Evaluation - Final Powerpoint

Music Magazine Evaluation from Lucy Teoh

Update

My final deadline for my evaluation is on Wednesday, so I'm going to use the next couple of days to really work on my powerpoint and prepare myself for my presentation. Wish me luck!

Evaluation - Question 7

The final question is “Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?” 

When I look back at the school magazine I did for my preliminary task, I see how much my photoshop skills have improved. I have also learnt how to take better quality images and how to make a layout better.

Evaluation - Question 6

Question 6 is 'What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?'
The first thing I learned was how to use a professional D5100 nickon camera. I learnt how to use shutter speed and aperture, and I learnt how to use a professional lighting studio. I also learnt how to use two different programs; photoshop and InDesign. With photoshop I watched youtube tutorials online and learnt how to airbrush, change hair colour ect. With InDesign I learnt how to create a professional layout.

Evaluation - Question 5

Question 5 is: 'What did you do to attract/address your audience?'

Firstly, my front cover model is staring straight into the camera which attracts the readers attention. I also used large headlines on my front cover and double page spread to draw the readers eye. My colour scheme is also suited towards my target audience. The name for my made up artist on the front cover is two names from famous rock artists so this attracts my audience as many of my target audience said they what attracts them most to the magazine is an artist they like on the cover.

Evaluation - Question 4

  Today, I answered question 4 of my evaluation “Who would be the audience for your media product?” this question has been answered repeatedly through the course of my project because my media product is aimed at my target audience. Therefore my magazine is targeted at teenagers and young adults between the ages of 14-25 who are interested in the rock genre.

Evaluation - Question 3

For this question I looked at two different media institutions:  Bawer Media Group and Team Rock. BMG publishes Kerrang and Q some of the biggest music magazines out there and they reach over 19 million adults every week. Then there is Team Rock who publish Classic Rock and Metal Hammer, so this company is more specific to my genre.  

Evaluation - Question 2

   Today, I answered question 2 of my evaluation. 'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

None of the people in my magazine are over 18 and this is shown through the images I have used. This is especially shown in my double page spread where I have three teenagers shown and they are messing and not being serious like they are stereotypically supposed to be. They are also shown to be teenagers through their clothing choices. The girl is wearing jeans and a superman t-shirt which is common among teenagers. The boys are also seen wearing casual clothing. In the contents page there is also teenagers there and I’ve shown this by editing the hair colours of two of the girls. Bright coloured hair attracts more attention which is another stereotype of teenagers- that they want attention. Teenagers are also represented in the dialogue in the article as the speech is casual and there are some swearwords.

My magazine isn’t gender specific, but it does have mainly girls included in it. This is because more males tend to listen to the rock genre, so by including females on the cover it makes women feel more included. But the women shown in my magazine don’t fit the gender roles. The two girls featured in the main photos for the double page spread and the front cover both have short hair, which isn’t very stereotypical. They also wear quite masculine clothes. The two males shown in my magazine aren’t shown in serious poses, which is what magazines usually do. Their dialogue in the article shows them tagging behind the female member in their made up band ‘Heart over soul.’

Evaluation - Question 1

Today, I answered question 1 “In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”The main conventions my magazine uses are:

•          Blocky style contents page

•          Name of magazine being behind artists head

•          Use of accent colours

The main conventions my magazine develops are:

•          Lowercase text instead of uppercase on my front cover

•          Blurbs for only a couple of articles on the contents page

The main convention my magazine challenges are:

•          Having a solo artist on the cover instead of multiple band members.

Update

Now that I have finished my magazine, I need to evaluate it. To do this I will produce a powerpoint presentation and answer seven questions to do with my magazine. The deadline for this is May 7th.
So over the next few weeks I will be answering the questions briefly on my blog.

Final Cut

Today is the deadline for the final cut of my magazine. So here it is:

I am really happy with how this turned out. Compared to my final cut; I got rid of the header of the top, added more plugs and changed some of the fonts.

The contents page is the page I am least happy about, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out. I didn't change much of this page compared to my rough cut; all I really did was finish it off.

This is the page I am most proud of. I just changed some fonts around and added some captions but more or less, it is the same as my rough cut.

Update

Today all I did was finish off writing the article headlines and blurbs for the contents page. I researched real band names for the headlines.

Update

I finished my front cover today. I added another poster to the 'poster pullout' plug, as I felt two wasn't filling up enough space. I also make a 50 years of rock plug inspired by a plug from the Rock Sound front cover I looked at.

Update

Today I changed some of the fonts on my double page spread so they were easier to read. While I like the font I used originally, the new font makes the writing look a lot cleaner and easier to read. I just got rid of the font everywhere I used it as well.

Photoshop Process #6

I used this image as a poster on my front cover, and it is one of the photos I took for my double page spread. It wasn't suitable for my spread, but I really liked the photo so I wanted to use it in my magazine. I eventually decided to use it as a poster, but I needed to change the mise-en-scene a bit so the image wouldn't be the same as the circle plug which already has the same model. I started off with this image:

Then I edited it using the same process I did for my front cover photo.

Now I needed to change the mise-en-scene so it would't be so simular to my other front cover photo which has her in.

Then I brightened the image a bit more, and used the quick selection tool to select her t-shirt. Then I refined the edge and changed the colour using the hue/saturation tool to change the colour of the shirt to black.

Update

I also want to show the photoshop process of one of the poster on my front cover. Even though the picture is really small, it's one of my favourite photos that I took. So that blog post will be up tomorrow.

Photoshop Process #5

For the final photo of my contents page, which is the one of the three people from my double page spread, I had to edit it a lot. I couldn't find a nice serious (ish) photo of all three of my models, so I had to do some serious editing. I found this photo which I liked of Mark and Rowan:

But I needed Alex to be in the photo too. So I took this photo which I liked of Alex:

And I decided to edit him into the photo. 

This was a very complicated edit so I'll go though the process now.

I started off by editing the models separately, and just did what I do with every edit: selective colour, brighten image, airbrush, dodge and burn.

I started off with a background layer of grey.

I then placed the already edited image of Mark and Rowan over the top of this and positioned the framing so there would be room for Alex.

I then duplicated a piece of the background on a new layer to make the background look larger.

Finally I cut Alex out using a mask and placed him in the image. I adjusted the colours so the lighting would be the same on everyone.

Photoshop Process #4

I just remembered that I haven't shown my photoshop process for the other two contents page photos. So here is the one of Jess.

I started off by brightening the image and using the selective colour adjustment tool to add more warmth to the photo.

I then edited the background so it would be different from my other photos, as I shot the photo with the same background. I did this by using the dodging and burning tool.

I used a curves adjustment layer to change the background colour even more and then used an inverted mask to only apply that colour on the background.

Finally I airbrushed her skin and dodged and burned any areas of her face that I wanted to emphasis.

Update

I didn't have time to show you the photoshop process for my two other contents page pictures, so I'm going to have that as the blog posts for the next two days. The pictures in question are the 'Heart over Soul' photo at the top of my contents page, and the one of the girl with brown hair looking straight into the camera.

Photoshop process #3

As I said in my last blog post, the mise-en-scene for the photos I took of Hannah aren't very conventional. So here is my photoshop process for this image.

I started off with this as the original image, the main thing I wanted to change was the flower print on her shirt.

So I did this by blocking out the print in black and then dodging and burning in where the creases in the top would be.

I wanted to make her even more conventional so I decided to change her hair colour to pink. I did this by using the quick selection tool and selecting her hair and then I clicked 'Refine Edge' so I would get a more exact cut. I then added a curves adjustment layer to the selected area and changed the colour to pink. I also lowered the opacity of the layer so the colour wouldn't be as vivid.

The final edit I did to this image was adjust the colours, and I did this using a curves adjustment layer.

Photoshoot for Contents page #2

I needed one more image for my contents page to complete it, so I decided to use some test shots I took of my friend Hannah while I was waiting for my other friend Jess to get ready for her photoshoot. Many of these photos occurred while I was still playing around with the camera settings, but I really like the ones with a slightly long exposure as it makes her look like she's coming off stage. However her mise-en-scene isn't very conventional to my genre, so I will have to photoshop her hair and clothing so she fits in more.

Update

There isn't really much to publish on my blog, as I'm just finishing off my magazine. I will still be posting updates to what I am doing, but the posts will be less frequent as I have less to do.

Feedback #2

Continuing on from yesterdays blog post on the feedback I got for my rough cut; here are the things people said I could improve:

• Finish everything off
• Make some of the subheadings bigger
• Change the font of the quote for the double page spread
• Add a price, issue number and barcode to the front cover
• Add more plugs to the front cover

Feedback #1

Today I got given feedback on my rough cut pages about what people liked about them and what they thought I could improve on, so first here are some of the things people said they liked:

• All photos are really strong and conventional to the genre.
• The double page spread looks professional.
• Good colour scheme.
• Name of the magazine is good.
• Good variation of images.
• Fonts are nice
• Quote on double page spread fits in well with headline.

Rough Cut

So today was my rough cut deadline, and it was extremely stressful and everyone was panicking. So, here is the rough cut for my magazine.

For my front cover, I am happy with the photo and the layout of the page. All I need to do is add some more plugs in, so the page isn't so bottom heavy.

My contents page was what I found most challenging, so I need to put more time into completing this for the next deadline. But I think all I need to do to finish this is add some more photos and add the text. Other than that, I'm happy with this.

My double page spread is the page I am most proud off, and I don't think I need to change much of this to make it perfect. 

Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to get finished, so that's what I'm going to have to focus on till the final cut deadline on the 23rd April. My teachers and my peers will be giving me feedback soon, so my next couple of blog posts will be about that. 

Update

My rough cut deadline is tomorrow so I'm sorry if I'm not posting as frequently, I'm just trying to get everything finished. Hopefully my posting will return to normal after my deadline.

Photoshop process #2

The editing for the double page spread photo took the longest, mainly because I kept changing my mind. I tried editing several photos for the spread but none of them felt right. So eventually I decided on this:

I think it really expressed the characters of the band members.

As for the editing process, I did exactly the same editing as I did for the front cover photo (please refer to my previous blog post). The big different in this image is the background for it. I needed the photo to cover both pages or at least the background needed too. So I tried cutting the image out and placing it on a different coloured background.

But I think that doesn't look very professional. So I tried editing the background of the image so it would cover both pages of my double page spread. Here is the editing process.

I started off with a plain white background layer. I then used the brush tool and added black on a extremely low opacity to add some shadow to the edges of the image.

I then added the image I wanted to use on top and edited the colour of the background so it was similar to that of the white layer.

I then got rid of most of the creases in the background using the spot remover tool and the surface blur filter.

Finally I dodged and burned the whole background of the image so the left hand side would resemble the shadows of the right side. I then used this image in InDesign.

Photoshop process #1

I finally choice the photo for my front cover, but before I could place it in InDesign I needed to edit it first. So here I have screen shotted my editing process.

This was the image I chose. I love her hair in it, it is very conventional to my genre.

The first thing I did in PhotoShop was to brighten the image. This automatically makes the image much better. Then I used the selective colour adjustment tool to get rid of some of the redness in her face and make the blacks stronger.

Next I got rid of all the wrinkles in the background. I did this by first using the spot remover tool (found in the tool bar) and went over the very harsh lines to soften them. Then I used the filter 'surface blur' to blur the entire layer, then I used a reverse mask to only use that blur on the background/

Now I needed to get rid of all the blemishes on my models face. There weren't very many as she has quite good skin, but as this image is going on my front cover I decided to airbrush her face. I did this by first duplicating the previous layer twice, naming one blur and one detail. On blur I used the filter surface blur to blur the layer. Then on the layer detail I used a high pass filter (this will stop the skin from looking too fake as it keeps some of the detail) changed the blending mode to soft light and was left with a highly airbrushed image. I then used an inverted mask to paint in the airbrushing where I wanted it.
This was the finished result.

I then also went back over this layer with the spot remover tool to get rid of any blemishes the airbrushing missed.

I then wanted to make the eyes really stand out, so I used the smart sharpen filter to make them stand out more, and then used a curves adjustment layer to make the eyes have more blue in them.

Next I added a grunge filter, and to this I first added a new layer and inverted it and then added a surface blur feature to get the result above.

I then used the hue/saturation adjustment layer to completely dis saturate the layer and then changed the blending mode to vivid light.

I then created a inverted mask to paint in the grungeness to my image. This adds a lot more character to the image. 

The final edit I did to this image was to create a whole new layer, change that to 50% grey and dodge and burned anywhere that needed it. This meant I could add more contours to the face and make the eyes stand out more.

Here is the finished image!