1. Magazine Processes
After researching the conventions of the ‘Sight & Sound’ magazines we started to produce our own magazine front cover. In this presentation I am going to illustrate
how the magazine front cover has developed overtime.
Here are some 2015 Sight & Sound
magazine front covers that we
looked at to help us design our own
magazine front cover.
2. Magazine Design
First of all we started to play around with the photoshop tools to get used
to them. We watched Youtube tutorials to help us with this. I was familiar
with using photoshop as I have had experience in using this software last
year in film studies so this was very useful.
When researching existing magazine covers for inspiration we found that
some magazines had a collage for the background rather than one main
image. We thought this looked appealing so tried it out ourselves. We
designed a collage for the magazine, taking various shots from the
teaser trailer and laying them out on the page. However as a group we
decided that this would not be best because the Sight and Sound
magazines are almost always more simple and have just one key image.
We also agreed that this made it look more like a poster rather than a
magazine.
Instead, we tried another approach, we used the same image as we
used on the poster. We found that this made it too similar to the poster
so we used the same image but edited out the hands on photoshop so
that it was just a mid shot of the main character; making it a different
image altogether.
3. We added on the masthead on the ‘Octin Spraypaint’ font
that we used in the poster and teaser trailer. We firstly
chose to have this font to show that we have a brand
identity but after looking at the Sight and Sound magazine
covers we realised that they always have the same font as
the anchorage text so we then changed this to fit
accordingly.
4. Here you can see
how we duplicated
the image and then
lowered the capacity
to give it this effect.
We had to use the magic wand tool to get rid of the
background on the image so that we could fill it.
5. We looked at images off google for ideas for a background for the
magazine cover. At first we liked the image of the medication but then
decided it was too distracting and took your attention away from the key
image (the character). The background of the brick wall fitted really well
with the theme because brick walls stereotypically give connotations of
gangs, suggesting that the character is involved in some trouble. The brick
wall makes her exposed and vulnerable to the audience because it is such
a wide, open area and she stands alone. Therefore we decided this would
be a good image to have as the background.
We went outside in our free time and took some shots of a brick wall
outside Reigate Station. We uploaded them to photoshop and edited them
appropriately. We made the image black and white and then lowered the
capacity so it did not overpower the character in front.
6. At this stage we referred back to the research we
did on magazine layouts to make sure what we
were doing followed the conventions. Here you can
see how we added the ‘Sight and Sound’. We
lowered the capacity of the wall because we
realised that it covered up the ‘International Film
Magazine’ text.
7. When producing the white boarder around the magazine cover we measured a
few of the Sight and Sound magazine covers and found that they were not
exactly A4 sized, so we made sure that we had the same size as the
professional ones.
We then wanted to add a surveillance camera. We used the magic wand tool to
cut around the image of the camera and then made it black and white. It took a
few attempts to do this because the camera was at first facing away from the
character so we flipped it so it was looking at her. We preferred this because it
gave more connotations of how she was being watched.
As illustrated on this slide you can see how we have then added the BFI logo,
the bar code and the anchorage text. These last few things were quick to do
apart from the text because we had to keep referring back to other magazines
to check we were writing the correct text in the correct order.
We showed the magazine cover to friends at this stage and from the feedback
we realised that we had made major spelling mistakes on the title. We learnt
from this and changed it to the correct spelling.
8. This is the finished magazine front cover. We had
audience feedback which I have explained in another
entry on my journal. Overall I am very happy with the
final product.
