Adobe InDesign and Magazine Design - Reflection

Welcome back, everyone! Now that we've practiced with Premiere and learned the conventions of films, we're shifting over to magazines. For the last three or four classes, we've been analyzing the conventions and structure of magazines, and more specifically, magazine covers. Following that analysis, we were given the assignment of designing our own magazine cover with a given rubric.

With that context, let's get right into my reflection!

Genre Choice

The genre I chose for my magazine cover was Travel. I do quite a bit of traveling, be it on cruises, road trips, or hikes. I actually travelled to Zion National Park in Utah, and a photo I took during a hike ended up being my inspiration and cover image. The cover as a whole was, I felt, very fitting with the genre considering the fact that it was a stylized photo of my travels. 

It included somewhat fancy fonts that fit the vibe of elegant travel and beautiful vistas, as well as a color scheme that fit with the cover image and complimented its highlights with deep royal blues and bright white text. The actual content of the text on the cover contributed greatly as well, with the masthead reading "Journeys" to emphasize the travel genre and cover lines about national parks, amazing views, and my very own journey through Zion National Park's "Narrows."

Conventions Used

I made sure to use plenty of the conventions of a magazine cover in order to "fit in" with popular magazines. I had a large, defined masthead that spread across the width of the magazine, a banner with general info at the bottom, multiple puffs/plugs to advertise certain things in the magazine, and aligned coverlines that would tease stories while also highlighting the cover image. This was also done to ensure that I would complete the rubric of the assignment, which required that I create my magazine cover in accordance with genre conventions. When it came to font, I chose an elegant, flowy, cursive font for the title to echo the image of penned annotations and labels on a map, and I chose a bold yet refined font for the rest of the coverlines, banners, and puffs to show that travel is a bold yet refined endeavor.

Overall, I think all of these choices helped make my cover more similar to popular magazine covers and more effective.

Highs and Lows

There were plenty of hiccups at the start of this arduous process, especially considering that this is one Adobe app that I've never used before. When I first created the new project, I struggled for a while just trying to import my cover image. Then, when I tried to add shapes for banners and mastheads, I had even more difficulty. However, with help from Mrs. Acosta and the videos that her previous students provided, I was able to pull through. 

After that, I started to get the hang of InDesign. It became much easier for me after I learned how to properly frame text and shapes to create the numerous features included in my cover. The aspect that I had the most difficulty with was just trying to create a circle for my puffs. I tried to import and then recolor an image of a circle, but that didn't work for a multitude of reasons. Then, I tried to import one of the Google creative library graphics that was a circle, but I couldn't recolor it and I certainly wasn't going to use a regular gray circle. However, Mrs. Acosta showed me how to change the rectangle tool into an ellipse tool to add circles, which made everything significantly easier.

Essentially, it was a long and difficult process at first, but once I got comfortable with all the tools at hand, I was able to create something I'm very proud of.

Takeaways

The main thing that I've learned from this assignment is that practice really does make perfect. I was lost at first, blindly experimenting with numerous tools and menus that I had no idea how to use. But, after some loose guidance, vague videos and a will to learn, I figured out InDesign and was able to successfully complete the assignment. I'm nowhere near mastery over InDesign, but I like to think that I'm getting there. As the proverb goes, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." 

Anyways, I'm very proud of the work I did for this assignment and I think that, over the past three classes, I've developed my skills quite nicely. If you want to see my handiwork, you can check it out below. Again, thank you all for reading and make sure to keep an eye out for more posts. Until next time!

Premiere Pro Practice - Reflection

 Hey everybody! For the last couple class periods, we've been practicing with Adobe Premiere Pro. It's been really good practice with Premiere so that I can be more experienced by the time I start working on my final project. But, with all that said, let's take a look at what I've been up to.

The Process of Practicing Premiere

First off, we were provided footage from ASB, a student television organization that organizes competitions and acts as an amazing resource for student filmmakers and journalists. They had a ton of raw footage from some kind of county fair and interviews on a concession stand called "Pineapple Whip," which I had the privilege of working with. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of errors and mishaps in the footage (including the interviews and B-roll), but I'll get more into detail on that later. All in all, it proved to be a pretty good challenge, and a great opportunity to hone my skills. 

I began with just putting all my clips into the sequence and examining each one to know what I did and did not want to include. Then, I broke up the interview into smaller segments to make the editing easier. After I had all the interview clips in order, I started layering on B-roll over the interview clips to "spice up" the visuals. Once I had a good foundation, I started adding on the special touches. I used constant gain to blend the different audio tracks, I used plenty of J-cuts to make transitions between shots easier, and added a lower third graphic. Finally, I went through the rubric that my teacher provided us to ensure that I had met all of the requirements, which I had. 

All things considered, it was a great assignment. It wasn't too difficult, but it was sufficiently complicated for me to challenge myself a bit.

Challenges and Successes

This assignment definitely had its ups and downs. My main issue was simply the footage that I was provided. For example, the interviewee never introduced himself with his full name and position, the clip just ended while he was explaining the main theme of the package, the interviewer would occasionally speak over both the interviewee and the b-roll, meaning I couldn't use any of those clips, and several of the b-roll shots were really odd. 

I didn't experience any difficulties with premiere itself, as I already use premiere for my TV production class and I'm familiar with the program. I actually had a great deal of success with premiere, such as when I made my own lower third name graphic and added special audio effects to make transitions smoother.

Lessons Learned

Overall, I think my biggest takeaway from this assignment is just to make sure you get things done right in production so you don't have to make sacrifices and makeshift solutions in post-production. If the original package crew that got the footage had just done all the things I complained about during the actual production and filming, it would've been far easier to make a better package.

Next time that I produce a package, and when I produce my final product for this class, I'll be sure to double check everything during production so that I don't encounter any hiccups in post-production that could throw off the whole project. 

Also, if you want to check out my finished package, you can watch it below by clicking the link. 

https://youtu.be/8g2OK0rjdPQ

See you next time!