Preliminary task 2: Magazine cover/contents

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My drawn plan.

i did do some changes to it later, i switched which side the text was on so it didn't cover up the picture and it just looks better.

i liked this task as well as the first one, though i didn't learn much because i already have Photoshop on my home computer and use it on regular basis. there are some differences though, like my Photoshop isn't as simple to use and some of the things are in different places.

we had to make a magazine front cover and contents page for this task, the target audience was students at school, so basically just a school magazine. i worked on my own so i decided to use our schools colours as the 3 colours for the front cover and contents (Green, blue, white). I used a mid-shot action photo for the front cover so it looked interesting rather than just someone standing still. I tried to stick to the things that magazines should include with a check list i made which including things like:

• Masthead
• cover line
• main image
• colour/fonts

the masthead should:

• Go across the page
• reflect the magazines style
• go over/under the cover photo.

I followed all of these, the title "L.C news" goes across the page, the style of the text is aimed at my age and the writing goes over the cover photo.

the cover lines should:

• seem like special feature (Plug & lure)
• hyperbole

i don't think i followed these very well, i made the main story hyperbole with "missed it by a long shot" but i didn't have a plug or lure unless the subtitle counts "Dare to read this?"

the main image should:

• big enough to fill the page
• young person (because its aimed at students)
• only use one photo

i stuck to all of these, i took about 30 pictures so i had a lot to chose from I'm happy with the one i picture though!

the colours and fonts should:

• only have 3
• reflect the audience
• title should stand out from background
• mixture of fonts (tops 3)

the only one i didn't do was change the fonts because i didn't think it looked right with different fonts.

Preliminary task 1: Video

for the first preliminary task we split into groups, in my group we had Sian Ball, Abi Edwards and Jezz Maxey. the task was to film a short sequence where someone

• Walked through a door
• walked across a room
• sat down in a chair
• some lines of dialogue

we had to include an over the shoulder shot. we story boarded our ideas quickly which i sketched out, before we began filming so we had a vague idea of what we were doing. we new what we wanted to do but we didn't no where to do it, i think that was one of the big time wasting problems we had. one of the shots we wanted to do was kicking a door open, it would be alright if we had done it after school but we couldn't kick a door in with great effect during lesson time. we didn't plan our narrative either, at the beginning anyway we wrote them down when we got to the point when we needed to film it.

we ended up doing filming/editing three times. the first time included:

• a long shot of me walking down a hall
• then a close up of my feet from the floor as i walked past
• then me going kicking a door open
• then me walking through the door
• slamming my hands on the table from a low angle
• and a mid shot of me shouting "Where is it!?"
• then we tried to keep to the 180 degree rule when me and jezz were disscussing where 'it' was.

unforuntally, we lost alot of the film and it didn't flow very well so we had to film it again. this time it was abi and sian who acted.

we stated off with a panning shot of sian walking out of a door, this covered the 'walk through a door" part we had to include. then we did a mid-shot of sian walking through the door from the front followed by a long shot of her walking round the corner to the bench abi was sat on. as she got closer to the bench we switched to over the shoulder breifly then switched to her sitting down next to abi.

because we didn't have much time left we went for quick simply diologue, sian has done an exam and she thinks she failed and abi is asking how she did.

we started editing it, but when we came back to add sound/effects/transitions the year above us had saved over our work so we had to edit it all over again which wasn't so bad because i think we made it better than it was before, accept we didn't add any music but the diegtetic sound that are already on it are enough i think.

i did like the task, but it was annoying when camera's didn't record everything because you dont no what your doing wrong. I can't wait to do the real thing so i can use my own camera. its a hard disc drive camera, so normally i can just take a video, stop it, that makes a new file on the camera then start again and then when im finish with the shots i can just drag on drop them into sony vegas on my laptop which is a lot easier.