Ancillary Tasks:

-We've set to work on these over the half term.


Fist up, the newspaper Ad (by Zane)



-This was his first design, and i really liked it, it's very bold, engaging and interesting. He said he wanted the layout to look like a comic book page, which i can appreciate, my criticism for this, however, was that there was just too much going on, with irregular miss matching fonts (with slight grammar error). I found it a little hard to make out on the writing at the bottom.

-So he took that on board and came up with this, which is fantastic, simple, has got all the right info, to the point, and a great choice of graphic.

IMPROVEMENT!



-Teachers criticism for this was that the green didn't go, and the style, and add the 'comic corp.' logo and adjust it so that the white wasn't there.

-I suggested, that we could probably break convention and stylise the More4 logo to fit the style that we want, that's mostly dark colours, red/black.

Secondly! The double page spread (Me)



-This is my first design, i wanted to have a dark colour scheme (black/red mostly), i wanted it to be quite dynamic, glossy looking and quite active, also much like the pages of a comic book. There is dummy text in the text block, but for the actual final draft we will have real text to do with the documentary. I wanted it to be mostly visual, to catch the readers eye with a snappy title.

-Problems with this: The background is boring and quite blank, i couldn't decide on what images to use to fill it up and make it look fuller.

-I also don't think that the images are that interesting, they are relevant, but not as bold as i would have liked to make them.

IMPROVEMENT!




-I then came up with this. Zane suggested that we connect the Ad and the double page spread even more through imagery, so, as you may faintly see in the background, i have used the same image of the girl that he used in his Ad. It's quite subtle but effective because it's a good 'filler', you may not notice it when it's there, but like in the first draft, when it's not there, it looks a little more empty and unfinished. I also used a second picture i found myself. These enhance the edginess and dark style we have.

-I also added a subtitle for the text block and on the bottom right, more text. There are a few mistakes, but these are only first drafts which i did on paint.net (a little like photoshop, but but in a basic 'pain' style). I believe Zane did his in Illustrator. We will be doing the final draft on Indesign.

Teachers criticism:
-It's to busy, your eyes don't know where to look.
-The title is a little immaturely done.
-Looks too much like an advertisement.

Ancillary post:

So, for our double page spread and news paper advertisement, i've gone off and done some research, and i've found some handy sites that i can learn from. Here are are few examples of double page spreads. (This post is a continuation from this one.)

Double Page Spread Analysis

--So from looking at this presentation, it seems that for a double page spread there are limited colour schemes, quite simple, fashionable and effective. The layouts are very open, they're not clustered like, the front page of a magazine lets say, and it makes it easier to read and nicer to look at. The pictures get to the point, they have to be large to call out to the reader.

(note to self: good website to upload my first individual presentation onto and post to blogger.)

Double Page Spread Analysis

View more presentations from Norwich City College.

-Here we can see that the graphics, just like the first slide i sound above, match the mood of the pictures.

-What i especially like are the blown up quotes, thats a good quick insight into what the article actually talks about. The pictures are the primary source for getting the readers attention, then the title/subtitles, then the bold quotes, much like the pyramid style of writing journalists use to get readers to keep reading.

FINAL PRODUCTION

Our production is finished!!!

It was quite a journey to get it to where it is. We've taken heed of the mark scheme, so i hope it works out. I am happy to present 'Women in Comics & Comics culture'




Now, down to our ancillary tasks ^_^


Just a note-
I don't believe that we should have had to make our own music for our documentary, documentaries don't really do that. (I caught something on Tv a while ago that had the same part of the Foo Fighters song that we wanted to use in our documentary, and it really does work well.)

Storyboard: Draft 2

This is the second/final draft of the storyboard, we only did a storyboard of the parts we needed to film/re-film. Storyboards for the whole thing will be put up later if it's really needed.

1

2

3

4

(Mirella/Me)

Changes-

At first we wanted a slide show with covers of comic books with women on them. But then we went with Zanes idea instead, which is the new beginning of the slide show. He put up of the clip of batgirl, anime con., the comic flip and then the interview, this worked much better visually, then me and Mirella edited it.

Our first idea for the Comic Corp ident was to have someone flipping through a comic book, reaching the logo at the end, then to cross-fade that into the actual logo, (bellow, rought visual)
-but instead we came up with the three women passing it around instead. The previous idea proved to be difficult in terms of framing and pace. This one was better because it incorporated the idea of women.

Decisions and revisions:

-Right, i was planning on putting up the storyboards, but that will take long, my computer is quite slow (scanning, uploading etc.) So i give you this.

We had to structure how it was going to start and finish, so we did a mini plan. At first it looked like this:



Which is an unreadable mess made by me and zane.

After, i think, about three attempts, me, Mirella and Zane came up with this:




Much better :) Sorry about the blurriness.

Script: Third Draft

This is the third and last draft of the script that i'd developed. It's a lot more snappy, and is not only the intro to the documentary, with the More4 ident, but also with our own ident. It also starts to go into the actual documentary aswell.

3rd Draft- Green

SCRIPT

-Thanks to zane for proof reading :)

Script: 2

I Finlay found a free file hosting site, and managed to upload the second draft of the script. Google documents is being awkward and unusable.

2nd Draft- Pink

Script!!

The site is 'Snapdrive.net'. I don't know if there are any dangers with these sorts of sites, but either way, it's better

Firstly: Ident

We have already decided to put out production on More4, a channel which showes a lot of interesting documentaries. ( As u can see from their program listing also)

We used this ident with our own voice over. (http://www.theidentgallery.com/player.php?id=MORE4-2007-ID-2)




However, i couldn't find the one without the voice over that we used (it was Zane's job to find the ident), but this is the style of our Ident, ours is the whole clip (20 sec).

We got another class mate to do the voice over for us because she had a mature and clear voice, similar to that of most V.O speakers.

I watched these and more,




And took down some of the things that may need to be in an ident, i.e.

-The show on later (time, w/who)
-Now (time maybe) short witty description --> e.g 'now, for something to wet your whistle'
-who is presenting
-what it is
-what it's about
-warnings
-Give the name e.g. 'Here on More4'

The speakers in the ident are always quite casual and witty.

Super-Update:

Haven't updated in a while, too busy focusing on the work, but the next serise of posts will show everything that has been done so far.

Where we left off:

-Scrip problems: Too much content,

The structure of our production was too much like a miniuture documentary. We went through two structures to get to our final production.

-Music problems: Using too much copyrighted material

We were unable to use the music we wanted.

-Filming problems:

We were unable, eventually, to film at Forbidden Planet.

Solutions!

1.Me, Zane and Mirella started making our own on Garage band, then uploading it onto iTunes and editing it further on imovie.

-We picked a simple tune to put in the back ground, but we found that other members of our media class, upon watching it, found it too repetitive and annoying, so we decided to alternate between two main tunes, as well as using the 'Kryptonite' song by Three Doors Down. This worked very well, and gave variation, keeping interest.

2. There were further issues with getting permission to film at Forbidden Planet that would have taken a lot of time.

-Unable to film outside and infront of these two places, we settled on filming not only in the black drama room, but also found it suitable to film in the library. Because it would have taken a while to get permision from our local library, and also one by little venice, (which has a big manga/ comic section) we decided to film in out school library.

3. The script was changed three times, i'll be posting all three drafts later. Google documents is being a problem, and has very limited file space, however it's where we were instructed to do our blogs.

-Also, another draft of storyboards was drawn up, i'll be posting those later as well.

-We also decided to add an ident, which i will be mentioning in another past.

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I think that's it for now, i'll be going back over posts and adding bits and peices maybe. I'll be expanding on all the things i have brought up in this post.