Wednesday 14 December 2011
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Image Editing
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| Before |
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| After |
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| After |
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| Before |
For this second image, I went against the last notion. On the front page, you want something relatively pleasant to look at. I airbrushed all the creases out of their faces, as it also removed any pixelation caused by the changing of the size of the image in the editing process. I then unfocused the background a lot, so that leg between Will and Dan doesn't get any of the limelight - that leg is unimportant. I also thought back to the interview at NME, who told us to try and avoid the colour Black, as it's not as visually engaging, so I brightened the background. Unfortunately, this created more pixelation, so I had to unfocus it more. By the end, it made the three subjects look like they are glowing, which is a positive thought, quite fitting with the way I wanted them to look - happy, unfazed by the Dramas they've experienced. So I kept it.
Thursday 1 December 2011
Wednesday 30 November 2011
Evaluation Question 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Slideshare, Blurb?
Slideshare, Blurb?
Evaluation Question 6
What have you leant about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
This whole process has been brilliant in the way for me to learn about new ways of presenting my work and research using new technology.
http://my.brainshark.com/home.aspx
http://voicethread.com/
BLOGGER
This was so much easier to use than a book. I often find that if I have to catalogue my work in a book or folder, various pages tend to get lost or damaged, or due to extraneous factors like a faulty or unreliable printer, some would just be missing or seemingly unfinished. Just being able to display my work exactly as it was created also means that the quality is exactly as intended, meaning any marks lost won't be down to something being pixelated in the process of me fitting it onto an A4 sheet of paper.
Another bonus that I learned how to use was that I could completely reorganise my work by just re-typing the date, which is so much easier than tearing out pages and reordering them by hand, which requires not only reordering them, but looking through them and determining which bits are which. I could also put these works into subfolders, making them easier to find.
Not only all this, but I could go over my work, re-type here and there, tweaking fonts and formats how I wanted them, which would be a lot more time consuming by hand.
PHOTOSHOP
I already knew how to change colours etc. and use the magic brush tool on Photoshop after spending a week in a photography studio for work experience, however in that week, I hadn't learned how to airbrush, which I have done over the course of the project. This new skill came in very useful, as many of my images were unattractive to look at and were in need of a little bit of tidying up.
What I didn't know was that airbrushing is just making the images slightly out of focus, which was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. Not only did this help with removing creases and blemishes, but it allowed me to remove a lot of pixelation, which was one of my main problems during the editing process.
iMOVIE
This, again, was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. Although the effects it allows me to use wouldn't be quite as professional as they would be in Final Cut Express, this allows me to make short movies or slideshows with music or voiceovers in the background, which is definitely going to be useful in the future.
This also gives me a range of special effects and transitions to mess around with, which use a simple drag and drop design, which is incredibly easy to use and makes the videos more visually exciting than just plain videos or images.
THE OTHERS:
SURVEY MONKEY
However, to have it all laid up in a presentable fashion (e.g. on a pie chart), or to have the non-option answers counted, we would've had to have bought the premium version. This would've been incredibly useful for displaying my results on the blog, however, it wasn't entirely necessary, so I did it the overall more time-consuming way of counting them myself.
PREZI (also SlideShare and HTML Embedding)
I was, at first, reluctant to use Prezi, as I felt it would be a lot easier to just make a slideshow on Powerpoint and upload that. This proved time-consuming, as it mean I had to make the slideshow, save it, upload it onto SlideShare (which is less straightforward than it sounds due to restrictions on the school computers) which takes a long time, and when that's done, embed it onto my blog. In fact, it's a lot easier to use Prezi, and in the end, it does look a lot more professional, and is easier to view/find specific areas.
In the process working with this, I learned how to use HTML to embed videos and suchlike onto my blog (usually on the 'share' menu, copy and paste to 'Edit HTML' on the blogs 'Edit Post' page), which is a lot more professional-looking than just posting a link.
XTRANORMAL
This was definitely my favourite medium for interviews and videos, as it meant I didn't need to go through the trouble of finding someone else to interview, as many of the people who I'd asked to help me in previous parts of the project had been camera-shy. It also meant there would be less room for hesitation and mistakes.
However due to the fact I need to buy a premium version to be able to record my own voice, i had to suffer the problems of automated voices - not only do they not quite have the same aural tone, like pitch changes in questions and pauses, but they have trouble reading out initials, like NME, FHM and IPC.
But besides those problems, it's quite entertaining, as I was able to mess around with camera angles, actions and what the characters sound and look like (but again, that was restricted because it wasn't the paid version), which made the video more interesting to watch and listen to.
This whole process has been brilliant in the way for me to learn about new ways of presenting my work and research using new technology.
http://my.brainshark.com/home.aspx
http://voicethread.com/
BLOGGER
This was so much easier to use than a book. I often find that if I have to catalogue my work in a book or folder, various pages tend to get lost or damaged, or due to extraneous factors like a faulty or unreliable printer, some would just be missing or seemingly unfinished. Just being able to display my work exactly as it was created also means that the quality is exactly as intended, meaning any marks lost won't be down to something being pixelated in the process of me fitting it onto an A4 sheet of paper.
Another bonus that I learned how to use was that I could completely reorganise my work by just re-typing the date, which is so much easier than tearing out pages and reordering them by hand, which requires not only reordering them, but looking through them and determining which bits are which. I could also put these works into subfolders, making them easier to find.
Not only all this, but I could go over my work, re-type here and there, tweaking fonts and formats how I wanted them, which would be a lot more time consuming by hand.
PHOTOSHOP
I already knew how to change colours etc. and use the magic brush tool on Photoshop after spending a week in a photography studio for work experience, however in that week, I hadn't learned how to airbrush, which I have done over the course of the project. This new skill came in very useful, as many of my images were unattractive to look at and were in need of a little bit of tidying up.
What I didn't know was that airbrushing is just making the images slightly out of focus, which was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. Not only did this help with removing creases and blemishes, but it allowed me to remove a lot of pixelation, which was one of my main problems during the editing process.
iMOVIE
This, again, was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. Although the effects it allows me to use wouldn't be quite as professional as they would be in Final Cut Express, this allows me to make short movies or slideshows with music or voiceovers in the background, which is definitely going to be useful in the future.
This also gives me a range of special effects and transitions to mess around with, which use a simple drag and drop design, which is incredibly easy to use and makes the videos more visually exciting than just plain videos or images.
THE OTHERS:
SURVEY MONKEY
This was an incredibly useful way of gathering information from people, as it gave a vast array of options that we could use to inquire about our target audience. It made surveying people a lot less time consuming, as it didn't need one of us to take down answers and keep an eye on how many questionnaires were distributed/collected, we just had to copy and paste a link on the internet and ask a few people to follow the link and answer the questions, and the answers given would be sent back to us, already counted and laid out for us, easy to read.
PREZI (also SlideShare and HTML Embedding)
I was, at first, reluctant to use Prezi, as I felt it would be a lot easier to just make a slideshow on Powerpoint and upload that. This proved time-consuming, as it mean I had to make the slideshow, save it, upload it onto SlideShare (which is less straightforward than it sounds due to restrictions on the school computers) which takes a long time, and when that's done, embed it onto my blog. In fact, it's a lot easier to use Prezi, and in the end, it does look a lot more professional, and is easier to view/find specific areas.
In the process working with this, I learned how to use HTML to embed videos and suchlike onto my blog (usually on the 'share' menu, copy and paste to 'Edit HTML' on the blogs 'Edit Post' page), which is a lot more professional-looking than just posting a link.
XTRANORMAL
This was definitely my favourite medium for interviews and videos, as it meant I didn't need to go through the trouble of finding someone else to interview, as many of the people who I'd asked to help me in previous parts of the project had been camera-shy. It also meant there would be less room for hesitation and mistakes.
However due to the fact I need to buy a premium version to be able to record my own voice, i had to suffer the problems of automated voices - not only do they not quite have the same aural tone, like pitch changes in questions and pauses, but they have trouble reading out initials, like NME, FHM and IPC.
But besides those problems, it's quite entertaining, as I was able to mess around with camera angles, actions and what the characters sound and look like (but again, that was restricted because it wasn't the paid version), which made the video more interesting to watch and listen to.
Evaluation Question 4
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Even though my magazine was originally intended to be more like NME, it ended up being more heavily influenced by Kerrang!
KERRANG! Audience Profile
Young, individually minded and passionate consumers, an audience defined by attitude, passion and loyalty.
Radio - 15-35 male bias.
(http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands/Kerrang/)
Kerrang! brings in a total audience of approximately 356,000 people weekly. Of that figure, 193,000 of them will be in the A, B, and C1 economic groups (around about 54%). This ranges from high and middle ranking professionals to White-Collar workers. This leaves the other 163,000 as blue collar workers, unkskilled manual workers and the unemployed. 313,00 of these consumers are aged 15-44, the remaining 12% are 45+. 67% of Kerrang's readers are male. Unfortunately the age bands i've found are wide, but this tells me that the target audience is young men in the C1 economic group. http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html (click link 'general magazines',then 'October '10 - September '11')
However, this group doesn't (in my opinion) fit the appearance of the magazine, and our target audience research found that Kerrang! readers were predominantly teenage girls - which seems more appropriate to me, as the magazine is mainly filled with quite small articles surrounded by large images of rugged young men in bands, and on a look at the fan mail page I didn't see a single post from a 35-year-old man in a suit! I presume these statistics are about the buyers of the magazine, not the readers...
NME Audience Profile
65% Male
50% 16-24
79% ABC1*
(http://www.nme.com/mediapack/)
NME is bought weekly by around 253,000 people. Just under two fifths of these people are blue-collar workers, unskilled manual labourers and the unemployed, already this tells us that the readers of NME are richer/have better jobs than readers of Kerrang! Magazine. In terms of age, 13% of NME magazine readers are over 45 years of age, a similar figure to Kerrang!. 167,000 of the 253,000 readers are male - 66%.This seems more realistic to me, as NME tends to use slightly less vivid colours, more live (less photoshopped) images, so the subjects look more honest and less perfect. These subjects are also in more of a mix of genders. Kerrang! only seemed to feature one or two women in their magazine, and i'd hazard a guess of about a third of NME's articles being about female artists.
http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html (click link 'general magazines', then 'October '10 - September '11')
From this, I decided that my target audience should be in the C2 and D economic class, as they are more likely to be nearer the age group I'm aiming for, which would be young adults, so between the age of 17 and 25. This would mean that they're more likely to want something substantial and informative to read, it would also mean they have the money to go out to different gigs, and will be wanting to find the best ones to spend their time and money on! Most of the bands covered will be Rock/Metal, which are two male-dominated genres, so my target audience will be women.
Our audience research:
Evaluation Question 5
How would you attract/address your audience?
ESSAY & Annotate/denotate images of my magazine.
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