public service announcement..

We have been asked to make a psa in our groups about rape. To make sure that our videos are accurate we have been asked to look up some information on the psa's and rape.

http://rasasc.bizview.co.uk/
This is a website that helps women that have been raped go to the police etc. I can use this website to get facts for my video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFwotSD6X4&feature=PlayList&p=33C00D8B5A8C7C5C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=13
This is link that is found on youtube, its a psa about passive smoking, I can use this to find out the best way to get to audiences, in using the camera effectively etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MTRJYnltcI
This is a succesful video from another Alevel student on rape, I can use this to guide me in the right direction when making my video.

what I have learnt over the past week...

Over the past week we have been planning and filming a phone call. In the phone call we had to show two people talking to each other from different ends of the line. We had to use differnet methods and shots to make the vidoe more than just a plain old phone call. Over the past week I have learnt a lot about filming and planning, such as, planning before actually shooting is so important. My group didnt pay much attention to planning and thought that it would be just easy to make it up as we went along, we learnt this wasnt a good thing to do as it took up a lot of our editing time as the filming took a lot longer than we wanted. I have also learnt that the shots we use in the film can be made to look so effective if used correctly. such as an establishing shot etc. In the future when making videos I will make sure to use the things i learnt in this project as im sure it will help me to achieve the highest possible mark.

Video ...

Over this last week, I have learnt the importance of small details that go into camerawork in making it a high quality stream of video. I have learnt how difficult it is in keeping the camera steady, as shaking the camera around makes the video horrible to look at, and that not much effort has been put into it. The same goes for cutting out people's head, the lack of care and consideration for simply putting someones head into a shot, makes a huge amount of difference when it comes to quality. I have also learnt how difficult it is in making a simple 5 minute video. It was very difficult to have dialogue and content in there without proper planning, However it does open your eyes and appreciate real cameramen who film months on end with huge cameras, keeping it steady and making great shots. You understand how much work they really put in.

evaluation presentation...

contents page preliminary..

This was my contents page for my preliminary task.. I feel this was ok bearing in mind that i hadnt used photoshop before.. i feel that this helped me alot in making sure i was ready for my music magazine. I dont feel this is aesthetically pleasing as my music magazines contents.. but this was a big advatage as i could build on it to make it better.

posting my preliminary task ...

As you can see when comparing my preliminary to my music magazine i used a lot of the same ideas such as picture in background etc. I felt that the preliminary task helped me bundles as it gave me many ideas and gave me a much better understanding of photoshop.. i feel my music magazine is a hundred times better than this magazine but I feel this is because i had a preliminary task to improve on.

Contents finished...

I have now finished my contents page and am soo happy about it...

I made sure to use almost identical colours to the front page in my contents as i felt this would make it look fully effective.. I used page numbers reguralry for the same reason.. I felt the colours i used were aesthetically pleasing. i used bigger pictures so that the readers attention is grabbed straight away.. and i was straight forward for the titles of the pages to make sure that viewers are not confused at all when looking for what they want..

How to make my contents fully effective..

I was a little stuck on how to make my contents fully effective as i didnt understand how to use information effectively such as page numbers etc. I have realised now that page numbers and pictures on the contents can help alot and therefore i used them in my work..

Double page spread finished..

I have had a lot of trouble when deciding on things like photos to use and how to organise them on the spread by using photoshop but i have finally finished .. yehhh!!

I have used a lot of colours as i felt this is just aesthetically pleasing but i also felt this would be the most effective to cath the readers eye.. I have sectioned off parts to make it easier to read and i also felt this made it look alot better. I used the picture as a background in the end as i felt this also was the most effective way to use it. i felt that using the questionnaire in the way i did was good too as questionnaires usually bring attention from fans.

Ive chosen...

I chose to use this picture because i felt it was more aesthetically pleasing and i felt it would be more effective in my magazine as a double page spread..

Stuck on pictures again..

For my double page spread i'm extremely stuck! i just dont no what picture will look best.. :S..

I am going to show you the two of which im stuck between..

The reason i dont no wether to use this picture is because im not sure wether the double page spread should have all the members of the band.. Or does this have the same effect as the whole band?
This is the band picture of which i might want to use, not sure wether this has a better effect to the viewer as it has two members of the band other than one..

front page finally finished ...

Since i have been back from the easter holidays i have really had my work cut out in trying to get the front page how i like it and fully finished, ive had a lot of trouble with photoshop but have managed to finish the front page finally.

as you can see I used the magnetic tool to make the picture look like it fades into the magazines colours better. I feel this is good as it makes it look more proffesional and more aesthetically pleasing. I have used differnet layers on photoshop to make different colour appear in different places, such as the red at the top and bottom of the page.. i also used this to put the bar code etc. this also makes it look a lot more proffesional. I used ideas from other magazines such as different colours in the magazines writing too as this makes it a lot more aestheically pleasing.

The pictures

In the last posts i have been talking about how i used pictures for my magazine but i never showed you the kinds of pictures i was using hopefully this will give you more of an understanding.. :)

A brilliant part of photoshop...

As i said in my last post, i feel that photoshop is not treating my pictures very well. I have found out that the magnetic lasso tool will cut out any picture to an appropriate size of which your pleased with. This will help me so much when adding pictures to my magazine, Especially the main picture it will make it look a whole lot better.

what i have found ...

As i have been researching for my magazine by looking at others, ( Kerrang, NME) I can see that a band picture is a big part of these magazines. I have managed to get a real band and i have taken pictures of them but i cannot seem to get the picture on photoshop how i wanted it to look. Im hoping that when i change the settings of the picture, it will help me out and and help to make the picture perfect.

music magazine

I have been research ROCK music magazines as i will be creating this type of genre for my coursework. These magazines usually consist of Bands interviews including band photos or close up images of the main icon in the band, Fashion, Events such as Download etc. There language used is informal and usually very explicit. I have learn't that a lot of the images are very aggressive, or sometimes of very explicit nature. They consist of a lot of black, red and yellow colours. The magazines i focused on most were Kerrang and NME.

preliminary task

we were set a preliminary task to give us more practice before we got to our main task of making a music magazine double spread. The task was to make a front page and contents for a school magazine using photoshop. We used many of the skills we had learnt up until this point to make our task as successful as possible. It was difficult to use photoshop for such long periods of time as it can become quite stressful, but as i came to grips with it I used it to my full ability. I managed to make a front cover as good as i wanted and i feel it has helped me incredibly on the way to making my music magazine double spread. It also gave me more confidence on using photoshop.

Researching a dance magazine

in our lesson we were made to research a magazine consisting of magazines such as, pop, dance etc. I chose to do dance as this is a genre of music in which im interested in. We were made to research these magazines so that we could put our research into our own magazines to make them as good as possible. we learnt alot of useful information such as language used in the magazine this consisted of language that was young, almost quite like slang, words were used such as sick, this means good in the dance world. We also learnt about how to use our pictures from looking at these magazines as they had used them in a differnet way in which i would have before i looked at them. Colours in the magazine were also useful to look at as this can be a big part as to wether the magazine will be successfull or not. This magazine used a lot of funky colours this worked well for the magazine as it reminded me of clubs and dancing which is obviously the genre its supposed to cover. I will take all of this information into consideration when designing and making my magazine as im sure it will help to make it as good as possible.

Photoshop tutorial

On Friday 30th of January, our class had a photoshop tutorial from the ICT technician Mark. He explained all the different things we could use to edit our pictures. He also showed us how to have different layers of the magazine we are designing, so if ever you make a mistake, you do not have to start from the beginning, you can just go on to the original layer of the work.He also explained that when cutting a picture out from another picture, and putting it into the original, you have to use the tool called lasoo, but also, you have to heighten the percentage that the picture is feathered, because if not, then the edges will be really rough.
I feel that i learnt a lot from this lesson but just watching and listening isnt really enough for me therefore i will have a go myself with the proggramme therefore i can see how to use it how in a way that really suits me.

The Sheaf

In our first lesson on the preliminary task we looked at The Sheaf. The sheaf is a college magazine and and although is aimed at a different target audience it gave me a few ideas at what i should look at for my piece. The picture on the front of the magazine is bold and really does a good job of catching the readers eye as soon as you look at, this therefore gives me an idea for my own piece of work and i will make my picture on my magazine just as bold to try and get the same effect.

http://www.thesheaf.com/

starting media

This is my first entry to my blog, i will be creating more entries to show my research and development throughout my project.