P R O D U C T I O N A N A L Y S I S

TV Listings Magazine Review

Using Photoshop

To create my second ancillary product, I used the Adobe software; Photoshop CS5.1.I had some experience with this application from past coursework products like at GCSE and then learnt to use it at a more advanced level in my foundation portfolio (click here to view). However, I feel as though my Photoshop skills have further improved during the production of my advanced coursework.

This is the original image that I decided to use (was first in colour but I changed it to black and white in iPhoto. In terms of editing the particular photograph there was not much that needed to be done…

I used the ‘dodge’ tool so lighten the image, particularly the background, which enabled me to increase the exposure without damaging colour levels of the rest of the photo i.e. the model.

I started by inserting the image into Photoshop, and placing it as ‘half’ of the landscape page, as my initial layout for the magazine was the image taking up a whole page of the ‘double-page’ spread.

My initial idea was to censor the eyes of my model, since the documentary has themes of identity, and I thought that this effect would link to other questions raised in my product like “what is the ‘perfect’ woman”. In order to get this effect, I first had to ‘rasterize’ the image layer in Photoshop. Then I used the ‘select’ tool to choose the area that I wanted to censor. Next I selected from the tool bar and chose “pixelate”.

The initial effect I was going for, but by pixelating rather

that using a block colour/shape.

However, from further research, I found this effect (to the left) more common when ‘censoring’ faces and preferred this look to the previous section only covering her eyes.

Therefore, I ‘undid’ the effect that I had used beforehand, but used the same tools/filters to create a whole censored face.

The next step for me, was to add and decide on a title for the ‘poster’ page of my double-page spread / review. I experimented with a few different layouts and fonts to see which looked best. I was not keen on the first attempt, as there was too much space at the top of the image. Also, instead of just having the documentary title, I thought that it would be effective to have a tagline, ‘What is Perfect?’ which also relates to the image, as it is a question which is somewhat contradicted by the censored image. However, in the second two images, I thought that there was now too much vacant space on the bottom of the poster / image.

At this point, I was content with the layout of the font / tagline and image placement as having half the text at the top and half at the bottom equaled out the image.

Although, when zooming in, and even slightly from afar, the white section around the font was noticeable which made the whole image look less professional.

Therefore, I zoomed into the text and used the ‘select’ tool again, his time to highlight the white parts of the font and simply clicked the ‘delete’ button on my keyboard. This made the font appear smoother and gave the image a more authentic and tidy appearance overall.

I decided that I needed to create a colour-scheme for ‘The Review’ magazine to make it appear authentic. Therefore I have tried to visualise a house style, with lots of burgundy and gray-scale colour. I used the ‘shapes’ tool (both ‘rectangle’ and ‘line’) to create my layout with a column on the right hand side, which is where I planned to have the TV listings.

In the bottom right-hand corner I have included the magazine name so that readers will know what kind of magazine this is. Furthermore, it hints that the article is a review piece. I also followed conventions of magazines and included the page number.

Next I wrote my article/review in Microsoft word and then copy and pasted it into Photoshop. To create columns I made two equal text boxes and spilt the article more or less in half. ‘Wednesday’ let’s the reader know which day the listings are for and also suggests that my own documentary is showing on that day.

I have a little section with the BBC Three logo, the title, the date and the time of preview so that readers will be encouraged to watch it.

Before creating my double-page spread I researched existing listings magazines, however, none had full reviews of programs. Therefore, I decided to incorporate features from a regular

magazine review AND a TV listings magazine. I liked the colours used in these magazines and

did something similar in my own product.

The final step was to choose between these two. I liked the white font, although the black is easier to read and looked more authentic.