Framing Images - Practice for Front Cover

In order to get an idea of the types of framings that could be used on a magazine, I did a practice shoot before taking my final photographs for the cover of my college magazine.

The shots that i needed to include were:

• Extreme close-up
• Close-up
• Medium close-up
• Long shot
• High angle
• Low angle
• Two shot
• Framed left
• Framed right
• Central image

I also applied what i learned about camera framing in Film Studies and included two other types of shots: a medium shot and a medium long shot.

In order to take these, I had my friend stand in front of a lit white wall in order to make it look like it was taken in a studio, giving it a sense of professionalism. I then edited the raw images, cropping them so that the composition and black and white effect made them look appealing. Then, I named and organised them so that they could be uploaded easier.

These photos were the best ones out of the 100+ I took. i had at least one for every camera type, and taking these helped me to gain a lot more insight into how a portrait image could be framed for the front cover of a magazine. I will definitely use what I have learnt in this task, such as camera framing and picture composition, when taking and editing the final image for my front cover. However, if my final image does not turn out as expected, some of these photos may work well as the main image on my college magazine as they are quite suitable for the criteria.

Semiotics - Movie Poster

We took this poster from the film: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl; one of a series of blockbuster fantasy swashbuckler films, and looked at how the colour, characters, title, etc. made it effective to the film and attract an audience.

There are four obviously main characters on the front of this poster, arranged in order of importance. The one being the largest and in the centre we assume is the main character before even having watched the film. He is looking directly at the camera with a slightly menacing stare and holding two weapons; a gun and a sword. This character also reflects the typical pirate look, which reiterates the title within his appearance. This is all important to attracting the audience as it introduces us to the main character and tells us there is a theme of danger, violence and action within the film. Just to the left and right of the main character are two other characters who hold the same stare, making them look menacing and reflecting the sense of danger and theme of pirates on the cover. However, on the far left is the only female character on the front cover. She has long hair which is being blown to one side and is looking seductively at the camera, suggesting that she may be the main love interest in the film. All of this is effective to capturing the attention of the audience as the characters connect with them by looking straight into the camera, and keep well with the theme displayed on the rest of the poster.

The title is written on a scroll of faded parchment, which keeps with the theme of pirates as well as suggesting the time in which the film was set (1720-1750). The font of the title is in a serif-style font which looks as though it could have been handwritten in the style of that era, further reflecting the theme of pirates in the 18th century. This attracts the audience as it backs up the theme of pirates and tells us that the time in which it was set makes it a somewhat 'period' film. Also in the title is a logo which fans can quickly recognise the film by and that is a skull and crossbones. However, the crossbones have been replaced by swords and the skull is smiling and wearing the same bandana which the main character (below) wears. This backs up the theme of the pirates, the front middle character being the 'main' character within the film and the assumption that the film may be somewhat mysterious and dark. This further attracts the audience as it gives us an image, or logo, within the title which we can recognise the film by (suggesting the film is worthy of recognition and a logo).

At the bottom of the poster is an image of a pirate ship, highlighted by the sun which is setting behind it. There are visible holes in the sails from cannon shots and pirates in smaller lifeboats around it. From this, we assume that the ship might be a prominent feature in the film before even having watched it. The fact it is highlighted makes the ship and the lifeboats appear silhouetted and casts a harsh, dark shadow across the water. This further adds to the dark pirate theme and makes the scene look very mysterious, attracting the attention of the audience.

The poster itself is comprised of mainly warm, contrasted colours such as oranges, reds, yellows and black. In fact, a large portion of the poster is black and the faces of the characters are shadowed, and this gives the poster a sense of mystery and adventure. From this, we get the idea that the film may contain violence and action as the general overview of the poster suggests it may be a darker film. The warm colours add to this contrast, and the use of red in the main characters bandanna may suggest danger. This is all effective to the poster as it ties all the themes within it together, making the poster look visually appealing and thus attracting the attention of the audience.

Despite the consistent dark theme of pirates, danger and action, we know that the film is family-friendly and suitable for younger audiences by the highly recognisable logo at the top of the poster which is Walt Disney Pictures. This is a key attention-grabbing point as it has a very large fan base. The audience recognises that due to the film being made by a very famous production company that it is more than likely going to be a very popular blockbuster.

Introduction to Photoshop

I have only briefly used Photoshop before, however, my secondary school had a slightly more basic version of Photoshop called Serif which I used fairly regularly in the past. I was able to build up some basic Photoshop skills on this which helped me when it came to actually using Photoshop in this introductory task.

We were given the image size (72x300) and then four pictures which we had to find ourselves and work with: sand dunes (which would be the background), the Eiffel Tower, a bear and an astronaut. Some of these proved to be a challenge to work with due to the shape and nature of them and so it forced us to have to work precisely and with different editing tools.

I started with the sand dunes as it was the background. I had to be sure to pick a high-resolution image in order to fit the picture size without causing detriment to the image quality if it needed to be scaled up. I downloaded the image, opened it in Photoshop and dragged it onto my blank image template, which created a new layer. In order to keep a track on all my layers, I made sure to name them so it kept things organised. The image I inserted needed to be scaled up, so I went to Edit > Transform > Scale and held shift whilst dragging it by the corner point so that it kept the aspect ratio.

I then found the image of the Eiffel Tower. Initially, I had some trouble with this as the image I picked was pasting as a very low quality image, even though the resolution was high. I couldn't resolve this problem, and after following advice from my teacher, looked for a new image. This time, it worked and pasted on with no problem and I was able to use the polygon selection tool to trace the image of the Eiffel Tower and then delete the background on it. I had to do this twice, however, as the first time I had forgotten to open my image into Photoshop first, and dragged it on straight from the Finder menu, resulting in it being pasted as a 'Smart Layer' and I was unable to delete the background.

I then looked for an image of a bear. This was slightly tricky as generally, the images I found of bears had their limbs covered by grass or they were laying/sitting in awkward positions. I eventually found one and used the polygon selection tool (with a feathering of 3 px to blend the fur into the background better) and placed it on my picture, deleting parts of the bear so it appeared to be slightly behind the sand dune.

Finally, I added the image of the astronaut. This proved to be the most difficult as the awkward shape of it meant that using the polygon selection tool took an awful long time, and twice I had to do it since the first time I accidentally double-clicked halfway through and had to start over. However, I eventually managed to cut the image out precisely and placed him in the faraway distance.

Throughout, I ensured that the images I pasted on blended into the background as best as possible by going to Image > Corrections and adjusting brightness, exposure, contrast, hue, etc. so that it looked slightly more realistic.

Overall, I wasn't entirely pleased with the outcome of my photoshop edit, I could have made it look more realistic and used better images. However, it is a starting point, and I feel that by having used Serif before may help and prove to be an advantage when it comes to editing photos later on.

Research - Moodboard, Layout, Titles and Colour Scheme

I have gathered research in the form of a moodboard, which then helped me to create a layout template, come up with title ideas and colour schemes for my preliminary task which is to design a college magazine.

For my moodboard, I collected pictures from Google Images which generally caught my attention and I found visually appealing and arranged them on a publisher document. Doing this began to show a general theme with the kinds of images I was picking out and I was beginning to see similarities in fonts, colour schemes and layouts. Some images, such as those of the college logo and the building itself, were put in there as I wanted to see how these might work with the general 'contemporary' theme if I were to include them later.

I began with the 'College' magazine images in the bottom right-hand corner. This was a good place to start as it showed some existing products which worked, looked appealing and I could use as a guideline later on. However, I found the search for college magazines difficult as there were not a wide variety of existing products to choose from, nor very many that I liked. 

I then moved on to searching for other magazine covers which I liked the appearance of. These were generally fashion magazines as they had the medium close-up shots and serif headers which I liked the look of, as well as light and bright colour schemes. I broadened the search for fonts by finding ones that I liked and putting these on my moodboard. Most of the fonts I have included are the titles of the fonts themselves, so I can easily search for them later and download them to use. I saw that the general pattern with the fonts I picked were serif-style fonts, with a small kerning and usually quite thin. I thought that the more 'bolder' fonts I included would look good as headers, as it would attract the viewers attention.

Then, I started thinking about the main image on my magazine. I already knew I wanted a single student rather than a group as the main image, possibly holding books. I dedicated the top right-hand corner of my moodboard to collecting images of students. From the images I picked, there seemed to be a general theme with female students (as I found that images of male students standing alone holding books seemed to be limited) holding books in an outdoors environment. The backgrounds are usually very blurred (short depth of field) or a solid colour, so I will take pictures with both in order to see which works best on my magazine cover. There are, however, a couple of images of students with laptops, and I particularly liked the one of the girl on the laptop taken from above as the high angle is quite unusual, however the more landscape appearance of this image may make putting it onto a portrait magazine cover difficult. When it comes to taking the photographs for my magazine cover, I will be sure to try out both the books and laptop as props, and both the outdoors and studio-like backgrounds.

Lastly, I looked for contents page covers in order to collect ideas for mine. I have concluded from the image research I gathered that I will have a white background, with a large title (possibly the title of the magazine) and multiple images on the page. I will try to keep it looking quite clean and minimalistic in order to make it easy to navigate when looking for pages, and the colour scheme will match that of the cover page.

After finishing my moodboard, I designed a front cover and contents template for my magazine in order to get an idea of where I wanted everything to be placed. From my conventions analysis, I decided that I wanted to include a skyline, footer and plug on my cover even though they are not particularly necessary, as I think it will balance out the appearance more and make it more eye-catching. As for the contents page, I wanted to centre the contents list as well as the title as I think that this helps in creating symmetry and making it look cleaner. These layouts are only a guideline for how I may want my magazine to look, as I may decide against including features such as a secondary picture on the cover as it might not work with the main image, or make it look too cluttered.

Then, I came up with some ideas for college magazine names and contents page ideas, and then used some of the pictures I had collected and displayed on my moodboard to come up with some colour schemes for my magazine. I can see that the general pattern with the colour schemes include blacks, greys and whites along with either bold or pastel colours in predominantly pinks, blues and greens. Although my decision on none of these are final, I found it was helpful to lay out my ideas and display them this way for future reference.

Conventions Analysis

As an introductory task, we had to research 3 existing college/university magazines, labelling them and then expanding on the labelled points to explain how it is effective and helps attract an audience. This is so we could see what products already exist on the market, therefore helping us in the production of our own college magazine.

Preliminary Task

To produce a front cover for a new school/college magazine and a mock up of the layout for the contents page and double page spread.