Editing a photo of my model on Photoshop

Editing a photo of my model on Photoshop which will be used on my front cover

This is a screengrab video I created through a program called Camstasia Studio which captures anything I do on my computer. It basically shows everything I do to edit a photo of my model which I am going to use for my front cover, so this is anything from fixing blemishes on her skin to give it a smooth, clear airbrushed look which will be more appealing to my target audience to adjusting contrast and colour to make it brighter and stand out to the audience. I have created this video to allow the audience to view how I edited my model step-by-step.

Final magazine

Front Cover:

The final front cover of my R&B music magazine 'The Game' has a consistent colour scheme using the same purple, black and white house colours which contrast well with my model's skin tone in the main image, aswell as her bright red lipstick. Furthermore, I think these colours also juxtapose well with her pink, yellow and green floral crop-top which adds a quirky feel to my front page. I feel the use of the three main colours gives my magazine a basic, simple look which will be more appealing to the audience as too many colours will come across as too complex and confusing for the reader, therefore perhaps putting them off. I chose the colour white for my masthead as I feel the colour is refreshing for the audience to look at, plus I used a Bevel Emboss and Drop Shadow effect on it so that it stands out from the main image and is the first feature to grab the reader's attention. Furthermore, I felt it was important to have 'CASSIE STARR' my main artist's name in large capital letters as she is the most important artist in the issue. For my sell lines I used the font Century Gothic which is a basic font, taking away any complexity and too much variety from the page. As you can see, my sell lines "backstage with.. Rihanna", "tickets to see.. Miguel" and "private gig with.. Beyonce" follow a simple almost repetitive 'list-of-three' effect which is simple for the reader to look at and understand, therefore standing out at them more. This will create the effect that being able to attend these gigs, backstage passes and getting tickets for concerts is also easy which is exactly what my teenage target audience will want. I used the font Georgia with a black colour and Drop Shadow on the artists' names so that it grabs the reader's attention immediately and they instantly know what the selline is about. As you can see, I've also added a "+ top 10 R&B songs right now" selline where the number '10' is a white font in a purple box so that the reader's attention is brought to this instantly making them wonder what the number is about, along with the plus sign making the reader feel as if they receive extra for what they have paid for. Plus a plus symbol is simple and easy for anyone to immediately understand. Aswell as this, I felt it was crucial to include a feature about the reader being able to win a prize which will again make them feel as if they are getting more than what they 'bargained for'. I included this aspect in a purple circle shape which is different to the rest of the aspects on my magazine therefore making it stand out. Furthermore as you can see I have also included purple banners at the top and bottom of the front cover with a Bevel Emboss effect on them making them seem '3D', with them both mentioning awards, concerts and 'hottest and latest R&B music' on them. The effect of this will be that the reader will feel a lot of opportunities and information is included in the magazine and that it is worthy of the money they have paid for it. Finally, I feel that the body language of the model I used was important because I wanted her to dominate the page and represent my genre well. The fact that my model is using direct eye contact with the camera lense represents that she is not shy and is welcoming, creating a feeling of personal connection between the artist and the reader, making the reader feel as if they are 'the same'. This will lure the reader in more to read the magazine. My model's stance is very basic; - her arms up behind her head portrays that she is welcoming and confident with nothing to hide. Aswell as this, her curly, bouncy hair, bright red lipstick and colourful floral crop top suggests that my model is fun, flirty, unique and confident aswell as very feminine. This could both appeal to females and males as females may inspire to look like her and males may have a sex appeal for her. The crop top represents a calm, relaxed and casual nature about her which is very inviting for my teenage target audience as this is what many teenagers like to do, and they may feel she is just like them; - not too restricted with some of the flesh of her stomach showing.
Contents page
The contents page of my final magazine again follows the house colours of purple, black and white. Each headline "on the cover", "regulars" and "exclusives" is in a black bold script font to give my contents page a classy, mature and perhaps quite feminine look. I think this would be very effective towards the female audiences. For each topic name next to the page numbers, I have put it in purple capitals so that it stands out clearly to the reader from its black lower-case description below. This means that the reader can easily navigate themselves around the magazine. I have used an editor's note which is a typical convention of an R&B magazine, and introduced the reader to it. I have also made sure to use 5 effective images, one of which is of a male in order to create a sex appeal and attract female audiences but to also make sure that the male audiences feel they can relate and that the magazine isn't 'too feminine'. Lastly, I have made sure to include all social networks and contact details in a purple box such as Twitter, Subscription and a The Game iPhone app which will further attract my young target audience as they are more interested in going on these social networking sites on the internet and using technology to communicate and get involved. Furthermore, advertising my magazine's technology distribution means that my target audience can get involved with the magazine in their spare time too and more easily share it around with their friends.

Double page spread, page one
On page one of my double page spread I used a large mid shot of my model with a leapord-print furr coat on to create a quirky look which will intrigue the audience, and then used a quote stating "this is just the beginning" in a large black font with the words "this is" and "beginning" highlighted in purple. I decided that this quote would really stand out to the audience because it suggests that my main artist has a lot more in store for them which is exciting and intriguing for the reader. Below this, some of the article starts here.

Double page spread, last page
On the last page of my double page spread, the rest of my article is placed here. Then, on the right hand side I have placed a black and white 3x3 grid of close up shots of my model pulling different facial expressions. I decided this would have a good effect because it would show the reader that my model has many different sides of her and that she can be silly too, which will stand out to my target audience in particular as they are still young and are able to be silly too, so they can relate and will feel as if they are "the same". Also, below this a bit more to the right hand side I have used a near-long-shot of my model singing into a microphone. This shows an image to the reader of the artist actually performim

Diary: 06/03/13

Diary: 06/03/13

 

Today I continued working on my music magazine. I finished creating the three boxes and putting them in the blank space on my double page spread, then underneath this was a gap aswell so I had to think of something to fill these. Suddenly I had an idea, and I decided to put all the social networking sites on there for The Game, so that my target audience could get involved online, too. However, before I managed to start this, I was presented with an AS Media checklist, meaning I had to navigate through my blog and check off everything on the PDF checklist that I had done. Next to each check I also had to select the quality of the piece of work, what document it is presented on and select whether it's completed or a draft file. I found I had completed a lot on my blog and was able to select most of them as 'proficient' which was satisfying. However, the checklist made me realise that a lot of my documents are presented on Powerpoint still, and even though I attempted to change this by transforming several of the files on my blog from Powerpoint to Prezi for example, there are still many that are presented through Powerpoint so I need to change this in order to have a wider variation of presentation techniques on my blog. Also, the checklist made me realise that there are two things I haven't done: behind the scenes document and the chosen images document. So I will work on the Chosen Images document over the weekend.

 Above, as you can see is a screenshot of the work I completed on my magazine today. I have completed the purple boxes I spoke about yesterday in my project log and have now also added social networking details below so that my target audience are able to get involved with the magazine online too.

This is a close up screenshot of what I did with the three subscription magazines at the bottom of my double page spread. I had to change the house colour of my magazine three times in order to do this, screen shot these, open them in Photoshop and drag them into InDesign, cropping them into the right size and lining them up together by the 'subscription' part at the bottom of my double page spread. I did this because I knew it would allow the audience to realise that there are many more monthly magazines to come from The Game and that they are all different, hopefully increasing audience's subscription to my magazine.

Diary: 04/3/13

Diary: 04/3/13

Today I continued to work on my music magazine, continuing to fill in the space at the bottom of my magazine with 3 purple text boxes consisting of my model talking about other artists. It took quite a while to do this and since my magazine is my priority whilst at school because I don't have InDesign at home, when I got home I continued working on my evaluation question. I found it hard to plan out what I was going to write but once I had figured this out the evaluation was quite easy to do.

Above as you can see is two screen shots showing the work I had been making on my magazine today. I had added these three purple boxes and had finished them by the end of the lesson.

As you can see, above is two screen shots of the work I have done on the question 7 evaluation so far.

Diary: 27/02/13

Transcript: In my lesson today I just continued to work on my magazine. I especially worked on the last page of my double page spread which was where I had an empty space that I needed to fill in, so I went over to talk to Mr Fisher and I asked him what I should do to to fill in this space as I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it and he showed me someone else's magazine and told me that I should fill in some boxes and say that my artist was talking about other artists and things like this just to get the audience involved as most teenagers like the gossip aspect. So today I just started on these boxes and filled them in with text. Then, me, Siobhan and Rag'e did some audience feedback videos in the office room in our Media room and we just said the good and bad things about eachother's magazines and we videod this and put it up on YouTube. So this should be up on my blog soon. I think this audience feedback really helped me because it made me realise the good and bad things about my magazine and how I can furthermore improve to make sure that it's up to scratch and the best it can be for the final deadline.

Diary: 25/02/13

Transcript: In my lesson today I continued to work on my magazine and improve my blog. So this was anything from filling in gaps to adjusting my blog, making sure that it's up to scratch and that I wasn't missing out on any parts I needed to. I also spoke to my teacher and we went over everything that I'd done on my blog and anything that I might of been missing out on and she ticked off everything I'd completed which was quite a lot so really I haven't got a lot left to do on my blog; - apart from the fact that I forgot to do my Time Lapse for my photoshoot and now this is not very do-able because I've already completed the photoshoot. This is really the only thing I haven't completed. On my magazine today I just worked on improving it and filling in any spaces. Also, I've been working on my evaluation, so any evaluations I have typed down normally, I have now converted them into presentation techniques using voice-overs etc.. One easy thing I found about this lesson was that I knew what I wanted to do with my magazine so continuing on working on it wasn't a problem for me. But working on my blog is quite hard because I didn't really know what parts I should be improving on, for example I wasn't sure if I should of been debriefing/adding text to every single document on my blog or whether I just had to do this for powerpoints etc.. However with some help from my peers I was able to work on this in the end.

Audience feedback/magazine analysis

This is a video of me and my peer Siobhan analysing eachother's magazines, stating the things we like about them. We discussed the strengths and improvements we could make on everything about eachother's magazines from the front cover to the double page spread. The feedback Siobhan gave me really helped me because it gave me further confidence on my magazine but also allowed me to realise some things I needed to change about my magazine to make it look more professional and up to its full potential. The audience feedback was created with Siobhan as she is part of my target audience, so I thought it would be appropriate to use someone within this age. I definitely felt I handed my final piece in at a higher standard thanks to some of the beneficial feedback I'd recieved from this audience feedback, so overall I felt it really helped.