Research and Planning: Shot Research

Point of View Shot

Mid Shot

Close Up

Extreme Close Up

Two Shot

Wide Shot

Aerial Shot

Over The Shoulder Shot

Preliminary task: My College Magazine

Above is the front cover page and contents page for my preliminary task - a college magazine.

Research and Planning: Creating signs to depict meanings

These are imaginary mastheads for imaginary magazines. I created the magazine mastheads by looking at the name and creating the font in a way that I thought would be appropriate for that type of magazine.

Research and Planning: Semiotic Research

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how they relate to language and other means of communication.


They are indications: ways to explain, without actually explaining, what is going on. For example, rock magazines include signs that show us that they are just that, without actually saying 'we are a rock magazine, like rock? Have a read..'.


Below is a picture of the cover page of one edition of Kerrang magazine:

One of the biggest signs that this is a rock magazine is the colours, red and black. These are colours largely associated with rock, and if the cover page of this edition were in baby pinks, yellows and light blues, we would not be given the same impression. Similarly, the words and fonts used are also signs of the rock theme: 'unfold the puzzle of life' is a 'darker' phrase, and the font at the bottom of the page is block, rather than full of flicks and curves.

Research and Planning: Target Audience for Magazine

The target audience of any magazine is very important. If you aim a college magazine at the wrong type of people, not many people will read and enjoy it to the point that they get it again next month.

The target audience for my magazine is broken down into:

Age

I will aim my magazine at people aged between 15 and 21, taking into consideration potential students joining the college in the next year.

Gender

My magazine will be suitable for both male and female genders to read, although there might be certain articles aimed more toward one gender than the other.

Interests

The interests of the people reading my magazine would be things associated with the perks of college, such as student discount, as well as trips away and interesting visitors at college. Articles will also be useful, such as how UCAS works.

Education

The magazine will be read by people at my college, Hyde Clarendon. They could be people studying part time or full time, and enrolled on A Level Courses or BTEC Courses.

Class

The class of most people at Hyde Clarendon is working/middle class, and my magazine will be written with that in mind.

Research and Planning: Medium close up examples

All three of the above are medium close up shots. I will use a medium close up shot similar to one of these on my college magazine cover page.

Research and Planning: Analysis of College Magazine

This is a good example of a college magazine because:


- The name of the magazine is 'College Lifestyle'
- Text on the front cover is simple
- The image is of a student, who has a 'Law, Business and Society' book, amongst others, in his hand.
- The stories and articles are aimed at students. For example 'Make Money on Campus'
- The colours are sophisticated, which is subconsciously important to students growing up and becoming independent. Bright colours, such as mixes of reds, blues, oranges, pinks etc. would discourage a student from buying the magazine, with the reason that it looks childish.

Research and Planning: Introduction to InDesign

 

For our introduction to InDesign, we made a film review using the program.

To do this, first I went online and found a film review for Toy Story 3. I then found an image from the film and saved into my file. After this, I opened InDesign and created my background using the rectangle tool and dragging it to cover the entire A4 page on my screen. At first, I coloured the background a light yellow colour. After the background had been coloured, I entered a title at the top of the page using the text tool. Then it was time to put the text from the film review onto my page. I did this by going into Layout, then Guidelines and entering 3 as the number of columns I wanted for my review. The program created useful guidelines which helped me when I copied and pasted my film review. At first, it appeared on my screen and wasn't arranged in columns. To sort this out, I clicked edit, then undo place, and the text appeared on my cursor, ready to be put wherever I wanted.

Research and Planning: Introduction to Photoshop (Skin Correction Tutorial)

Research and Planning: Introduction to Photoshop (Creating a Document)

For this piece we were set a photoshop challenge, which was to complete the following 8 tasks:


- Open up an A4 document to work on.
I did this by going to File, New, International Paper, A4.


- Write text 'AS Media Studies' in Century Gothic in size 24 font.
For this, I used the 'T' tool on the toolbar, then used the Text Character and Paragraph tools to change the font and size.


- Change the colour of the text to red and centre it in the middle of the page. 
Again, I used the Text Character and Paragraph tools here, to change the colour, then used the Alignment tools to centre the text into the middle of the page.


- Change the background colour to blue.
This was done simply by selecting the background layer, clicking on the paint fill tool and changing the colour to blue, before clicking somewhere on the document.


- Highlight the text and give it a drop shadow.
To give my text a drop shadow, I highlighted it, then selected Layer, Layer Style, then Drop Shadow. Changing the preferences can change the position, depth and colour of the shadow.


- Place a picture of a person from the computer/internet under the text.
All I had to do for this was open the file and drag and drop it onto my document.


- Change their hair colour.
For this I selected the paintbrush tool, changed the opacity to a low number, changed the colour of my paintbrush, and coloured the hair.


- Draw a border of any colour or shape around the picture.
I selected an interesting border for this, which I found on the Styles tab.


By completing this piece, I learnt that in many cases there is more than one way to do a number of things on photoshop.

Research and Planning: Introduction to Photoshop (CD Cover)

 

This CD cover is the first piece we did in our Media class. It was a simple way to ease us in to the class, and introduce us to Photoshop.


We were originally given three images; the CD, the music sheet, and the horn. We were given a set of tasks:


- Merge the three objects, with the music sheet as the background, into one photoshop document.
We did this by dragging and dropping the two foreground images onto the background
- Rotate the CD
This was done by selecting the CD layer, selecting Edit, hovering over Transform, and then clicking on Rotate, which us enabled us to rotate the image by clicking and dragging with the mouse.
- Add text
For this, we used the 'T' Icon on the toolbar. Then, we clicked on the page, where we wanted to type, and typed the text. We edited the text using the Character option on the Layer/Adjustments/Style bar, and added a drop shadow by selecting Layer, followed by Layer Style.
- Reveal the notes
For this, it was just a case of finding the notes on the Layers list, and clicking on the box, to make it visible.
- Change the colour of the CD
There are many different ways to do this, but I did it using the Magic Wand tool, as I wanted to change the colour of to different parts of the CD

I'm quite pleased with the outcome of this first piece. 

Media with Keisha, Lucy and Holly! :)

Welcome to my blog! This is the place you can catch up with everything I'm doing in Media Studies, including coursework prep and all the crazy things we're discovering and exploring as part of the course!


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Ciao for now,
Tasha :) x