this as well but you can see like a shadow around which doesn't look good. I haven't used Photoshop that much before.

Research and Planning: Introduction to Photoshop

I first used the lasso tool to draw around the CD and then I added it onto the musical notes background, I then used the scale and rotate tool to alter the size and position of the CD, I then went onto the adjustments and altered the colour balance of the CD. I then used the magic wand tool to select all the white around the horn and then selected the inverse (i.e. the horn) and moved that onto the background and used the scale and rotate tools to move it about and also adjusted the colour balance as well. We then added the musical notes onto the background by clicking on the eye on that layer so they became visible. I then added my text on by selecting the text tool and used the rotate tool to move the text and messed about with the colour and added a drop shadow too it. I filtered the background so it had a wave effect and also changed the colour balance.