For my 12 month development action plan I've split the plan into three main goals and gone into detail of each goal, listing details of the goal and how I can achieve it in a specific timeframe. My first goal and most important goal to me is to get into University to do a course in either film or photography.
To do this I'll need to work on a personal statement and have this complete, ready to send off before the 15th January (which is the deadline for applications). I'd like to have my personal statement complete on the 15th November so that I can apply to Universities sooner rather than later. This seems like quite a daunting task so to get this done I'll need to set out a plan for each paragraph of the personal statement, brainstorm ideas of what to say & do research online by watching videos and reading articles and other personal statements. I'll also need to ask for feedback from my lecturers and adults so I can keep adapting and improving the personal statement.
Next I'll need to find some University courses that apply to me so I can apply to them and have good options (if I get a place). I have some universities in mind already but I'd like to find a couple more and ideally I'd like to have this done by the end of the month, so to make a sound decision of courses I need to read their prospectuses and look at their websites which will state what they look for in a student.
Lastly I'll need to take action on what the university websites say about ideal students and make myself appealing to the university by acting on this. This will mean working to my best ability in this college course to try and get a distinction, and working on personal projects outside of college. I'd like to make at least one product a month up until University so I gain lots of experience and knowledge whilst also having some work to show for myself. This product could be something moving image based, audio based, or photography and design based. I'd also like to try and watch at least 3 films a week to get more familiar with analysing and understanding them, and again to gain experience.
My second goal is to improve in my college course so I can achieve the best grade possible, which will help to lead me on into higher education. I've split this section up into the three lessons we're taking this year: Contextual Studies, Moving Image and Audio. To begin with, for Contextual Studies I'd like to learn how to pitch better, which means delivering my ideas and presenting more effectively. This is because pitching is an important skill to have in the media industry and can help massively towards getting your ideas heard. To do this I'll need to research effective techniques online and practice pitching in these lessons.
Something I'd like to improve on in Moving Image lessons is knowledge on real life aspects of film and tv such as budgeting a production, lighting techniques, scriptwriting and storyboarding. I know how to do all of these things but I'd like to research them in more detail and learn how to do them better so I can improve my work. I'll be able to research all of these things online so I aim to be more skilled in all of these things by the end of the year.
For audio I want to become more familiar with sound in premiere so that I can apply this knowledge to my video productions. To do this I need to pay full attention and contribute in my audio lessons with Tom, as well as doing research and experimentation outside of college by watching videos on it and googling it.
My last main goal is for personal things outside of college. For these I'd like to make myself more attractive to future clients and employers which means making a portfolio and personal website. Which I aim to have completed by the start of 2018. I also need to work on independent projects outside of college with other creative individuals which I will do on my free days and in the holidays. Lastly I need to keep myself organised so I can work to my best ability. I can do this by setting deadlines and achievable tasks for myself.
I hope to check back on this blog monthly so I can see what I'm doing and what needs to be done, leading to my personal development.
For the production of my Final Media Project I planned to make a short magazine based on youth culture (more specifically music, art & fashion) and a 30 second advertisement to promote it. I aimed to print the magazine so it could be presented as a physical publication rather than digital.
I wanted my magazine and advert to pastiche retro 80's/90's style and design, so I made a moodboard in pre-production to try and show the 'look' I was going for. I aimed to make sure I kept to this style throughout production.
Magazine Development
Front Cover
To start off with my magazine production I referred to the flatplan I made during pre-production and began to create the magazine page by page in Photoshop. For each single page I opened a new document in Photoshop and selected the preset 'International Paper > A5'. For double page spreads I made a document like this but doubled the width.
I started with the front page, which I planned to include the title and a photograph. I came up with many different names, and whittled them down to three: 'Creators', 'Carpe Noctem' and 'Youth'. I decided on 'Carpe Noctem' meaning 'seize the night' because I liked the twist on Carpe Diem and thought that it was unique.
After coming up with this name I set out with the front page. At first I wanted it to just be a solid colour with a title:
I tried this with a few different colours and fonts, but thought this looked a bit boring and bland, because there was a lot of dead space. I therefore decided to replace the solid colour with a photograph. I used some photographs I shot on film on a sunny day which had nice colours and retro undertones thanks to the film photography. Through my experimentation with 35mm film I was able to develop my design for this front page and choose fitting images.
I liked the flame font from before as I thought it gave off a real 90's aesthetic, so I stuck with it. After trying a few different photographs I stuck with this one:
I chose this one because the white text looked good against the blue sky and effectively stood out. The photograph makes for an appealing front cover due to the yellow flowers complimenting the deep green tones from the leaves and the light blue sky. The light clouds also match the title colour. My view of the colours was helped by my research on colour theory.
Title Pages
After my primary and secondary research I drew some conclusions as to what I should include my magazine and how it should be laid out. One thing I discovered from my research was the effectiveness of splitting the magazine into sections, giving each different section a title page, similar to iD magazine. I wanted to go for a font similar to the one used on the front page, and also wanted it to be simple. In the end I decided with a black, flame style font on a white background. I liked the font because it looked hand drawn and as if it had something more than just a title. It made it look more interesting. Here are a few examples of the final title pages I made:
One problem I ran into when creating these pages was making sure that the letters all lined up seamlessly so it looked neat and hand drawn. I did this by adjusting the tracking in the character window of photoshop as shown.
Interview Pages
Most of the content in my magazine is interview based. It has four interviews in total and they all follow a similar design pattern as I wanted to magazine to be neat and uniform. I went about doing these interviews by getting in contact with the people and asking if they were willing to be interviewed, then I came up with a list of questions and asked them.
Two of the interviews I did were recorded and typed up (Aiden May and Ben Coleman) and the other two took place in messages online. For Aiden and Ben's interviews I printed out the questions, and recorded me asking them with the answers using a Zoom H4N microphone borrowed from college. I could then listen back to this and type it up into photoshop. For Reuben Robinson and Cale Labbe's interviews, I sent them the questions one by one over email and copied and pasted the responses into photoshop.
As far as design goes for the interviews I used rulers in photoshop to split the page into two, then from this created columns for the text to go in. This made it look neat and uniform. For the type in the interviews I decided to use the same retro looking font throughout to fit in with my theme.
To differentiate the questions from the answers, I made the text of the questions bold. After typing up the interview, I was able to make spaces for images because of the text being bound to a box. I was able to press enter making breaks in the type to make room.
When adding the images to the interview, I made sure they all had around the same colour scheme and that they were related to the interview so that it looked uniform, visually appealing and nothing clashed. As an example I'm using the double page spread interviewing Aiden May. I shot the photographs of Aiden on film in London with him, and took photos showcasing him and his clothing pieces, because the interview focuses on fashion and Aidens involvement in it. I also made sure that when choosing the photos I used the ones with prominent greens, browns and skintones.
From the whole roll of film I chose to use the portrait of him outside the shop as I thought this image was stylish and introduced the subject well. I also chose the photograph of his shoes as these are the pair he mentions just above the image on the page. Lastly I used the photograph of him walking in the tunnel as it had the same colours as the other two photos and fitted nicely over half of the page. It also shows Aiden with shopping bags which I thought was fitting.
Magazine Layout
When compiling the rest of my magazine, I went through some changes to the layout and design to make it fit in with the overall style. One of these things was the layout for Reubens interview.
I thought that it looked a bit bland, so I changed the colour of the title to match his t-shirt colour in the portrait, and added a border of the same colour to the image using the rectangle tool. The border idea was inspired by my research when looking at 'Dazed' magazine, as they used a similar design technique. Below are before and after images of the changes I made to improve the layout:
Another layout change I made was on a double page spread of my photography near the end of the magazine. At first I had one photograph taking up the whole page and another on a white background.
I decided to reduce the size of the full page photo and add a border to both images, which made them match more and look better side by side:
However I still thought this looked a bit bland, so I decided to add a background because I felt this gave the photos context and set a scene. The vivid colours and high saturation of the background made sure that this fitted in with the style.
Final Magazine
After typing everything up and laying out all of the photos and images I had created a full magazine.
I named each page with a number to order them, as before the files were all jumbled and unorganised. By numbering each page it prepared them to be printed into a physical magazine. I also made a .pdf with all of the pages in one file as a digital version and hard copy which I could make amendments to.
Advert Development
When starting the production of my advert I had a fairly clear idea of what I needed to do due to me storyboarding and creating a shot list in advance. I only had 8 things to shoot on camera as the rest of the advertisement would be graphics in the form of titles or animations.
I started off by putting together all of the digital parts of the advertisement according to the storyboard in Premiere Pro. In the storyboard I had planned out all of the colours, titles and transitions I wanted to use in the video. I decided to use the same font from the magazine title in the title of the advert to give the name its identity.
The first shot is animated and has circles which reveal the title. I did this by using keyframes, although it looked fairly artificial at this point.
To solve this, I added some directional blur to the circles to create motion blur, to make the movements look smoother. I also added a small amount of gaussian blur to soften the circles.
The beginning scene ended up looking like this:
Another big part of the advert was the timing to music. I wanted it to flow well and keep the viewers attention and therefore wanted all of the editing to be in time with the song I used. To make sure of this, I zoomed into the audio track in order to see the waveform. This way I could make the cuts and see where they relate to the song.
To shoot the actual video parts of my advert, I set up a greenscreen for the shot of the magazine spinning around. I originally set it up in my room however it was fairly dark and the lights gave off an orange tone. I therefore did it in my sisters room in the daytime as it has large windows which let in lots of natural light. To give the illusion of the magazine floating, I attached a piece of green string to the inside of it so I could hold it up. Below are the pictures of the setup.
I also shot some footage of the magazine being held and read in front of the greenscreen for the advertisement.
At the end of the advert I added a link to the shop online where the viewer would be able to buy the magazine. I thought this was okay but I decided to add a qr code that once scanned takes the viewer straight to the website. This not only adds ease of access but also makes the advert more up to date (which is comedic due to its very not up to date style).
Here are before and after screenshots of the end frame:
This is the first render of the advertisement:
At this point I thought it looked good however I wanted it to have more of a retro style. To solve this I opened it in after effects and applied lots of effects to the video to try and superimpose a vhs style to the video. This included blurring the channels, adding some frame jitter, distortion and a noise and static overlay. After adding these effects the advertisement looked really stylised and I thought it fitted the aesthetics and style well. This is the final render:
Website Development
Finally, I put together a fake website to sell the magazine. I used the company 'bigcartel' for this online shop as they set it up and make it user friendly to create a shop. I stayed with the generic template and adjusted the colour scheme to follow that of the magazine in the sidebar.
I also used photoshop to create a header image, using the magazine title font to keep continuity within the brand. I made sure it had the same colour background as the background colour of the website so that it blended in.
After this I shot some photographs of the magazine to use on the website. I did this in the studio against a large white piece of card to give them a clean, professional looking background. When shooting the photos I shot in RAW format so I could edit the photos non destructively. These are some of the photos I shot:
I used one of the images to show the magazine as a product and the rest of them on the website in a gallery on the homepage.
I thought this looked good however the borders made the photos look dark and unprofessional. To solve this I used photoshop to cut the backgrounds out of the image which made it look a lot more professional and made the design look a lot neater.
After this I thought that the site looked complete and authentic. Here is a link to it.
Throughout my first six weeks on this course, I have learnt a lot and started to develop many new skills in a range of areas.
Firstly, in Moving Image and Media Theory I have developed my knowledge about film and the history of film. I've discovered how films have changed over time and how different shots connote different moods and feelings to an audience. I've found out how sound helps to tell a story and make it more effective, and the process of how it's done in the real world, which I didn't know before. Through this I learnt about foley artists and how to use a sound recorder to get my own sounds for my films, and how to edit them accordingly. I've also learnt how to effectively use Premiere Pro (which I had some knowledge of before) so that it backs up my project as I work, and lays out my footage in an organised and effective manner.
In my Audio lessons with Tom Grey I have learnt about audio and sound in more detail. He helped us further understand about sound in film, and how to use Premiere with sound design and music, so that the sound is mastered and doesn't clip. He also taught us about making photomations, and how to edit them in Premiere by importing photographs in a group called an Image Sequence.
Publishing with Ty has helped me learn how to be more efficient with photoshop, as well as develop my knowledge about graphic design and film posters. I already had basic knowledge of photoshop before these lessons, however he let us experiment with the program and discover new things individually. He also taught us a range of keyboard shortcuts and techniques to make us more efficient with the program. In these lessons I've produced some of my own film posters that I'm proud of, and gained some useful knowledge and skills which will be helpful later in the year.
Film Poster Mashup made
in publishing (Design 1)
Film Poster Mashup made in publishing (Design 2)
Sprited Away Poster (Made in Publishing)
Final Design of Spirited Away poster
Lastly, Interactive lessons with Steve Spicer have been really useful in helping me develop my knowledge in design and how I look at pieces of work me or others have made. In these lessons I've learnt a lot about very important parts of Media such as colour, text and design. Steve taught us about colour theory and colour harmony, typography and connotations of typefaces which are very useful to know about, and have helped me in other lessons when designing things. I also learnt the basics of Adobe Illustrator which is a complicated program, made simple to understand in these lessons. Using it I have made infographics as well as gained knowledge on how to use it for making posters and 3d graphics.
Colour Wheel made in Interactive
Image made in Interactive showing different parts of a typeface
Overall I think that in this first six weeks I have learnt a lot about programs and theory which will be very helpful as this course goes on, and now I feel a lot more confident approaching tasks with this knowledge. I still have things to improve on however, one is being more effective at planning and putting more time into planning before getting into a task. Another improvement I could make to help my learning is to spend time doing independent research and work (i.e. outside of college) and giving evidence of this. In the next term and half term holiday I will definitely try to act on these improvements, be it watching a few films mindfully, reading a book or getting outside with my camera and experimenting with it.
This blog shows all examples of all of the skills I have listed, as well as the video below, which shows some examples of skills I have developed:
