Magazine research Part 1

This is is the front cover of the best selling skateboard magazine 'sidewalk' although i have already done a post on this, i'm going to be using it for an example. I like how the cover is very simple and is basically just an image with their logo at the top, this style is very bold and effective, however my main issue with this style is that if i was to do a cover like this, i wouldn't get as many marks because it only has a few conventions of a magazine cover. These conventions being the large bold magazine title at the top of the page. The skateboarding has also been masked out so that he covers part of the title, magazine do this is because the know people already know what it says because the magazine is so popular, its like a sign of success. It has the magazine website underneath the title on the left hand side in small writing, this is for people that want to find out more about the magazine, The burst on the cover is used to catch the potential customers eye because its tells them about something interesting in the magazine(e.g free poster) these bursts are always in bright colours in contrast to the rest of the cover.

Magazine research Part 2

Empire magazine is one of the worlds best selling film magazines, this issue is advertising the film Inception, they have done this by having the background relate to the film, also having the main character in a long-mid shot in the center of the magazine but also covering up the majority of the cover, he is standing in a very powerful pose holding a gun, also holding a gun adds to this serious effect. They have also made it so that the characters head covers up part of the title of the magazine, this is to show that Empire are a well established magazine and the consumer will know what the title is even if part of it is covered up.
The cover only use 3 simple colours; Black, red and blue, these all being very male dominated colours, also the main character being a male and all the text advertising films that are targeted at the male audience, this whole cover is aimed at males.

The burst on this magazine is the only thing that is a different colour, this is to grab the viewers attention because they are advertising something within the magazine, however i think they failed to do it with this cover because there is so much going on its hard to just focus on one thing.

Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers. In your experience how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework?

It all started back at GCSE level when i had to create a front cover for a magazine, for this at first i only used microsoft publisher which let me have a small amount of creativity. Then i saw one of my friends using Photoshop and watched him create some really unique things for his cover, so i decided i would download Photoshop CS3 and see if i could use it. At first i was awful with it, i watched plenty of tutorials to try and learn the basics. I learnt some useful text techniques which made my front cover look proffesional, however i havent got a copy of it to show anymore. Using Photoshop also let me become more picky about certain things, like colour. It lets you pick almost any colour you want an create custom ones, this ment that i could get my magazine to look exactly how i wanted. I ended up creating my entire front cover in Photoshop and ended up getting a B for my coursework grade.

After my GCSE exams were over i was still interested in editing, especially text. I carried on researching and finding out lots of new techniques which i tried to use in my work, while watching a tutorial i found out about another programme called ‘Sony Vegas’ this program is used for video editing, its one of the most advanced of the time having so many different customisable options. I thought i would give it a shot to see if i could edit anything interesting, i ended up look for inspiration on what i could edit and game across a massive community on youtube of people editing video game footage into a ‘montage’. This style intrigued me because i was already into video games, i ended up recording some gameplay from me and edited it in this montage style syncing it to songs and adding some cool effects, i set up a youtube channel and posted it to see if what the reply would be from this community i found out about, the video got 2500 views within 2 weeks and i got some really positive feedback and lots of constructive criticism. This is what got me really interested in editing, i started trying to edit real life things like skateboarding and then just some random abstract things. However my main problem with this was using my camcorder, it wasnt a very good quality one so obviously the audience wouldnt enjoy it as much compare to if it was shot in crystal clear High Definition. After a while i lost inspirattion to make/edit videos.

Then i started Sixth fom and i found out our media courcework was to create the intro to a horror film, i thought that it was right up my street. I started researching again looking for editing techniques only horror films use and how the try and build up lots of tension. I ended up studying to intro to ‘SE7EN’ which is an editing materpiece, created using the montage editing i as used to. When it came to my courseowkr though i left it to the last week or so before the deadline to start putting things together, this ment my whole project was rushed and i was nowhere near pleased with it because i knew i could do alot better, however i did learn a lot of things from this work to do with editing. I learnt how colours affect the mood a lot in a scene, thats why in my coursework i had two contrasting colour corrections, one was a really dark gold overlay and another was a colour boost to try and make it seem happy. My courseowrk piece was supposed to be about a schizofrenic with a drastic split personality, but i dont think that came across in the intro.

I’m now in year 13 and my coursework this year is to create a trailer for a skateboard documentay so obviously i am very excited about starting this having previous experience in skateboard filiming and montage style editing which 90% of trailers use.

Back from summer

First proper week back from the summer holiday so its time to really crack on with all this media research. i'm going to start by looking at some magazine covers to get some ideas for my other task. i'm doing to be looking at some of the top selling film magazines and see what the main conventions are and what makes them stand out.

Possible plot

i had an idea to instead of just doing a film about skateboarding, i would do a documentary about why people see skateboarding as such an 'anti-social' thing and why people see skateboarders as 'rebelious' and 'punks' this would mean inteviewing certain members of the public to try get their view on skateboarders.