Consider the Consequences

Now that we had nothing to do with the rape awareness advert and not enough time until the end of term to start a new project we started the brief for next year, we will be entering a competition for a making a film about the consequences of drinking alcohol when underage. This is to be between 3 and 10 minutes long. The film is for Alcohelp, who help with alcohol problems especially for underage drinking. The website for this is http://www.alcohelp.com/consider/ which explains it in greater details and gives details of how to enter.

We have only just started looking at this so i currently don't have many ideas, but we did a spider diagram in lesson and i have a few that i could expand and elaborate on next year.

Editing the Advert

We had 3 days off 6th form due to an induction for the year below us so we missed a media lesson. The lesson after filming the advert that i couldn't attend we were planning to edit, we got the laptops and camera's and moved to another room because of a en accident that occured in our normal room where someone left the tap on over the weekend. Once we got to the other room we looked at the cameras to find that during the induction for the year below they had a filming task and had taped over our work, this meant that we could do little more with the rape awareness.

25th June

In this lesson we were briefed about our next task where we were instructed to make a "Rape awareness" public service announcement. Firstly we had a chance to speak to 2 previous media students at the school who are both at university at the moment studying within the media industry, both these girls did this particular task a few years ago and gave us some advice about how to do it, such as the ideal locations around the local area such as pubs and parks where a rape scene could be set. After we had a chance to ask them any questions we got into groups of 4, i was with James, Chloe and Olivia. We planned to make a film with a storyline that was along the lines of "suspect the unexpected" meaning that anyone could be raped by anyone. The idea came along by thinking that people may be letting people they don't know into their house such as builders, gas men and other workmen along those lines. We got an idea for how to film the advert from a Gillette advert where many different men and women do the same thing and good cuts give an impression of it being many different people doing the same thing. We spent another lesson planning this and were due to film the following Thursday. This turned out to be a problem for me, Dan and Loice as there was an ICT presentation day that we were told that we had to attend, this meant that i could not take part in the filming.

Filming and Editing "The Phone Call"

On 18th June we started filming "The Phone Call", me and Adam were the actors for the storyline which was based on a blackmail theme, we used a local phone booth for the scene for about an hour filming for the settings and establishing shots. We did all the script for Adam at the phone booth before we went to another location within the school grounds where we filming all the script i was in. Once we had all of this we edited the film for about half an hour before the end of the lesson. We continued to edit the film the next day on 19th. We finished it in this lesson and saved it on the laptops, we edited the film with iMovie on the MACs, this was the first time i had used one. This was my first real go at making a film with a storyline and editing. I feel that i have learnt from this well and i got a bit of acting experience from it as well no matter how brief it was.

16th June 2009

On this day we were briefed about the short film we would be making called "The Phone Call" we were given a list of scenes in a random order to film and we would arange them later in editing on iMovie, this will be our 1st time editing. We started work on a story line and drew up origional storyboards. We are due to start work filming on it on 18 June.

12 June 2009

On this day we viewed the films that other groups had made about a tour around St. Marks and assessed them with good and bad points, we were given advice on how to improve filming next time around and what problems will occur e.g. background noise like wind, that we can edit out in iMovie on the Mac Books

Filming Essay

On Thursday 11th June we had to make a short film about a tour around our 6th form, we did this in a group of 5. we chose to do a short film about a new student at the school who got shown around by the head boy, our film clearly showed that we weren’t very good at holding the camera steady or timing cuts very well as the camera was often shaking and the cuts we made weren’t very good and very quick. Another problem with our film was the sound quality, this was due to using a camcorder outside with wind and not having the chance to edit it out so there wasn’t much we could do about it, this was a common problem with all the groups and films, another common problem with all the films was holding the camera steady as zooming in and out often made it shake slightly. Traffic noise was also a big problem in other people’s films because they were much louder than wind and couldn't hear the speech over it very well. But these are problems that should be overcome during editing. Editing would also overcome other problems that showed in the films such as gaps between cuts and rewinding the tapes successfully. This was very clear fault in some of the films as there was time between cuts where there would be simply and blue screen and no sound until the scene continues, another fault like this was when a scene has been done again but not rewound properly and the scene starts then starts again, these problems wouldn’t occur when we use editing because we can edit them out but we now know how to avoid it. I feel that we have now learnt from our mistakes and next time we film the film will be to a higher standard by using equipment such as a tripod to hold camera steady and iMovie on the Mac books to edit the sound well. One other problem that other films had was that it wasn’t very relevant to having a tour around the 6th form. This was the first time I had use a camcorder seriously or for work purposes and I feel that it has helped me a lot and I will continue to improve on aspects such as holding the camera steady and choosing the correct angle.

With more practice using the camera and more practice choosing how to arrange the shots I feel that the standard of my filming with significantly improve.

Film Making Essay

On Tuesday 9th June we were instructed to take many different angle and distance shots with a camcorder, we did this in groups of 4-5. we had 1 hour to do this, we had a problem with the camera where it was out of battery and we could only film when it was plugged in to a plug socket. this obviously limited where we could film and the movement we could have.

Full Magazine

Presentation

I think my magazine looks professional and wouldn’t be surprised if a magazine just like mine would be sold on a shop shelf, this compared to a recent issue of Q magazine and NME which are two of the UK’s top-selling music magazines, they all look like they could be real magazines, the biggest difference is the photography where they can afford sets, props, and a professional photographer. Another one of the differences is that the Q magazine has a title of “The Killers” and NME has “The Last Shadow Puppets” and mine doesn’t have a title apart from the logo in the top left. I feel that my magazine has a good colour scheme that looks professional and smart. I decided to go for the smart look when I was researching into Q magazine.
The similarities are that all 3 magazines logos are in the top left, and all have other features going the down the left hand side of the page. They also don’t have that many people in the shots where here there is 1 or 2, not a whole band. They also all have a bar code near the bottom right corner.

With my preliminary task I approached it well I thought although now looking back on it, I feel I have done much better with my final music magazine, this is because my school magazine looks more like a newspaper with 5 images on it where my final magazine only has one image which after doing research is the norm for music magazines, this is why I feel that my magazine is much better than my preliminary task school magazine. I feel that my preliminary task I kept a very good colour scheme keeping 2 colours as my main colours and carried them onto the contents page as well, I also did this for my final task using black, blue and white, where my preliminary task colours were purple and white, for both tasks I was able to carry the scheme over to the contents page as well.
I feel the biggest difference between my two tasks now is that my main one is much more professional, the preliminary task was the first time I used Photoshop and designed a magazine and I think that that shows, I think that my magazine shows how far I have come with my research and my understanding of music magazines.

I felt that to get my magazine looking like a professional magazine that could be sold I had to my front cover almost perfect, so I devoted most of my time and research to front covers and contents and layouts of different front covers. I ended up spending about 6 hours of time on the front cover, this included lesson and free periods where I would play about and edit my front cover until I was 100% happy with how it looked. I intended to spend about 1 and a half hours on the contents because I knew what I was going to include in it and most of the content to put in, I ended up spending about 2/3 hours in lesson and free periods to get it the way I wanted it. With the A3 spread I wanted to spend less than 3 hours on because it shouldn’t be too hard because I knew about the layout I wanted. I spent about 3/4 hours on it which was mostly in lesson time.

To make my music magazine I had to use Photoshop, which I had not previously used before attempting my preliminary task, we had one of the ICT technicians show us how to do it originally and was then around for a few lessons if we had any questions, I feel that got to grips with the new software quickly and managed to do what I wanted without many problems.
I had a problem when I was trying to sort the picture that I wanted for my front cover out, I managed to get round the issue I had which was that the logo of my magazine was covering the lighting which gave the picture a good amount of colour and light. I did this by reversing the picture so the light was on the other side and the image was not effected a great deal.
I am much more confident using Photoshop now and feel that I can edit a picture well if I want to, I this could help me a lot next year if I continue to do media.

I feel my images are all very good with a good range of medium and long shots, I feel they offer a good variety in terms of lighting and are not all repeats. I also feel they look professional live photos. I think I have picked the best picture for my front cover as it has the best lighting and background with all band members in. I think all the locations are relevant because they all are taken during a live performance.

I feel that I have further had my style of professional and smart magazine with the language which I feel has good grammar and is not hard to read. I feel that because of this my audience will not get thrown off the magazine while reading it, and that it fits the genre well. In the course of my research I read and analysed the language used in the articles and tried to copy the style.

I feel that my magazine fills the gap between the genres of Q and NME with a more professional and smart look towards rock and indie music. This is why I feel that my magazine could be professionally sold in newsagents if it was a real magazine.

I would use Bauer to sell my magazine if it went on sale, this is because they have magazines such as Q and Kerrang so they obviously know how to produce a successful music magazine and what to do with it.

I feel that my audience for my magazine would be mainly males between the ages of 13 and 30 because of the rock genre and the colour scheme is more of a male colour with black and blue. This is only the main audience I also feel that the magazine could aim at mainly university students boys and girls.
I asked a few people about my age to assess my magazine and they said that it looked attractive and had a good colour scheme.

I feel that my smart colour scheme and background colour is a very good aspect of my magazine and would attract potential customers. I also feel that keeping the house style throughout is a huge plus. I feel that my magazines smart style of layout and writing can connect with university students because it is a lively genre of music but sophisticated magazine at the same time.
I also included a website that I mentioned on my A3 spread at the bottom right corner.

I feel that my magazine has shown me that with research and time and effort I can make a good looking magazine that isn’t far off professional standards. I feel that my photos helped me a great deal because they were live acts and I got some very good shots.
I feel that if I printed out the front page and put it on a shelf at a newsagents people who saw it would not recognise it’s not a professional magazine.

A3 Spread

For my A3 spread, the first thing I wanted to do was keep my colour scheme. To do this I put a black background, with predominantly blue writing. I also added the page numbers, exactly the same colour and shape as the page numbers on the contents page.



For the content, I looked up Hard-Fi on Google, looked on a few sights to find out basic information that I didn't already know. I used this to briefly find out hat I wanted to include in the content of my main spread and write it in my own words as well as including some quotes.

I included 4 pictures, that I already had, I included one picture at the end of the article, which is a picture of the end of the concert with the encore, this picture is also a long shot which shows the whole band. I feel that this is relevant because it is the end of both the article and the concert. The rest of the pictures are live action pictures all from a fairly mid range distance.

To keep my colour scheme unique in made the first word of the article white, I came up with this idea when i saw that Q magazine have the first letter of their articles are much bigger than the rest of the writing. I feel this makes my magazine more unique and keeps a good colour scheme.




After my article and underneath my last picture, I included a small advert for my magazine's website and Hard-Fi's websites, I did this to make it look more professional and relevant to the page, I also coloured the writing "http://www.brokenrecordmag.co.uk/" white. This makes the website for my magazine stand out more, the other 2 websites are in blue writing.

Making the Contents

To make the contents page the first thing I did was to put the logo in the top right hand corner, which stands out but isn't in the way.

Which looked like this after I had added the text;



I stayed with my black, blue and white colour scheme, I had the title "Contents" at the top left to be the same size as the logo so it was aligned. To keep my colour scheme I decided to have a black background with white titles and page numbers with the features names in blue so the writing was equally white and blue.

The next thing I did was to get 2 pictures in, these were one of Billy Lunn and one of Hard-Fi, this is because those are to be my magazines 2 main features so they were both pictured on my contents page.

With the pictures i decided to use the "Cookie Cutter Tool" this cuts out some of a picture, i chose to cut out the outline of the picture to give it a more rough look to it, I used the same effect on both pictures and overlapped them, this gave the contents a more messy look to it but it stayed simple.


The last thing I did with the contents was to add the page number, the contents would page 1. I did this by making a small blue box (the same shade of blue as the writing) and then adding a black page number into it.

Making The Front Cover

To make my front cover I used a photo of Hard-Fi because they are going to be my main feature for this issue. To do this I took the most eye-catching photo i had and cropped it first to make it fit onto an A4 piece of paper.


This is the cropped version of;






This gives me the background for my front cover, i am using one photo on the front cover because that is what I have found to be the "norm" for most music magazines after doing my research. Once i got this photo I looked at the different colour effects that I could use, I decided to enhance the colour more to make the picture bolder and more colourful, this did not make it any less defined just brighter, which I feel made it more eye-catching.


I had not sorted out a logo or name for my magazine once I had this photo, so I made that my priority, I thought of many things that were relevant to music to play around with the words, such as;

CD, Tape, Radio, Sound, Speaker, Instrument, Record, Gig, Concert, Venue

After playing around with these words I came to my final choice of having "Broken Record" as my name.

I then needed a logo, I deiced to use Paint on the computer to design one, My first idea was to have a large B and a large R with the words after each other, but after trying this it took up a lot of room and didn't look very eye-catching. I then had the idea to have a big B and R with "Broken Record" underneath it, I couldn't manage to tilt writing on Paint so i wrote "Broken Record" on when editing the front cover on PhotoShop

My final logo is;

I saw on different magazines I had bought there was writing over the pictures in different colours, I didn't like the idea of having different colours because I am sure i want Black Blue and White as my colour scheme, I then had the idea of a slanted black text box and writing for the features. this worker very well. I then added a black circle at the end of it to round off the edge of the box, I feel that this gives it a different effect which makes the cover look less solid, it also works well with the wire and microphone rounded at the same angles.

To include other features in the magazine I put a black box at the bottom left of the front cover to include smaller features such as; An album review, Bands to reform in 2009 and The Weird and The Wonderful.

To make my bar code I looked up pictures of bar codes on Google, took notes about how they were laid out, the size of the bars and where abouts the numbers are and how many there are. I then designed my own bar code on Paint.

I also added the details of the issue into a slated black box at the bottom right hand side. This includes the issue number, the price and the date of release.

The final outcome;

Photos

I decided to use some photos that I had already from a concert I went to in December 2007 as I knew I had some good photos that can be used. They are from a Hard-Fi concert at Wembely. Some of the best photos that I am going to use are.

I feel that this is a very good photo with good lighting, visibility and positions. Because the photo is landscape I would have to crop the photo to be on the front cover.

I feel this photo is good because it is easy to crop, this is because both of the band members featured in this photo are in the middle and there is nothing in the way of the photo, the lighting is also fairly good.

I think this photo is good enough to use because it has very different lighting to many of my other photos, it also has a clear visibility and focused on the lead singer.

I think this photo is good because it features 3 members of the band all in the central position. It is also easy to crop again because they are all in the middle of the shot.

I feel this photo is good because the lead singer has a close up with a good pose, although another band member is behind him i feel i could use this photo in my magazine.

This photo is good because the confetti is being sprayed upwards at the end of the concert as well steam, this gives a great view as an action shot, the shot has a great visibility as well.

This photo was taken at a local gig where the lead singer of The Subways (Billy Lunn) was doing an acoustic performance at a local venue, this shot gives a great action shot close-up of him playing. The lighting could defiantly be better but i don't think it makes that much difference if I can edit it well enough to make it less noticeable.

Planning

On 6th March we were told how to plan and take our photos for our magazine, we got basic ideas and first initial thoughts on what we could include and how to take the photos and edit them. we got about 10 minutes at the end of the lesson to plan the layout and pictures.

I bought 2 magazines, ( One Q and one NME ) to help get ideas for content and how to layout my front cover. My magazine i had already decided was going to have a genre of Alternative Rock/Indie. which meant that NME and Q were probably the 2 nearest magazines feature-wise to what I wanted my magazine to be.

I looked at the double page spreads that these 2 magazines had and any older magazines I had from previous months and issues, a lot of the double pages had interviews or reviews. this is when i decided that i would have a review as one of my main features.

I wanted to make my magazine different from any other big magazines out at the moment so I decided to have as my main A3 spread the story of a band/artist.

The first thing i had to decide for my magazine in my mind was the colour scheme, i chose to have black and blue mainly with some white.

before starting the first thing which would be the front cover I had to know what a good front cover looks like so I went through any magazines I had at home which mostly included NME and Q ( I also went back over the presentation I did on Q magazine because i knew I included many images of Q's front covers on it) and got a good idea what I wanted to include which was one big image that was applied as the background and text around the top bottom and sides wit the image being the central idea. This meant I had to have a very good image which stood out.

Presentation

On 5th March we made a presentation on a music magazine, we had to do it on a magazine that we had not previously looked at. I decided to do it on Q, we had 2 hours to do this and present facts and figures on a PowerPoint presentation. this was a helpful task because we could see what we had to include and think about when making our magazine cover, contents and double sheet.

Essay

On 3rd March we had to do an essay in the lesson on the ways in which magazines attract their audiences online and on the print versions, including things such as keeping reader loyalty and free gifts and the differences between both. this is why the homework we had to do before was important.

I wrote about the layout, the free gifts that are given away both online and on print, how the website can be updated much more often than the print and how the genre of music is kept consistent every week to keep people buying it every week and keeping the loyalty of the customers.

Music Magazine Homework.

I decided to compare the versions of NME print and online.

One of the biggest differences between the print and online on first impressions was the lack of colour on the online version, the print version is very colourful with many coloured backgrounds. on the website there is a simple white background. The online version has much more content because it has pretty much unlimited space to put features in, a magazine only has a set amount of pages to work with and also have to include adverts to make the money in those pages as well so there's much more content online.

The print versions include posters with every issue. which the online version obviously can't include unless you take a picture they on there and print it out. they do include however pictures big enough to be a desktop background on most computers. these are all free gifts, other free gifts are only available by buying the print issue, like the issue i was looking at gave away a free CD and a Kings Of Leon poster.

Magazine analysis

On Friday 27th February we had more time to look at music magazines. I chose to look more at NME and at kerrang because i hadn't looked at that yet, both magazines had very similar contents but with different genres and styles of music.

We were given homework on comparing the print version and the online version.

Contents Page

On Thursday 26th February we had to do the 2nd part of the preliminary task, we had to make the contents page for our magazine. We had our double lesson to do it in the computer room. I made sure i had a good house style with the same colour background and the same font. this is important to make it look as realistic as any other magazine.

this is my final product.

After we had finished the contents page we had some time to look at some different music magazines. there was a selection of NME, Kerrang and Top of the Pops for us to look at. we had about 30 minutes to look at them for.

Muisc Genres

On Tuesday 23rd Feb we were given a task to do with music genres where we had to give examples of what makes up a genre and what is included aswell as stereotypes that go along with them, we given 4 genres to right about, Rock, Pop, R "n" B and Dance. we worked in groups of 4 and did a genre each. I did rock where I mentioned examples of bands, examples of songs and the style of music it is.

Editing Magazine Cover

On Thursday 12th February we had to edit and compose our front cover of our school magazine which includes at least one medium close up of a student. Unfortunately I had a dentist appointment on this day which overlapped with part of our double Media lesson. I was back from the dentist with 70 minutes left of the double lesson. I found the right classroom as we needed ICT to use photoshop. I had an hour less than everyone else so i was behind straight away but i managed to get it done with the schools colours being my colour scheme of maroon and white.

Taking the photos

On Tuesday 10th February we had to take the pictures we wanted to use for our school magazine front covers. the first picture I took was a low angle shot of the schools crest that is on a banner outside the English department. I also took photos of the library, a friend (who agreed to be in some photos) looking through a book, I also took a picture of the section of wall in the 6th form block where the year photos of the 6th form are hung, (this was for a section on my magazine that would be "The History Of The 6th Form"). After taking the pictures me and Dan returned the camera and batteries to Mrs Rogers and uploaded the pictures. We were then let go 10 minutes early.

Drafts

On Friday 6th February we had to plan and draw our front covers. We had to think of a catchy name (which I struggled with) and sort out how our school magazine front cover would be laid out, with pictures and text. i decided to have mine divided by a slightly diagonal line down the middle of the page and a small triangle at the bottom right of the front cover where a small blurb/contents of the magazine could be place. I also put a low angle view of the schools badge at the top left had corner next to the title.

Editing Nature photos

Because we had a snow day on Tuesday 3rd February we had to do the editing on Thursday 5th. This didn't help much because the photoshop tutorial Mark gave us was a week ago so a lot of the skills had slipped my mind by now. This obviously made it a lot harder than it had to be but it was doable. We didn't have the best pictures to work with so that made it a lot harder to do. I found a picture I took of an overview of the pond across the road of the school with a floating platform in the pond and many ducks on with a background of many trees. i made this the background of my A4 size picture for the magazine. To give it more affect I increased the red in the colour to give it a different feel to the picture which I felt gave it more personality and a more peaceful look. Then i added some text, I added the word "Nature" at the top of the picture as a title. I also added the text "January 2009", i made this into vertical text so it ran down the side of the page.

Nature Magazine Front Cover

On Friday 30th January we were given a task of taking a medium close up picture that would be suitable for the front cover of a nature magazine, were given a camera between groups of 2/3 and aloud out of school premises and around the local area. Me and Dan decided we would go to the pond over the road from the school because there is usually wildlife there such as ducks, swans and other birds. we had an opportunity for a very good photo of a robin in a tree but unfortunately before we could turn the camera on and take a picture it had flown away. We did get some good pictures of ducks in the water although a lot of the time they would swim away from anyone getting near them. after around 30 mins taking pictures we returned to the classroom and uploaded the pictures onto Miss Rogers' laptop.

Photoshop Tutorial

On Thursday 29th January we had a tutorial of how to use Photoshop given by the school's ICT technician Mark. He showed us all the basic editing techniques and how to do most things we are likely to need, he then let us ask him any questions about things we didn't understand or things he had left out.

After the tutorial we were given a copy of 2 front pages of university magazines, QUAD (Queen Mary University of London) and Newsman (Newman House, University of Birmingham). we had to annotate the front pages and explain the techniques used in making the front covers attractive to the reader.

Online school magazine

For my magazine i used "Precinct" which is a magazine at The University Of Liverpool For Staff and Students. The issue i used was the Nov/Dec 2004 issue which was issue 198.

The link to the magazine is http://www.liv.ac.uk/precinct/nov2004/novdec04.pdf

The first page is just a front cover showing the north of England around the Liverpool area. There are 24 pages to the magazine including a contents. First impressions of this is that it is a very colourful magazine with most of the contents having a coloured background, the colours are also very varied. They also use a lot of pictures to illustrate the point being made or to further explain it. Although a lot of the magazine looks similar it does not have a clear definitive house style. this is because a lot of the posts and columns are in random places with random colour backgrounds, some don't have any background at all. The page after the contents suggests that the magazine is not just for people at Liverpool University but most people at University (teachers and students) all over the north of England. This is because it gives facts and figures about the north in general before mentioning Liverpool after the contents page.

The first couple of pages talks mainly about science and research more than anything else, it then has a small section about the Chief Executive of Liverpool Football Club Rick Parry at the launch of a course. then they go on to talk about buildings and then music on the next few pages, there clearly is no order of what is being mentioned and each section has no relevance if any to the last or next. There is a section for people to write in on page 12, this issue has someone writing in about the unhealthy lifestyle of England and what the local sports centre has done and the fact that people now have to pay treble for their memberships. on page 16 there is an interview with 3 university staff about "The Graduate School". and this is followed on the next page by introducing 8 new professors to the university in the magazine. There is a similar section on page 19 where there is a farewell section for 3 staff leaving the university. On pages 21 and 22 there are a lot of adverts for activities that are available to students including music and art. there are also classifieds and noticements on page 22 and 23. On the final page is an advert for a local book shop.

Sales Pitch

In today's media lesson we had to present a sales pitch for a school magazine, we were given costs of how much the paper would cost to product for different ways. we had around an hour to prepare it and perform it in front of the class. we had to consider target audiences, any images we want to include, the content we include, how we can make the magazine attractive to people, the format of the magazine and the house style. My group didn't do too well because we failed to make it very relative to the school and more of a general magazine.