Production Monitoring Blog- 14th March

Last week, I managed to get quite a lot done with regards to my magazine. On Monday, I continued with my pre-production work. I managed to get this finished on the afternoon in a free I had later that day. On Wednesday, I created the InDesign document, and started to create my double page spread. I also wrote some of the magazine article, and got about half of it done. On Thursday, I continued with the InDesign document, and changed the layout of the magazine so that it looked better. However, I am still not happy with the layout, and therefore plan to continue with it this week. On Friday, I went on Photoshop, and started to create layers for the front cover of my magazine. By doing this, when I take my pictures, I can just paste it into the Photoshop document, and see what needs changing . However, I’m not too sure if this will work, but I will be able to see if it does when my pictures have been taken. I have used various technical skills in both Photoshop and InDesign. In Photoshop, I used margin guides, so that my sell lines are lined up, and the magazine looks neat. I also used the stroke tool, so that the ‘G’ is emphasised on the masthead. In InDesign, I used the text effec ts tool, to make the header of the article looks effective. I also added boxes to the document, but changed the content settings to either graphical or text. Over the weekend, I prepared my props. I printed black footprints onto a white t-shirt, by painting the bottom of a welly black, and stamping them onto the t-shirt.



In this week, on Monday, I will spend half the lesson writing this blog. I plan spending the other half of the lesson looking at magazines such as Nuts or Heat, so that I can get ideas for a layout. I want to use these magazines as these are the sort of magazines that appeal to my target audience. On Tuesday, I have my photo shoot at 10.50, so I will use this time to take pictures of the model in various poses, with various props. In Wednesday’s lesson, I will download these pictures onto the computer, and choose the ones I want to use for the magazine. I will then start to edit them. I plan on spending all of Wednesday’s lesson doing this, as I want the photos to look as best they can. In Thursday’s lesson, I will again look at magazine articles, so I can get an idea of how to create humour in my article. I hope to actually finish the article in Friday’s lesson. If I don’t use all of Friday’s lesson on the article, I will come back to the front cover, and continue optimising it. I will learn new technical skills this week, especially when I am doing the photo shoot. These technical skills may involve lighting, or camera settings. I might also learn new technical skills in Photoshop or InDesign, which will make both the article, and the front cover look effective.


There are various things that could go wrong this week. Although I trust the model I am using, they might not turn up to the photo shoot. In case this happens, I have a back up model. The cameras may not also be available for the shoot. To avoid this, I could go and see Chris Marriner to make sure there is definitely a camera available for the shoot. The photos could also not be of the quality that I had wished for. I am going to take a lot of pictures in the shoot, to make sure that I have some that I am happy with. In case any of my important documents go missing or corrupt, I have saved different versions of them, so that if one document becomes corrupt, I can refer to an older version, and keep going.

This is a screen dump of what the magazine article looks like at the moment:

This is a screen dump of the layers I have created for the front cover: