AS Reseach and Planning: Conception of Photoshoot for Music Magazine.

My initial and main idea of the conception of the front cover of my music magazine is to have a photo of a girl with long, dark and curly hair. She will either be standing or sitting, with a guitar for relevance to the magazine. I will take various shots, including close ups, mid shots and long shots. The front cover will have a plain background; either plain white or a light purple/grey/pink colour. This will depend on the colour clothes she will be wearing. The double page spread photoshoot will include more photos from the cover shoot, but this time with scenery. I am looking for surburbia meets country girl, meaning her clothes will have a mix of these. I plan to take a picture of her walking down a busy pavement and casually carrying a guitar in one hand. This will have relevance to my theme. Next, I plan to take a photograph of her sitting on a brick wall, with busy industrialisation behind her. She will be playing her guitar, contrasting with the background.

AS Reseach and Planning: Preliminary Task Conception, Framing & Shot Distance

For my preliminary task (designing and creating a front cover of a school magazine), I have planned how my photos for the cover are going to be taken. I have decided that the backround and main image is going to be a long range shot of Smithdon High School. The masthead, content features and another image is going to overlap this main image. I must show that I can take a mid shot image of a student which I can then crop and cut out using Photoshop. I will either show that I can do this but not actually use it for my final cover or I can use this for my final cover, which I have not decided yet. I plan to test what both covers will look like with both techniques and then use the most effective looking one. I will take close ups, mid-shots and long range shots of the same image so that I have a variety of images to choose from and further show what I am capable of doing.

AS Reseach and Planning: Preliminary Mock Magazine Cover

This is a part of my research and planning (pre-production). This is my first attempt at designing and constructing the layout of my first AS preliminary task; this is to design and produce a front cover for a school magazine.

The programme used to contruct the layout is Microsoft Publisher. As you can see (from the rather badly done colour layout) the main picture is going to take the most space on the cover. However, the picture is merely a backround for 'main content info' and the three 'content features'. The effect of having a simple photo instead of a busy one will compliment the content features nicely. The photo must also have some kind of relevence to the 'main content info' for continuity purposes.

The masthead on my mock up is simple and standard of a typical magazine. The effect of this is that the magazine is simple, tasteful and lets the picture below do the talking. The masthead will be the title of the magazine.

Finishing touches such as the logo- which should incorporate the school's own logo and colour scheme to make it look offical and not a tatty and a cheap knock-off, while still being obvously linked to the school. The barcode is purely used here just to make the magazine look more authentic and official.

I should also mention that I do not intend to use this terrible colour scheme for my cover!

When I improve on this mock up I will use professional programs such as Photoshop and Microsoft Publisher to ensure the authenticity of the cover.