My Tour Poster

Before I could start making my tour poster, I began by researching the conventions of folk tour posters, album covers and conventional folk fonts. Below is a moodboard of these folk examples that I found.

When starting to make my own tour poster I want to include these conventional colours, fonts and image styles whilst also making my poster unique. This is important so my audience is still interested and not disappointed.

Typically the colour palette includes pastel colours, oranges, blues and greens, that create an organic feel, typical to the folk genre. The artist isn’t often looking directly at  the camera, they are usually looking off into the distance or we can’t see their face.

Below is my final tour poster for my folk artist:

For this task I used Photoshop and Indesign to construct my final tour poster. I chose to use a corn field background as it has an organic feel which is a key convention of the folk genre. I includes pastel colours which also conventional. From my research I discovered it isn’t common for the folk artist to look directly to the audience. However I wanted to make my poster slightly unique to the genre so the audience aren’t disappointed and disinterested.

Please click to view the document in full.

Targets:

  • Keep experimenting with typefaces and the stroke of the text.
  • Improve my cutting out in photoshop, cleaning up lines.
  • Make sure the layout ensures that all the text is legible.

My Magazine Front Page Swede

After being introduced to Indesign we had to create a replica, as close to the original as possible, of the front page of a magazine, including the conventional features of a magazine front cover such as a masthead, cover lines, a pug and a main cover star.

Below is both, my final draft and the original.

My final draft. Please click on the image to see a PDF

The original magazine cover

This task has successfully introduced me to Indesign and how to use its features such as adding text, changing the stroke of the text, adding shapes and filling a frame proportionally with an image. I have also been able to consolidate my knowledge of the conventions of a magazine cover which will be essential when producing my own. Here, I have listed some of the strengths and weaknesses of my mock-up front page:

Strengths:

  • I found it easy to navigate placing an image to fill the frames.
  • I was able to change the spacing in between the lettering to more accurately reflect the  original’s font.
  • The layout of the quote at the bottom left of the front cover, matches the positioning in the original.

Weaknesses:

  • In places, such as the pug, the text is bolder than the original.
  • The alignment of the cover lines on the right of my magazine cover is not right. They are not in line with each other.
  • I struggled to find the correct fonts to match the original.

Here are some YouTube tutorials I found that will help me in the future to use Indesign more effectively.

These tutorials will help me when it comes to using Indesign in the future for my tour poster and magazine. Using these videos I will be able to navigate around text in Indesign more easily as this was what I struggled with the most during this task.

The Camera Talks

Below is a moodboard that I created with Canva to show the 9 best photos from our shoot. The hashtags describe the camera technique, the denotations and the connotations of the images.

Please click to enlarge my moodboard.

My favourite photo from above is the high angle, close up in the right centre. You can clearly see her facial expression and it conveys a narrative that she’s sorry and vulnerable.

This task has taught me what makes a great photo that communicates a story and how to use my DSLR camera effectively. Even though this shoot contains photos which are out of focus with the wrong lighting, I am now able to more successfully use my camera now.

The skills that I have acquired during this practice photoshoot are going to be really useful when it comes to producing my own music magazine as I will now be able to use my camera effectively to produce photos with a narrative.

Technical Camera Terms

I have learnt, from this task, how to use my DSLR camera successfully. The first techniques we experimented with was changing the aperture (F stop) and shutter speed. Aperture refers to how much light the camera lens is letting in. The smaller the F stop the more light gets through, meaning everything in the frame is in focus. Whereas, if the F stop is larger less light is let through meaning the background is often more out of focus. Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter is open. If you use a low shutter speed lots of light can enter the lens and a high shutter speed is used when less light is required.

The other techniques that are key to consider when producing a photo with a narrative are:

  • Distance – How close to the camera is your subject? If using a close up we see the subjects emotions and if it’s a longer shot we can see the surroundings more clearly.
  • Angle – Are you looking down or up at your subject? Looking down at a subject, using a high angle, represents they are vulnerable and using a low angle suggests the subject is powerful and superior.
  • Framing – Where is your subject positioned within the frame?

Above are contact sheets consisting of all the photos my group and I took when experimenting, using these different angles, framing and camera techniques to produce photos with a narrative behind them.

These skills that I have learnt from this practice photoshoot will be very helpful when it comes to doing my photoshoot for my music magazine. I will now be able to use angles, distances and framing to create images with a clear narrative.

My image that uses mise-en-scene to communicate meaning.

My group was assigned the music genre, Folk. We found that the most important MES (mise-en-scene) conventions of folk music included:

  • earthy colours
  • free and hippie costumes
  • happy, free body language of the artists
  • minimal make-up if any
  • props include guitars, banjos, violins etc.
  • natural settings

Made with Padlet

We then used all of this research on conventions of the folk genre to dress our model as a folk artist. After dressing our model, the class helpfully labelled her with adjectives that suggested how her character was suggested on post-its.

As a producer, I used the conventions of the folk genre to encode my model with the appropriate MES and the audience correctly decoded this by labeling her with the following adjectives:

  • Flowy
  • Dreamy
  • Earthy
  • Relaxed
  • Calm
  • Organic
  • Care-free

Feedback on our model by the class

Below is my choice of final image from our shoot.

Click to view all the photos from our shoot.

This folk artist is presented as care-free I think this is the best of the photos taken of our model as this reflects the most conventions of the folk genre we had  previously  researched  as  you  can  see  more  clearly  in  the  analysis  below.

This task has developed my understanding of how important MES is and how to communicate a narrative through its use. I plan to use these production skills, by considering every part of the MES, when dressing my model for my music magazine.

Print Media that Communicates Meaning

In order to put my newly acquired media analysis skills to the test, I analysed a music tour poster and reflected on the mise-en-scene and how it helps to communicate a narrative.

The skills that I used during this task will be very useful when it comes to producing my own music magazine as I will be able to construct it with its colours, fonts, images, body language etc (mise-en-scene) all purposefully chosen and used.