Homework Task: Prezi's

I have completed 2 tasks using Prezi, the online presentation maker. The links are as follows:

Task 3
Part 1 - George Lucas Prezi: http://prezi.com/tlnmahbe9djf/george-lucas-presentation/

Part 3 - Portfolio: http://prezi.com/p5zm5yekngmq/jonty-truin-portfolio/

Editing - Factual

My second film that I edited was the Factual. I carried over many techniques from the Social film. More importantly this time was editing to music, mainly syncing audio to visual. I had a sepearate audio recording of the live music to give us freedom of camera movement. This was difficult to edit as the images had to atleast slightly resemble the music. I did this by finding the similar sounds in the video, and spotted the movement the musicians were making at the start of the sound. Then on seprate visual files from a different verse or chrous I find this movement, silence the sound from that clip and then play the one long mp3, and the short clip. This makes it appear as if the audio is synced to the footage.

I also used crops and zooms to turn footage from the same shot into a range of others . This gave me the opportunity to have a wider range of footage to be used as filler and actuality footage. This can be obtained from the effects bin.

On both films i used the Audio Mixer to change the voule of levels. Where the key frame option allows you to be very precise, the level changes the volume for the entire clip. This was used on the song clip so that i wouldn't over power the voice over. With the voiceover, while these were in long strings of sound, using the "In/Out" system I could cut it up to further lengthen the amount of talking time or make the voiceover specific to the image.

I have exported both films and they are ready to be put onto DVD

Editing - Social

I am nearing completion of the Social Action editing. After Converting the files on AVS4You and passing around the files I could start the process.

The first thing to remember is setting up the project. Firstly by creating Audio, Rush, Sample and premiere folders, and then placing the existing files (films rushes and audio clips) into the right places, the Project file is saved to the Premiere folder when you start the new project. After selecting DV - Pal 48Khz the project is ready to start.

Firstly I imported all of my media files and then grouped them together. This gives me my materials for premiere and keeps me organised. The next step is reviewing story boards and scripts and then creating a seperate plan more corresponding to the shots.

I still tend to improvise in a way when editing. While I have a development plan, I tend to not follow scripts or storyboards as closely as I could as, as I said in a previous post, things change when you get on location, as in different ideas or changing action plans etc.

I kept to quite a conventional style of editing, using simple cuts and jump cuts, avoiding fancy transitions or visual effects. The first technique I used was multitracking audio.  I knew there would be scenes with no audio which would be voicedover. For these I made a track of audiop and then silenced the whole line. This means any audio in this track will be silent. Other tracks were for the main audio which would remain at the default level and any extra tracks for audio where this clip would have an effect or a different volume. This is used for background noise (which I will add to some scenes to keep things flowing). Another track will be for music.

In terms of visual effects I have used 3 so far. Firstly masking cuts by adding a cut away to a seperate location. If I wanted to use one long shot but get rid of the stuff I didnt want. However if I cut the shot it would be jumpy but wouldn't fit with the rest of the cuts. Instead, would cut away to another relevant shot and keep the audio running to make it "seamless".

Next I used "Roll" to fix the camera angle. "Roll" is a "Camera Positioning" effect where you can rotate the video the same way you would a Photoshop image. I corrected the anlgle of the shot, which then left a white rim around the iamge. To correct this, a single unit of zoom zooms in enough to get rid of the white backrground rim, making the image appear level.

I used split screen for the first time in a project to show a range of Subway Products. To do this, overlay a video over another and then click the image in the final editor (on the right, this plays the timeline). It then becomes transformable like a Photoshop image, I pulled it to the side and the other image to other side, using the framing option to make sure I had things equally lined up.

Using keyframes, images and audio can be faded in and out. By selecting the clip, aligning the selector with frame you want to add the keyframe to (whether it be audio or visual) and clicking the add key frame button. This makes this point editable by either bringining it up or pulling it down (quiter or louder for audio, more visible/less visible for video). To give you more options, adding fades etc, you need to add a second keyframe then you can manipulate the line to create a fade.

This was great for fading audio in and out. I had a music track running through the whole video. For moments of dialogue or voice over, the music is either silenced all together or is lowered so that the dialogue is the most prominent audio feature.

We have recorded voice overs to help further the film experience. This was recorded on an MP3 recorder in a silent envrionment then imported into Premiere to be matched up to the visuals.

These are the various techniques and plans I used during editing for my social film. Many of these will be repeated or used differently in the factual programme.

Filming Day 2

After chasing down a Music Lecturer willing to talk to us and offer some students for interview with us as well we were set for atleast a few interviews. The first issue was that Tantra didn't show and it was illogical to wait for her risking losing the interview. Me and Callum set about seeting up camera with one lecturer and about 6 students. This went well getting lots of longer answer,s group discussions and strong opinions. Callum was on Camera duties for the whole day so now all of us have used it. Next, 2 drummers agreed to play for us for actuality footage. This was great here too we got moments of natural group discussion. We stuck completely too the tripod as there was more of a formal feel about this piece, more like a news report.

Luckily on the same day the students had a concert in the recital hall which gave us the opportunity to film our first and last "bookend" scenes. We rented an mp3 recorder to record a seperate audio track giving us freedom when it came to editing as we could move the camera. This made sure we covered pretty much the majority of the piece in one day.

I was happy with what we got done, both the footage and the audio seems to have come out well. Also there is an opportunity to get more (if needed, the piece could be competed with current footage). As said before we kept the  shooting quite simple as it seemed appropriate tro the piece.

I think that the work we got done today showed that we were prepared to chase people down for information and put ourselves in a proifessional working environment, treating our contributors with respect and getting respect (and footage) back.

Filming

Today was spent filming our Social Action Film on College Food providers. After weeks of Pre-Production and spending the fast few days obtaining filming permits and securing locations today we took to the coolege with a camera (again Callum was absent so it was me and Tantra). We very quickly hit issues when on shot number 1 it started pouring with rain. Thankfully, the rest of the schedule was based indoors so we got to work with that.

While we had developed story boards and shooting schedules, when working in a constantly moving environment it is often difficult to achieve your initial aims. While on shoot we were often forced into different positions than planned and then each new environment would give each of us different ideas and different approaches. In the end, as I have always believed, it can be very good to avoid the constraints of the plans.

We quickly developed a style for how to capture each enivronment. With each different area (Coasters, Subway and The Shop) our first priority was actuality footage. This was the filler, with establishing shots, capturing normal buisness as it happened (despite the slightly more quiet atmosphere of shooting on a Friday). Shooting the actuality footage first gave us an idea of each place which was usefull. Step 2 was obtaining interviews. We had a large amount of Public Release forms primed and ready before shooting and this was where they came into play. For about an hour we observed students in Coasters, one by one asking people for interivews that would make up our Vox Pops sections. While initially we got the cold shoulder, once the first few had agreed to be filmed, more people felt comofrtable being on camera and answering questions. While there were a few difficulties working with the public (camera invasions etc) I found the process intresting and enjoyable. Each Contributor signed off our release form before filming. We ended up with around 12 interviews for Vox Pops, as we added a couple of extra scenes with other students from our class as, when they talked about the documentary with us, they ended up having some strong opinions which we asked them to then express in the film. We also asked James Searle, our student tutor, to provide an answer from the colleges point of view and will be in contact with a manager from Aramak (the caterer for college) as the official statement for their side of the story.

As I said earlier we tried to create a visual style. This envolved both tripod shots as well as "shaky handheld" style. These will be coupled together to create visual impact when it comes to editing.

Our biggest issue of the day was with Subway. While the day before we had got a Waiver form for the location signed off, the workers were upset with being filmed and we were asked not to film. This was annoying as we had taken the time to get the Waiver signed buit in the end not vital for the documentary.

In the end I was very pleased with the work we produced. It took a long time and it was difficult to get everything we wanted but in the end we have atleast enough to make a fairly decent documentary taster.

I am anxious about next weeks plans for filming. As it stands, none of the teachers we emailed inquiring about interviews have returned our mail so Tuesday will be spent more agressively chasing the interviews in first person. Time will also be a factor but at the moment we have just about enough time to hopefully tackle the issue.

Pre-Production

We have spent the last few weeks completing production paperwork for our 2 documentaries. This has envolved listing and eveloping our ideas, developing scripts and logistical sections and research and planning tasks.

The pre-production work helps track you're performance throughout the project and your all round progression. We assign the tasks for each project, making sure noone does the same thing twice. This is important as it means people can cover a wider range of information. Sadly, as Callum wasn't here, as we needed to book the camera we had to either coomplete or do his work from scratch. This envovled either re working versions of our own work or workin with Tantra to quickly get things done at a reasonably high level. While for me this will hopefully help show a wider range of skills and the ability to adapt to a situation, Callum will probably have to work to replace some of our stand in work.



We will next move onto the filming stage, firstly shooting the Social Film before focusing on the factual next week.

Editing Skills Profile

Skills I Have Learnt
Film editing is one of the primary skills for these modules. We have brief experience with Premier Pro from the advertising project so I have bought a small handful of skills with me.

Firstly, setting up the project, you must create master folders, and set to PAL with the right settings. It is important to start the project right otherwise you will run into issues further down the line.

Before clips can be edited they must be converted from the MPEG2 to AVI using AVS4You. They can then be bought into Premier.

I learnt that there were many multiple tracks for both audio and visual tracks. This means you can sync the two together, run sepearate music soundtracks, put effects layers in etc. You can take a clip, and using the "In/Out" commands pull the clip onto one of the various tracks. Extra, non-accurate editing can then be done by dragging clips on either side to lengthen or shorten.

To add effects these can be applied to a seperate layer. Effects include split screens, crop's colour grading etc all accessed from the effects bin.

A very useful tool was the razor tool. This alowed you to make a precise selection to split the clip in half. This is useful for when you want to perhaps cut out a specific selection of a whole clip, or apply an effect to a certain section. In both these cases, you make two seperate selections which the razor and this spearates them into seoarte, editable clips.

I also used subtle effects, such as the facial blur. For blurring out peoples faces who didn't wish to appear in the film, I pasted a identical video ontop of the source video, cropped it's dimenions to cover the area of the face to be blurred, then added the casmra blur effect. This makes the people unidentifiable.

Skills I Need To LearnMy biggest issues last time round were on audio. While I used thr Mixer, I still couldn't get the exact results. This time I will be recommending to my grouo we use an MP3 recorder to do seperate adio track and then sync the audio to the lip. Syncing could be difficult, especially with a wide, varied amount of cuts and tehcniques. While I think this will be simple I won't know until I get back on Premiere with Rushes.I will for the first time be cutting to dialogue. Where as on previous film projects there has been no dialogue I will need to learn about keeping the audience on track with my cuts.

Social Action - Initial Investigation

For this project, we will be creating 2 final outcomes. Along with the factual programme a seperate social action film needs to be made.

The first investigation involved us identiying famous social action documentaries, analysing impact and purpose before starting to think about our own production. Learning about these films gave us an idea of what needed to be achieved so the next step was identifying oursevles what needed to be done. I looked at a handful of issues and needs for social action film making, analysing important issues that needed to be understood.

The next step is writing up a proposal to take into the production stage.

Factual Programmes - Investigation

Our new project will focus on creating a factual programme. The first step, as always, is to begin research and investigation into the programme type, looking for styles, codes and conventions.

Our first investigation looked at just this. Given a list of buzzwords and a few lessons on the history of the documentary, focusing on the theory of it, the investigation involved defining the list of terms, listing examples and then trying to consider where and when each technique or convention can be used.

This helped me become more knowledgable on the different codes, conventions and techniques but also taught me to be critical of factual progamming and develop some of my own ideas and theorys on how to present or go about creating a documentary.

Double Page Spread Development

The double page spread was probably the hardest aspect of all 3 elements for me to produce. While I had had ideas for the other two before starting, I quickly discovered my ideas for a double page spread definitely didn’t work when taken to paper. My plan was to make everything look like it was written on to a pitch, like on pitch advertisements, or team names/logos in American football. This was a difficult effect to get right, and was deemed inappropriate for the readership.

I decided again to simplify and try and keep as many of the visual themes as possible. I felt by now I had developed a good style throughout and wanted to carry this over. With the guides already made up (See previous posts) I first setup a black box layout, similar to those used on my contents page. With this visual style kept, I was a bit freer to change the style for the rest of the page, as is often seen in magazines. After playing around with different variations, I decided to carry over the “exploding paint blots” from the cover style. I also went for a distressed look to my text as I felt this looked more professional and gritty.

I used Freshman for my header font, a classic Collegiate font. Using the same custom brush set as I did for the Cover picture I applied them to the text to make it looked slapped on. Then using the rubber tool, picking different brush styles and different opacity levels, I lightly rubbed away section of the text for the “distressed” look. I carried these techniques over to my images as well, using the paint splats to this time define movement instead of noise. I felt this helps show the hard hits and physical nature of the American sports. To take the images away from their various backgrounds, I mainly used the Extraction tool. This lets you define an area you want to extract by drawing around the image with a pen and then filling the shape made to define the extraction area. This was useful where magic wands weren’t helpful.

I had up to this point been using a solid white background. This felt a little flat to me and needed something discreet in the background. I used rows of stars behind the headers and body copy, again with the slightly rubbed out distressed look. These were put on angles in the corners. Lastly, I put a column of stars in gutter. This gave it a more defined looked and pushed home the American style.

When writing the body copy, I didn’t want it to just be generic straight columns.  I used quotes, using the Freshman font, and the rubbed out distressed look. Placing these large font quotes in between columns so they crossed over into the text safe zones meant that when it cam to writing body copy, the shape of the body copy morphs around  the quotes. This helps add discreet change to the shape of the body copy.

Ideas

A while back, when creating my masthead, Simon encouraged us to be creative with the formations of the words. After a one to one, I was told to consider different ways to present the words, such as focusing on sound, more exploration of symbolism and positioning of the letters. Below are examples of the experiments in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator:

Cover Development

Developing the Cover for the magazine was a key element of the project. It had to be grabbing for the audience, but actually appealing to them. I wanted to have an image that was relevant to my double page spread on American Sports in the UK, but wasn’t sure whether firstly it would alienate the audience or if would I have the resources to take an image that conveyed my themes. In the end I decided to keep it simple, taking inspiration from Time Magazine covers, where the main image is a facial portrait.

So my concept was to have a generic American football player on the cover just looking forward at the camera. I looked for some time for a place I could borrow or use an American Football helmet but this wasn’t possible. To show the audience what I wanted to convey I would use the classic “war paint” sun block that football and baseball players wear in America.

With the concept ready I took a range of shots, asking a friend to pose for me, wearing a sports top with padded shoulders to give the effect of an American football jersey with protective pads. I took photos of different poses, such as a dead pan face, a smile, a scream etc.

I chose the scream shot as I felt it was the most powerful. The next step was to take it on to Photoshop, separating the model from the background. I then Desaturated the image (turning it greyscale) as I later planned to heavily contrast it with any colour on the page. However, this made the image slightly flat, especially with the relatively low camera quality of the original image. To give it a little bit more depth, I ever so slightly changed the “Curves” of the image. This tool lets the user precisely decide how light is used on the page, manipulating the Input and Output  tones. This just gave the image a little bit more “pop” than before.

The next step was painting on War Paint (as my model had refused to put it on). After using a range of different, brushes, layer blending options, layer styles and artistic filters to try and make the stripes of paint look real. However nothing was really working. I had to figure out a way to work around the unrealistic war paint (as without them there is no way to identify it is an American Football Player). 

I took inspiration from a music Video, where when the singer screams, an inky stylised sketch of the singer is layered over the actual footage. I took a similar concept for my main Image. Using a downloaded set of custom brushes for Photoshop (which I had from previous out of college project)I took my image, and using the colour selecting Eye Dropper tool, took a colour from the image, and then added an exploding paint brush ink blot coming off of the picture. This gives a cool effect, giving more fury to the screaming football player, and justifying unrealistic colour. Lastly I added yellow stips to the jersey. This once again gave more pop off the page to the image which was dearly needed.

When deciding layout, I sketched ideas firstly before developing prototypes on the computer. While I had a general design concept, I needed to make different variations to find the style most effective and appealing to my audience. After handing out a questionnaire with 3 different designs, my results showed me to take my original concept, and take some from other designs, namely the “sidebar” on the left hand side. With the image and design finished I compiled them on screen.

In Photoshop I first added the Vector Layer of my Logo (becoming a vector smart image in Photoshop) as my masthead, and then got onto the design of the side bar. This was made of a black rectangle and then the information as well as my “symbol tagline” for finger on the pulse. These were separated by the “CMYK” colour dots which I had used in the Contents page, as it was important for me to keep an ongoing visual style throughout. With my image now placed at the far back of the image, everything else laid over the top.

A problem I had here was that dense black from the image made the masthead unreadable. As it was supposedly a new magazine, I couldn’t afford to put the image over the mast head as the brand isn’t known. To tackle this problem I place the masthead on top of the image, gave it a thick white stroke and a drop shadow. This made it look good and also successfully separated it from the image.

I then put up the various sub-headings. There was a problem with original layout as the subheadings were on top of each other like this:

Sub-Heading
Sub-Heading

This made it hard to identify whether topics were related or not. So I differed slightly from my original concept, placing them in completely separated  sections of the page. I also wanted to use a sticker effect. To do this, with a ellipse tool I made a circle (keeping the dimensions using Shift and Alt), gave it a white stroke and a slight drop shadow, then warping the shape of the circle to look like one corner has not been pulled down. Next, I separate out the effects layers from the layer, and then warp the drop shadow, under the unstuck section. This part has text over it look like part of the sticker.

Finally, I wanted a background to the image of the football player; something that suited the visual style of my magazine as a whole. Once again I was looking something with "pop" and a pulsing energy to it. After trying different things such as tares through the page or pulses, I decided to use the grid used in the contents page. Then with multiple Cyan, Magenta and Yellow circles, each with a Darken Blending option I created a line of colour blobs behind the player. Although not particularly relevant to the subject, it was suiting to the style and gave the extra level of visual interest I was looking for.

Now I just had to group things into the proper layers and place everything where it needed to be, allowing room for print errors around the side before having my final Cover.

Creating Layouts

Today we began creating the layouts for our double page spread. This involved creating all the guidelines and measurements for gutters and margins, so that when it came to creating the spread, we would know how to layout the page and create the guides.

This inolved calculating the areas for each column of the page. After first creating margins (remembering the Optical Centre, where some margins are larger than others), we are left with the amount of "safe space" we can use to add our content. To get the width of each column we want to use, we decide on the size of the gutters and the amount of gutters, and use these figures to calculate the size of each column. I used a classic 3 column by page layout, as it thought it was simple and gave me room to add all the elemnts, hopefully in an intrestring way.

I drew this out on Photoshop, which lets you create custom guides for yourself. Using the rulers to measure the space (using the calculations from before) you can then pull guidelines out from the rulers and place them in the places you want.

I also drew this out on to paper. This way I could quickly sketch out a plan, deciding where to place different elements, noting design choices etc. This is helpful as a designer so you don't get stuck when you come to working, and works well as evidence that you have thought through the process.

Supplementary Photographs

While I will be using as many of my own photographs as possible, to get the magazine looking more professional, I will need to use some Photographs by other people for instance pictures of celebrities or of events I wasn't at. There are many ways to go about this in a professional way.

Firstly, I have been looking at websites of related media, e.g. local sports teams or American Sport Organisations in the UK and emailing them asking them to give an estimate price of how much it would be to buy the rights to the images. These are just quick emails explaining the project and what is needed from them. Although it is unlikely that these sources will reply, but showing evidence of my contact shows I have made an attempt at getting the copyright.

Next, I looked at Royalty Free Stock Image websites. These websites offer you images for free, and the form of payment is a credit on your media. For instance, if I take an image from one of these websites, somewhere in my magazine I will have to show a  link or copyright name for the Photograph. You see these often in websites and magazines so is a perfectly legitimate way to get secondary photographs.

Lastly, using Getty Images, an App gives you a quote for the full publishing rights of an image. The user says how it will be used, the type of media, length of time of use, size and multiple other factors to give you a price of publication. This is a great way to get pictures of celebrities or events that I can’t photograph myself, and the database of choice is huge.

I will next move into my own original photography.

Contents Page

The first page I have fully developed is my Contents page. I wanted to keep it quite simplistic, yet bold, inkeeping with my other designs. With this in mind, and remembering the boxed "computer window" designs of the similar existing products, I decided to seperate each different elements (Contents, Editorial, Credits and Pictures) out into sperate boxes.

I also wanted to get an inkeeping visual stlye which would spread out across the entire magazine. My choice for this came when trying to decide a colour scheme. After trying various different colour schemes, Iwent back to using just a black and white style. It was bold it was effective, but it was laxking visual flair. I decided then to have some contrasting colours against the background, aiming for vibrant colours. After starting different combonations, I had quickly gathered a pink, a light blue and yellow. I liked these colours, and realised I could use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Balck) as my design style, furthering the conept to make it look like a "pre-print colour" design style.

I liked this design/theme choice as I fell if done right, it will add to the slightly electronic feel I am giving to the magazine while also being a relatively original design style choice. I then used my sketches to start building the contents page on Photoshop, fcousing on the seperation of the elements. I then added the bright colour contrast and decided on a different way to present the contents. I decided to use this to push forward the brand awareness again. So i used a Zig-Zag pulse, where each peak of the pulse was a page. I thought this was a creative way to push home the brand even more. Adding Colour squares with numbers, and fixed height titles worked as the titles for each page.

 I then moved onto each section, in keeping with my visual choices from before, for instance, using the same colours and fonts from the contents section. For the gallery section, a selection of images qith corrosponding numbers to the contents page to show what the subjects are about.

I looked at my initial research when looking for other material to put on the contents page to make it look more professional and full. I had noticed that most had an editorial page, where the editor briefly discusses the magazine (and this is especially good for a new magazine as it is a good place to explain what the magazine is all about. Next I used a Publisher credits section. This window briefly describes the personnel who work on the magazine, contact details and pther informstion such as websites, copyright notices and other legal notices. As it is a one man project, this was ndeed a very brief section but helps add to the professional look.

When creating the graphics, I used layer groups to seperate out each element. With so many layers and different components to each element, it is important to keep things seperated out so as not to get confused. It is also useful for organising things, keeping different parts in sight, whilst others are hidden to create the bigger image. Also important was using the Photoshop Grid option. This puts a grid onto the screen for you to work over, making sure things are properly alligned and such.

With the contents page completed, I can continue the visual style to the rest of the magazine.

After taking some criticism for the contents page it was decided that, while the design was good, there wasn't enough colour or visual flare to the image. I was stuck on how to improve the colour without devaluing the bold visual style. In the end inspiration came from my completed front cover. Using a grid (representing a kind off heart monitor/lie detector feel to Pulse of the Contents) and finally colour circles, using the CMYK style from before to give extra pop.

Creating Content Part 1

With the majority of written work and the pitch completed it's time to move onto actually creating the content. This involves putting all skills learnt and all your plans in to practice to create the final product.

We have to consider 3 different elements to the magazine, the Cover, Contents Page and a Double Page Spread. An important factor to consider is the content of this double page spread as this will effect the images choices and headlines of the rest of the magazine. As shown in my pitch, I have decided that my content will be about the booming popularity in American sports such as American Football, Baseball, Basketball and Ice Hockey, and looking at the University/College Leagues and the Male and Female games.

I will start by sketching out various ideas, and testing layouts on the public instead of just jumping into production.

Font Justification

Today we have spent a lot of time thinking about why we use certain fonts and why we present and place them the way we do. Looking at my own chosen main font, Makisupa, I looked into why I was using it. I like makisupa as it is a "fixed width" font, which is something I like very much in design. It gives it a boldness and grabs the reader. Next, the slightly squared off sides give it a "techy" computery effect which I think suits the electronic connotations of "Pulse".

I have emailed the creator of the font, asking about it's history and creation:

The name "Makisupa" comes from an aspiring cartoonist, Kevin Jameson, who scanned the
characters and requested that I make a font of them. KJ says it's the title of a Phish
song, a fact I can neither confirm nor deny....I'm not a Phish fan. Gimme Pink Floyd and I'm happy.

I will be using Freshman as my font for headings and subheadings on my double page spread. This is a traditional Collegiate font, used in many American Sports and in College Memorabilia. 

Custom Fonts

When designing my masthead, as stated before, I used Makisupa from dafont.com. So as to be more original, using Adobe Illustrator you can add shapes and details to the words to make them your own.

To change my masthead font I decided to square off various corners of the characters. To do this I created white and black square shapes to lay over the words, either effectively rubbing an area out (white) or adding further to the letters (black). Creating one square at a specific angle, I can then copy and paste multiple versions of the same shape and reflect the shape if they need to be in a different direction. This means I can keep a relatively similar angle to each of the corners. I then loosely place them in their positions. As they aren't precisely placed, this still keeps the slightly jagged, imperfect style of the text.

The process below shows how I got from the original masthead design to the reworked font style:

The Original Design



Construction Guidelines show the placement of the boxes to square off the corners



I can also manipulate the text in Photoshop. There are far more options in Raster so I have a lot more options. During Harry's lesson we went through different ways of changing the text. We looked at using selection tools to delete parts of the text. Then with the eraser tool you can choose different brushes to create distorted effect. Next, using the Horizontal Masking Tool, you can type over a background. The mask then selects this and the user can sperate this out. This gives a picture background or fill to the text. Next we added symbols to the text, overlaying a smae colour custom shape to customize the shape of the text. Then using the Darken layer style, putting three different colour layers of identical type makes and colour bleed effect. Lastly the Colour halftone creates a comic book style dotted effect.

 

Pitching

For the last few days we have been working towards our pitch infront of the class. Although all our documentation has been created to help support and boost our presentations, the last few days have been spent creating the pitch.

Starting with a brief planning stage, I planned out what I would be doing. With a large 2 page mind map spread, I mapped out the way my Prezi presentation would flow with headlines and a few brief comments so I would know what to write about. I find jumping straight into Prezi isnt a great idea as you can quickly get lost or stuck, and you need to know how its going to move or flow. Also, a prezi can't be easily printed off as one document of evidence, so evidence of planning shows what you have actually done.

The next step was producing images for the presentation, following my plan. These were small things and didnt take long.

I finally went onto start the Prezi process. I have used this software before for my previous pitch so knew a bit more about it than before. Although the interface is quite simple I would say I used frames more to group important information together or to zoom into pictures, like on a moodboard. I, used more sweeping and rotations then before as well, Although this can be quite in your face to the audience, when used subtly it can keep the presentation intresting.

I finally pitched my idea to the two groups and was quite pleased with how it went. I feel I may have added more on what I would actually create. This was something I feel I got wrong on my last project as well so will put more focus on in my next pitch.

Student Magazine -Initial Ideas

At the very start of the project as a test I started throwing down some Initial Ideas. Here I used the working title "On Campus" so I could try some different combinations. Using Adobe Photoshop at home, I drafted some ideas on layout and style. I wanted to keep it simple and stylish, using an imitation helvetica font initially. My first ideas are below:

After doing some research of existing products, I not only gathered some ideas on presentation but also about the name. Now using the name "On The Pulse" I used my initial ideas to mock up something for the new name, furthering my use of symbolism in replace of actual text.

The above picture was made with the vector based Adobe Illustrator, which i now had installed at home. I thought in the end this was a negative design move as the the logo really didn't work as well as any of the Initial ideas, and thanks to my rustiness on Illustrator.

After a couple more lessons with Simon using the software and developing some of my own tricks, I sat down and tried to just simplify, returning to my original thesis of it being simplistic but stylish. i was now also building more of a feel of what my magazine would be, after creating my mood board and through further research i was going to go for a slightly more alternative style while still appealing to a wide audience. Now with the tag line "Finger on the Pulse", suggesting the magazine knows what is cool, but it knows what is up and coming and cool. Changing the name finally to "The Pulse" I created this logo:

Here I had retained the symbolism, but simplified everything down. The font is Makisupa, and the edgy quality was found when playing around with the software. Illustrator has a tool called "Live Trace" which is used to attempt to convert Raster to Vector. Using it however I found, especially with typography, it made the edge slightly jagged and imperfect. I really liked this so instead of installing the font, I screen printed the words on Photoshop, bought them into Illustrator work space and Live traced, giving me the different effect.

With the logo and branding done, it makes it easier to now know what I will be doing with the rest of my magazine.

Student Magazine

We have now been given the brief, for ASH Publishing, asking for a cover, contents page and two page content spread for a new student newspaper, the name and design style of which we can come up with ourselves.

The first step is the production schedule. We have a lot more freedom (and pressure) on this project than the others. We have been given the time frame for the project and deadlines for the pitch and the whole project. it is up to us to map out our time effectively and meet our own deadlines. Using past schedules as a frame of reference i made a new one using Microsoft Excel, mapping it to my own needs. This included achievable quick deadlines for written work, allowing me to leave more time for the more creative side such as ideas stages and the Pitch (where I will be using Prezi once again).

New inclusions also included a "Completed?" column. These cells have conditional formatting and three rules, Y, N or started. Now when I enter any of these values the cell changes to show Green for Yes, Red for No and Yellow for Started. This gives me a visual way of seeing at what stage i am at with which section of the project.

We have also been doing many reports and investigations on digital graphics with Simon. These focused on Colour Space, Raster/Vector, Typogrpahy and magazine layout (See earlier post)

Project 3 - Print Publishing

Our next project is focusing on Print. The end product will be a cover, contents page and a two page spread for a student magazine. We will be creating our own concepts and working independtly throughout the whole process.

I first task was analysisng briefs. to better understand what is being asked of us, it is important to research the different terminology in briefs and know the different set ups of each different style. Looking at the formats, we saw multiple different briefs and picked out there features, such as whether they were negotiable or non-negotiable, 1 entrant (Contract) or multiple entrants (Tender) among other things. We would also estimate the resources and skills needed to complete each brief, which came from looking at what they were actually asking for (the end product).

We also mind mapped out the process of a pitch. This was useful as a recap of how you would go about planning production but was also effected by the new knowledge we had learnt.

I now know more about the brief, and now when reading our new brief for ASH Publishing, I know more of what is expected of me.

Layout and typography

Simons lesson were spent analysisng lyouts of different magazines and typography styles and associations. Important here was also the different terminology used, which is needed to understand the different technques.

Firstly looking at magazines, it was good to see how the designer of a magazine sees the layout before the content is added or it is sent to print. Guide lines define the spaces for pictures, header and subheaders and the body copy (the main body of content) are distributed into columns. This is a convention of nearly all printed media (outside of the novel format) and puts text into columns across the page. These are spaced out by gutters where the space between columns is used to define to columns themselves.

This was useful for getting ideas into how I would actually layout the pages of my magazine. Before hand I hadn't really thought about how I would lay this all out, but it is clear that it is important to meet the readers standards of presentation.

Next we learnt the differences of the two different typography formats, serif and sans serif. Although this was something I knew about before it was good to get more of an idea of the connotations and reasons for using each type. Serif fonts are the ones with the "hands and feet" on the ends of the letters, for example Times New Roman. Serif fonts are those without these such as Impact. Both can be used on the same page but it was important as the designer to understand the reasons for using each type.

Lastly in the day, we looked at using effects on typography in a vector workspace, Adobe Illustrator. this was good not only for learning to use Illustrator (which I have used before but my skills definetly needed polishing) but also for scouting out effects to use when it comes to designing the content for my work. I focused mainly on manipulating the shapes of the type faces as i felt these were the  ones i was most likely to use, as colour or other distortion effects often needed rasterizing.

I am now writing up the results of my investigations and about the things i have learnt to help me with my final product.

Project 3 - Skills Profile

Skills Profile

1.      Have you ever undertaken any work that has required you answering a brief?

I have done a few brief based projects before at college and high school. All of these have been practical projects where an end product, final or prototype, has been made. All of these have needed research to answer the brief as you need to know how to meet the various criteria for the client.

2.      Provide a summary of all your skills you have already that will help you in this assignment.In terms of practical skills,I have intermediate level skills in most aspects of Photoshop. From simple aspects such as transforming, adjustments, layer styles, blending options filters, magic wand, lasso’s, changing colours and some higher level aspects such as the pen tool/paths.

I have skills in creating market research surveys and gathering results. This will come in handy to see if the product has hit the target market.

3.      What skills are you looking to develop while working on this assignment? Include both practical and theory skills.There are many areas where I am either looking to improve or learn something new. Firstly, I don’t have much experience using the text tool before, and when using a smaller size I have struggled with pixilation. So techniques for creating clear text would be useful. I’d also like to learn about keeping a colour palette or consistency in  an advert, to develop a visual style. I will also need to look at different regulations for print advertising such as the legal and ethicals of it. Hopefully, skills and knowledge learnt on previous projects will help me to find this information.

4.  Skills I have developed during the project:Firstly, I have developed skills in independent work. We have been all but left on our own in terms of how we structure our time and development, so I have had to learn how to organise ourselves, and work independently.

Although I have used Illustrator before, I got a lot more indepth with the program on this project. Mostly looking at text, we looked at basic skills (which was a good recap for me) text filters, layer styles and effects and composition. We also got a much deeper understanding of the theory behind Raster and Vector graphics. Skills with these programmes also included using Raster and Vector together for a more effective output.

I have learnt lots of skills in Typography, mainly understanding why we use different fonts and what they are trying to say. This helped us justify our own typographic decisions, such as masthead fonts, body copy fonts etc. When the designer knows what message they are trying to give out, they can use fonts as a powerful but subtle message to the audience.

I also learnt about the terminology and templates of magazine layout, looking at image placement, columns and gutters, folios etc. This helps me understand how I will layout my magazine when it comes to production and help me plan for the future.

In Photoshop we learnt many new effects, also mainly concerning text. There were many techniques here. The type-mask tool helps you get textures from other images. Then with your own designs, you can distort, recolour and blend text to gain multiple different effects.

I have learnt how to use layer options in a new way. Say if you had a an image with a drop shadow and other layer effects on it. By right clicking the "f" on that layer you can seperate out all the effects into different layers. So you would have a seerate layer for each effect. This allows the user to edit as they wish.

I have learnt about the actual printing of the finished piece. Most importantly the bleed option. The industry stanrd puts it a 3mm and this adds a safe area around the page allowing you room for perhaps the movement of the paper in the printer etc.

Editing

Now with both our sets of footage, I have edited most of my final advert.

Using Premiere Pro, you can import images, rushes and audio and cut, compile and add effects to them. This makes it a superb professional piece of software with extensive options for all of the mentioned. After quickly picking up the fairl simple user interface, it became important to know your way around the workspace.

I found these two aspects the most usefull on the program. The monitor on the left shows the current clip you are editing. Here with the "I" and "O" keys you can place the "In and "Out" points. This means, you can get the exact moments you want to capture instead of a badly edited clip. Then by clicking and dragging the image down onto your timeline, it will include it and here it can be moved around.

The monitor on the right will always be showing your entire project, so if you press play then it runs through everything you have done so far. This means you can quickly edit on the left and then run through the entire project to see if it works and you like it.

This screen plays out as it is set in the Sequence timeline. This is where all the clips are placed and put in the order you want (and can be edited here as well although I only used this if there was an undefined space that needed editing, for more precise editing it is better to go with the left monitor "In/Out" system.

The timeline has multiple audio and video tracks. This means I can play different sounds or visuals over the top of each other, or separate them out to make to make them easier to organise or move. These multiple tracks came in handy in audio editing. To keep a form of sound continuity, I ran a background track of silence  on a separate track throughout. That way, I could isolate the significant moments of the recorded or  replacement downloaded sound effects and place these on a separate track.

Similarly, the multiple tracks helped me make a special visual effect. At the very end of the advert, as Tantra leans backward, the tag line wipes onto screen following the movement of her head, as if her head is rubbing away an invisible layer to reveal the tag line.

To create this effect, I added an identical trick of the same clip, then using the Video effects bin, using the Crop effect, I set the whole image to crop from right to left. Then using key frames, I set when I wanted this to happen and synced it with the movement of Tantras head. On a separate layer, there is my tag line on a PSD with a transparent background. This makes it play over the clip.  The only other place I set an effect was again using Crop. I noticed a prop in the background, which broke continuity. So using Crop, I downsized the image and checked "Zoom". This means that the image will now "fit" the screen instead of leaving black gaps where the image has been cropped.

The next step is exporting, before moving onto market research of our advert.

Responding To Analysis

After editing our original footage into a rough draft of my own, It was time to present my initial cut to Harry. I should note that at this point the audio editing was not complete so the advert was technically unfinished but gave the gistof our message and how we use the camera.

With an improvement plan, the tutors can show us where we can improve our work and where we should be at this point. After looking at the advert, Harry came back with a lot of feedback for the product.

Basically, to try and summarise, he disagreed with the concept and message being shown to the target audience, pointing out some problems with the way characters were portraid as angry and negative and generally the whole concept of the man replacing his beer.

Thankfully, there were no issues with our execution of the idea, so we had showed we could use the camera and lighting effectively. The only problem here was the sound (although auido had not been completed in this rough draft) so this needed some work as well. So, with the present group members, we decided we would have to go out and get some new rushes the next day. We planned the nextt day and met in Shoreham where we shot the new footage. The story had been slightly changed to fit the new concepts of the advert and promote a more positive image which still highlights the male market.

We got some great new footage and improved the shots Harry hadn't liked in the original, so once again it is time to convert and edit. The next step will be market research, testing our two edits on the public to see which they prefer.

Filming

After weeks of pre production, on Wednesday it was finally time to shoot the advert.

We had decided in a group meeting that the filming would take place on Wednesday, shooting at Holly's aunties house, meeting at 10am. Sadly, Tantra didn't show up for the shoot and couldn't be contacted, so we decided of course to carry on without her. In the professional environment work can't be halted because of the absence of one team member.

Once arriving on location we set up the equipment and quickly ran through our shooting schedule, slightly altering my original draft, shooting throughout the day based the need for continuity in camera placement and lighting. For instance, we wanted to show the character picking up his keys and then later in the advert he drops them back on the side. To make sure these looked the same (to keep continuity) we filmed the shots one after another, instead of doing the whole thing in a chronological order, we didn't move the camera and kept the lighting consistent. This makes it more believable to the viewer. A lack of continuity shows the viewer that there is human error.

We ran into few issues during shooting, and as we started early, if we had had any issues it would have been easy to go back and re-shoot or adjust lighting or camera position. We had left ourselves time in our contingency plan so that if we did have problems they could be rectified. Filming was mainly completed in 3 hours, with a second day kept for the shooting at a second location. This was at the college shop, and we ran into a few difficulties here. After asking previously at the shop and organising a time to arrive and set up, when we arrived we weren't aloud to set up equipment. To tackle this, realising we needed the footage as soon as possible, we decided to ask permission to shoot free hand, no tripod. This way, if we kept a steady hand we could at least get some usable footage. In the end we got what we needed so it wasn't all bad but if we get the opportunity I would like to try for a retake but at the moment it doesn't seem likely.

Now it is time for conversion, editing and sound capture/retakes if necessary.

Conversion

With filming complete (post coming soon) before editing could begin, we needed to change the orginal MPEG files from the camera, to AVI files for sharing amongst the group. Using AVS Video Converter, I converted the vieo. It is a long but supposedly fairly simple task, as I just had to follow the intructions posted on the walls of the classroom. Everything seemed to be going fine and conversion took about a half hour. However, once distributed to all group members, a very large problem occurd. On nearly every computer,the files played as audio  files and not at all in Premiere. This was strange as it worked on a Mac or on a computer in different software combonations. After much debate and consultation it was decided to just try reconverting as something had obviously gone wrong.

After relinking the camera and going through all the steps I realised I had missed the vital step. The "profile" had been set as DivX format instead on the Uncompressed PCM version we are looking for. This was a major error on my own part, but once the problem was identified and the files run back through the converter, everything seemed to have worked fine. To insure no time was wasted I did some Premiere testing of the files before hand to check that they actually worked. These had positive results so after some trouble saving everything (it is over 20GB in size) the files are now on a portable hardrive ready to be distributed to the other group members. I have now moved onto Premiere, and after learning the basics of Premiere (see skills profile) I haved started editing.

30 Second Advert - Pre Production

We are all now well underway into the pre production documentation and the majority of tasks have been completed. Now, most of the work has to be compiled together and edited slightly, to either flesh out ideas or get rid of unneccesary information. Compiling it together in our group folder will finish the post production stage and everything will be ready for production.

30 Second TV Advert - Group + Pre Production

We have now been put into our groups for the project and decided our group name (Mad Dog Productions). From here we have started group meetings, each one being chaired and minuted by one member of the group which will rotate to the next person for the next meetings and so on.

The first jobs were to swap numbers and contact details so that each member could be contacted if needed. Then first, we listed all of the pre-production jobs, assigning jobs where necessary. These tasks, if assigned were to be completed for the Tuesday when we reconvined. The next task was to pick a concept out of the four.

Each of us presented our idea, and we had all 4 from the given range of products. One by one we presented our idea including scripts and treatments if necessary. Each presentation was followed by a quick summary and taking questions from the group to make sure we all fully understood each other. After all ideas had been thouroghly discussed, we had to choose an idea. Making up Pros an Cons for each and our personal prefrences took us to Diet Coke, with the main appeal being the new angle of aiming it at men.

With the idea in place, we now have the time to go off and complete our individual tasks.

30 SECOND TELEVISION ADVERT - Skills Profile

So now we have moved onto a new 5 week project, to create a 30 Second Television Advertisement. The best way to start a project, after you have looked at everything that needs to be done (using the Production Schedule) is to list the areas you already have experience in. The practical focus of this project is ofcourse, the filming and editing of the advert.

Useful skills would include being able to use movie editing software. My experience here is only at the most basic level. I know the very basic editing programme, Microsoft Movie Maker, many times for things such as school projects. However, there are only so many things that can be done on this programme; cutting movie clips, splitting them or grabbing a still shot from the clip, adding titles or text to the clip, pre animated transitions or visual effects. Most things on this programme have been pre-programmed for you. In terms of audio, I can edit the audio from the movie clip or add my own audio under it. I can also fade both film and audio clips in and out.

The only other editing software I have used is Ulead, a slightly more advanced programme with more options and more freedom for the user. I haven't used this very often but in this kind of software it is easy to translate skills from other programmes into new ones. For instance, the way you cut clips is very common and dragging and dropping or a pick whip style method are often used. This means that new programmes can be picked up quicker thanks to a base knowledge of simple skills.

In terms of actually making my own clips, most of my experience here has been with point and shoot digital cameras for amateur or school project. I have yet to have experience in trying to light a scene or try any advanced cinematography but I do have a general grasp for the composition of the shot.

As I have said in earlier posts, I have Intermediate level skills in Photoshop, and know many techniques for editing photos. The closest I have got to use it for film editing however is the animations in the last project. So I am confident I won't have too much trouble actually editing the image, but I am intrested to see the different ways my skills can be applied to moving images.

Filming and editing are things I am very intrested in and am looking forward to adding many new skills to my profile in this new project. Firstly, Adobe Premiere is an important piece of software to add to my skill set. Although not the industry standard like Photoshop, it is a high level, professional film editing tool, with many different things to learn. Aside from the general editing techniques, the use of special effects and animation is an important skill I want to learn.

Also, filming the advert will be the closest I have come to a more professional film shoot. There are many things I will want to try and test here, especially getting some hands on work with the camera and putting some of my ideas on composition and execution into practice.

AFTER POST PRODUCTION

I have learnt a whole load of new skills on this project. Firstly, after a workshop with Phil, we learnt the best ways to use and treat the tripods. Here I learnt how to erect the tripod, how to get it at different levels, keep the baseplate flat or at and angle, use the panning booom, and how to put things at different angles or heigts.  On set, I finally got my hands on some filming equipment, and as a group we formed our ideas on how we would want to set up each shot.This meant I learnt lots about how to use the camera, from basic operating skills to lighting. With lighting we took lighting into account on every shot, trying to get rid of lens flare or glare (especially off of the reflective Coke can) and so I feel I have learnt how to use natural light to our advantage, closing or locking windows etc and using non-natural lighting such as lamps, when trying to gain the maximum amount of light. Also in terms of compostiion and camera placement, I learnt that you need to get as much footage as possible so shooting at multiple angles is a must. We went for quite a punchy, impactful feel to the advert, so I learnt that for this you need quick close ups. This also effected the way I thought about audio, going back and rerecording with cameras just to get the sound.

In terms of post production, I have learnt a new program in Adobe Premier. Here I have become pretty good at using the software as a whole, I can import, edit with the "In/Out" system, mix and edit using the time line, including with multiple tracks of audio and visual, use the effects bin to add low pass to audio (this makes it sound like the background), and with visuals I used crop to cut out unwated background, and to have a wipe effect on separate layers. I learned how to export the videos, and create them in the first place using the right resolutions, encoding and codecs etc. This means I know that I am cxreating the work to be presented in the right formats.

These are the skills I knew before, and have gained since on the project.