Contents Page

Contents Page

I am currently making progress on my contents page for my magazine 'Smoke and Mirrors', I am unable to upload a picture of it at this moment in time due to my Photoshop not being able to open the document, so I am unable to change the image from a PSD to a JPG. I will do this when I have access to Photoshop on one of the school computers tomorrow (20/11/12). I can, however, tell you what it is going to include. First of all it is obviously going to contain the name of the contents going down the right hand side of the page with the title 'Smoke and Mirrors Contents' at the top. The headings for these shall be, in no particular order (because I don't remember specifically): 'Interviews', 'Features', 'Competitions', 'Reviews' and 'Celebrity News'. I am basing my magazine contents page of that of 'Kerrang' magazine, despite the fact that I am not doing that genre of music magazine, I liked the layout and thought it would fit my magazine well. Here is an example of 'Kerrang' magazine's contents layout:

Initial Ideas

Initial Ideas

This post will include my initial ideas towards my front cover, contents page and my double page spread of my magazine, I will include some real life examples of magazines that are my stylistic influences and what I am going to change to make my ideas original and unique. I will also analyse these magazines in detail to show where I got my stylistic influences from and why I like them in the first place. The two magazines that I am going to analyse are 'Q' magazine and 'NME' magazine as they fit in with the type of magazine that I would like to create. However, the two magazine types that I have chosen to analyse both hold features that I would like to include in my own magazine 'Smoke and Mirrors', this is because NME is for a specific genre, whereas Q has a wider variety of musicians and acts contained within it it. 

My first initial idea for my magazine was to do a rock genre magazine, but then I decided to change the genre as I wouldn't be able to fulfill the requirements of the specification if I were to do so. I changed the genre to a more modern, up to date pop/mixed genre of music magazine as I  found it easier to write about and would be able to create a magazine based on it. I will include my analysis to real life magazine products in my next post so that they can be separate from this post itself.

First Draft of My Front Cover

This is the first draft of my front cover for my magazine 'Smoke and Mirrors', it is not the final draft and I had some editing to do on the layout and adding more articles onto the page as it looks a little bare right now. I also need to edit the background a little as it is a little too dark for the style that I wanted. I can easily do this on Photoshop and change the brightness and contrast so that it doesn't look as dark and dull looking. I am also going to change the colour of the title as it does not fit in with the colour scheme of the magazine that I want to create. I would also like to make the font size a little bigger on the articles that are on the side of the page.

Production Context

Production Context

The name of my magazine shall be called 'Smoke and Mirrors' and shall be a music magazine as required for the course. The target market shall be people who are interested in all different types of musical genres. Mainly targeting those of up and coming new talent.

The magazine, 'NME' or 'New Musical Express' could be compared to my magazine as it focuses more on new and up and coming talent in the music industry and maybe not bands or musicians that people have necessarily heard of before, this is what my magazine will also do. However, compared to 'NME', my magazine will not be targeted at a mass audience, this is because mine will be purely music based, whereas 'NME' magazine has snippets of movies and television shows entwined within it. The layout within my magazine 'Smoke and Mirrors' will be similar in comparison to 'NME' magazine's double page spread layout as it is one of my stylistic influences.

FRONT COVER

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

Film Opening Title Analysis

The screen shots I have chosen for this analysis each hold a different meaning in relation to the film I have chosen to analyse, which is Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. I like the opening titles to this movie as they are not quite as conventional as other films, but still hold the needed conventions for an opening title sequence.

 2) In this shot we can see not only where the film is going to be set, but it also sets the dark mood of the film. It's raining and it is set in Victorian Era London. It also tells us the name of the production company who made the film, "Zanuck Company".

3) In this shot we see the infamous barber chair, it gives insight into one of the main points in the film, this is the place in which Sweeney kills all of his victims, even though the high shot makes the chair look smaller than it actually is.

 4) This is the first shot we see the name of the director placed over the barbers chair with a splat of blood on the window in which it is being filmed through. The text 'Tim Burton' is bigger than the words 'A' and 'Film' as it shows they are more important than the rest of the text.

5) This shot shows one of the main actresses in the film, along with silhouette portraits of both Mrs Lovett and Sweeney Todd. It also shows the top of a worn chair as well as the wallpaper which is also quite worn, this just shows the environment they were living in and a key piece of information to the film.

6) This is the first time that we actually see the name of the film, although it is quite far into the sequence, and it is really the only colour we see throughout the title sequence so far. The red is significant because of the blood spilled in the film.



7) This is a significant shot in the title sequence as it shows fire, which is a main point in the film's conclusion, it also shows one of the names of the casting directors.




8) This is one of the main shots in the sequence as it not only shows the pies, which as people know, are thee main focus in the film, it also shows the blood, which shows that the pies are not normal pies. Another piece of important information is the name of who the music was written by as the movie is a musical and the music tells the story of the film.

9) This is the last shot in the title sequence, showing the name of the director for the second time, sealing it as his work and putting his stamp on it without any interference in the background.

Preliminary Exercise Evaluation

Evaluation of the Preliminary Exercise

Overall, I think that the filming for the first draft of our preliminary exercise went well. We had no major problems with the filming, we managed to get all of the shots we needed for the piece and the camera did not have any faults in the slightest and we had the perfect location to film in. Although I did not take part in the actual filming of the piece, I was there when Jimmy, Dan and Harry filmed it, along with Megan. When it came to editing the shots together, Megan and myself were in one group, whereas Jimmy, Dan and Harry were in another. This is because there were too many people in the group for us all to get a chance to do it. Although Megan did more of the editing than myself as I took Media Studies last year and did not need as much practice as she did. I would say that the editing went well, apart from a few technical hitches at the beginning.

The names of the people in this group are Daniel Faint, Megan McMillan, Jimmy Beaton, Shannon Pratt (me) and Harry Mead. We filmed our short scene on Tuesday the 9th of October in the head teachers office as it was the best place to film the scene. The equiptment we used to film this excercise were the Canon Legria camcorder to film and  Adobe Premiere editing software to edit the scene and place it all together. The skills that we were practicing in this excercise were the 180 degree rule and camera and editing skills to put together a thirty second clip. The things that went well whilst we were filming were the fact that we managed to complete all clips that we needed to film and the location that we used was perfect. One of the things that didn't go as well was the fact that once we had managed to upload the files onto the computer, there was trouble getting them to convert and import into Premiere, so we have yet to finish editing.

Shannon x