Media Studies: September 2022

Photography rules

Rules of thirds

In photography, the rules of thirds apply in a way that uses a grid to enforce or imply a certain perspective on the image, to show or contrast what's being shown to the audience in question.

Triangles

Another method used by photographers or digital artists is to use triangles in a way to convey a strong sense of sentiment whether it be stability, uncertainty, or aggression. Grouping, different strong key points that map out a triangle or just a simple effective triangle is enough to emit a harmonious image.

[ S P A C E ]

In S P A C E, no one can hear you scream, except in photography, where space can show how empty or full a canvas or photo is, whether its an empty

Passports and Paper Currency

Both passports and paper currency can be official documents/paper issued by a governing body or made by a private firm. Passports are certifying the holder's identity and citizenship and entitle them to travel under its protection to and from foreign countries.

The Intricate pattern in a passport and paper currency.

A passport or Physical currency's printing techniques have such a complex and intricate pattern combined with text that they exceed any other copier, printer, or scanner available in the printing industry in terms of print resolution.

And if whether or not used for educational or malicious practice to copy and reproduce, there would be a noticeable difference in quality when compared with the actual real thing itself.

Republic of Slowjamastan

Line art made for a passport cover

The denotation and connotation of the movie posters.

The movie poster "Inception", shows a single man in a formal dress holding a Heckler & Koch P2A1 Flare Pistol - 26.5mm, knees deep while in a flooded cityscape, as the towers above him look like they are about to fall and break down.

However, the tagline "Your mind is the scene of the crime" shows that it's not what it seems, and implies its a mystery or at least a thriller film that does not show any comedic or romantic parts even though, those genres show a bit in the actual film. The thunderous cloud appearing in the background indirectly hints at the confusion and impending

The movie "The Crazies" shows a girl standing in the middle of an empty road with abandoned cars, vacant buildings, and a cloudy atmosphere to accompany it. The key feature of this poster is how empty it is, with no one to be around.

Meanwhile, in another context, the apocalyptic clues and attributes of the image show that there is a pandemic going on. The tagline "Insanity is infectious" further proves this theory of it being a cataclysmal event filled with sadness and despair and a feeling of isolation from being with yourself.

A poster I made using the Photography rules and applying them on a poster, as well as the feedback I received on it.

The feedback I have gained from sharing my poster to my classmate:

Key lighting

Key lighting is used to emphasise the focus of an image, for example, brightening up a person’s face and muting the colours in the background is key lighting.

High-key lighting is when a picture has a lot of light and white/ mid tones added to the shot/photograph. Adding lots of controlled light depicts an upbeat mood, light, and airy emotions.

HKL = lots of bright to mid-light tones

Low key lighting is limiting the ambient light in your scene and closely controls your light source. You will usually use a black backdrop.

LKL = very less bright light tones

The image on the left(Joji's NECTAR album) is what I wanted to do with low-key lighting, as I have taken the bright red single light shown on his face and then used it on the image on the right. The background colour is an extremely toned-down vivid red.

I didn't use any examples for this image as I couldn't find something to use from memory or there weren't many tools. But this image is high key lighting with a purple colour facing light starkly on her face.

the website used: http://www.zvork.fr/vls/

Reflective journal entry 28/09/22'

Reflective writing is about how your... 1. is progressing and why.

I joined 3 weeks late into the course, due to being in a different country at the time. But I have managed to keep pace with the other classmates and students in my lessons.

The work I have done so far includes photography and its subsequent rules in which I had to learn what rules of thirds, triangles, space, and other stuff so far. But now learning how key lighting is applied in the above work.

Another type of work I had to do was learning to make a movie trailer by using other trailers in Adobe premiere. Making a poster with my previous work on it.

Adobe Illustrator

There are usually 4 different types of fonts.
Sans serif, is a type of font, that is just straight basic lines that don't have any enhancing features.
Serif is the same as the previous type of font but has a decorative stroke that finishes off the end of a letter's stem.
Decorative, while not limited to pixel art, is a font that is a highly decorated version of sans serif, serif, script, and other font styles.
Script is similar to a handwriting style or font. A classification of fonts designed to resemble traditional cursive handwriting

3 Point lighting 3/10/22'
Task: for each image, answer the following questions.
What type of lighting is used in each image (High or low key)?
What effects/meanings does the lighting suggest?

This is 3-point lighting, which can also be said as lowkey lighting (but there aren't many shadows or darkness to be said as such). The main emphasise is on the dinner table, with filler lighting coming from the lamps and candles. Backlighting from the other side of the room. The mood is very lusterless and hazy even tho we are in a dinner setting, but the lighting suggests otherwise.

This shot uses low-key lighting. We know this, because there is a limited number of light sources, as there are only 2 sources of lighting. The key lighting here is the lamp, and the filler lighting is the main character. Emphasising how much the character is in distress by acknowledging how little hope he has left in his arc.

Another low-key lighting image, set outside in rain but at night time, gives off no natural lighting other than a bit of the moon's reflection which could be little to nonexistent, as the main key lighting is a bit to the left of the character whereby it is blasted on the character with little to no fill light helping him out. The backlight is a lamp post behind the car. The mood set is very bleak and despairing. As the character seems lost and quivered in the wet storm.

This is a very good example of 3-point lighting. Main lighting

The type of lighting here in an alleyway is low-key lighting, using natural lighting, with background lighting emitting from the inside through the door. The lighting set is dark and dim which gives off a very dreary but hopeful mood as the backlight signifies a bit of optimism.

Composite Landscape images

It's when you take a photo, preferably a landscape, and take out certain bits of clutter or blemishes from the surroundings to make a photo look stunning.

A composite is a photograph made from several exposures carefully blended together.

Example of a composite landscape image:

Exotic Landscapes:

Madagascar.
Spikey orange and deserty area with clear skies

Fiji.
More green and tribal hut housing with large mountains in the background

Columbia.
Palm trees and a beach shore give off a tropical setting, and some archipelagos accompany the vibe.

Audience

Utopia, a channel 4 drama, and science fiction thriller was made for a young but still mature audience of 15+, due to the lack of representation for that specific range in the media in the UK at the time. The show is made for both genders and of almost all backgrounds, as there is a female independent lead with a mixed cast of characters of different ages and ethnic ranges.

God of war, a PlayStation 4 exclusive game(now available on PC stores and the PlayStation 5), is an action-adventure, hack-and-slash game, with the latest entry as of now being more story-based, and way more mature with the characters, as well as storytelling. This type of game still from the first game is intended for mature and a serious audience, but with added emotional moments.

Reflective journal entry 05/10/22'

What have you learned this week?

Well, I have learned a lot about Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, and what effects and tools you can use to change an image or file in a different setting. Learned how to make cool-looking images with one material and a camera with some lighting effects that bring out the colour and abstractness of an image.

Another cool little thing I learned was about 3-point lighting. And how to spot them and analyse them, whether they were low-key or high-key, used 3-point lighting, etc. But it gave a good me a good understanding of how good lighting is important and needed to make any scene stand out.

Media Passport and pattern

I made the media passport using both Adobe Indesign and Adobe Illustrator. The line pattern was made in Adobe Illustrator, by using warp and stretch tools to create a unique background to detail it as a cool feature.

The 2nd-page borders were made to look casual and amateurish

Creating a composite image in Adobe Photoshop

Today I was tasked with creating a composite image in Adobe Photoshop by putting an ocean into a cup of tea to make it look magical. I used the "Select and Mask" tools along with layering and something extra I did by putting a transparency mask onto the ocean as well as the cup itself to make it look more natural along with the Perspective tools.

Before:

After:

For the next task, make a composite image with at least one of them being your photo
Images to use in a composite landscape next lesson:

Using images I have made myself and others from royalty-free sources. I made space and a skull-filled lake/ocean with a ghost standing on the pier in the reflection but can't be seen in reality.

I was told to have a minimum of 3 background images, so I added a purple ominous cube staring down the lake. And adds some context to how the lake could have formed along with the mysterious ghost in the reflection being the cube.

Evaluation for Composite Landscape

Interview Q's compiled into paragraphs for the composite landscape:

The desired finished product I wanted from this Composite Landscape is that I wanted to both infer and imply the alluring effects of the lake as well as the mysterious purple cube that could relate to the enigmatic body of water. I took the skulls I shot and layered and edited them in the lake to create a despairing feeling but also alluring. Furthermore, in the original unedited landscape, there is a person standing on the platform, but I kept the reflection as is, to tell a story of how the cube was human and sane at one point. What I imagined at first was the lake being sucked in from a void, but was difficult to do as I was limited in my skills. Lastly, I always liked the aesthetic of cosmic horrors but wanted to do with it as little research as possible to challenge myself. Looking back, this was not the right approach but it did make me think outside the box a lot. I researched a lot of mountains with lakes for the primary and space, stars, and a lot of skulls, but at the last second, I researched some obelisks and found the purple cube in the image. For planning my outcome, I used a mood board, making it generic, but it got developing with the theme over time with adding of space-related themes.

The overall image and composite landscape I wanted are presentable and good enough to be shown. But I want to develop more striking colours, as the colours I have chosen for the bottom have to be more alluring as well as cautionary, I would redo the skull effects and do planets and constellations instead. the travel theme wasn't something I thought of during most parts of the composition. But I did create a place of mystery in which someone or a group of people would want to visit but with caution as it could be dangerous to even be in the vicinity of the water.

Most of the techniques I have used and achieved in this composite landscape were new and difficult to do. As I had little to no prior training other than masking an ocean onto a cup, but that's all. I achieved the red/pink skulls with layers and masking by using a technique called "Patterns and Repetition" which I learned a few weeks ago. And which gives off an effect of a cosmic mess. But my favourite has to be mixing the colour values of the stars onto the lake while messing around with the opacity settings to make it liquid-ly. One thing I would love to develop is a better understanding of photo editing and colour theory. I have used the rules of thirds but not strictly as I wanted the divide of the water to be clear with the mountains and the sky. I didn't go for low-key lighting as that wouldn't express the vastness of the background compared to the water, so I went for high-key lighting instead.

travel video composition

Link for the video: https://youtu.be/jwhjSejXGKY

Title: Places I want to visit and why

For the next video, which I made in Adobe Premiere Pro, I used Chapters of the places I wanted to go to. And their timestamps to go to. Places being New Zealand, Dubai, Tokyo, and Wyoming.

I added more Video Tracks and used Adjustment layers to make a VHS effect of the line being dragged down the screen. Made the aspect ratio 4:3 to further add to the old aesthetic I was going for. Used some pretty simple video transitions and cutaways to smoothly go into the next chapters of the video.

Trailer Video

Link for the video: https://youtu.be/UKSgbTdDLHU

I made the trailer video in Adobe Premiere Pro, in the timeline, I spliced, cut, and did some fadeaways to the beat of the background music I chose to create a very upbeat but melancholy feeling with adventure, alien, and supernatural elements.

Keeping a consistent theme and visual element was challenging to make it fit together, seamlessly.

Reflective Journal Entry 12/10/22'

This week was slightly less productive but I still had the same amount of work to do, like the video editing projects I had on Adobe Premiere Pro on finishing my trailer video, and making a travel video on places I want to visit and their information. But haven't completed it yet.

In terms of other work, I completed the Composite Landscapes I needed to have done by the end of the lesson, and they turned out fine. Learned the specific techniques on how to layer masks, use other images to make something unique, and so on.

Magazines

What are magazines?
(From Wikipedia) A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination of the three.

They feature cut-outs, panels, columns of text, fancy artsy images or text, or a mixture of both. And by using these features of a magazine, they need to use space effectively to put adverts.

BBC Top Gear is a popular magazine in the U.K, and slightly outside the EU. Shows the tools and methods they used to effectively write out the information and aesthetics of this extract of a magazine.
Large images of the product are on the right, with the introductory text on the left presenting us what the car can offer, or what experience a vehicle can give us.

There are other variations of this spread. But this suffices as a good example.

I made something similar to what I was asked. Made columns of 4, with an image in the middle of the second page. The text wrapped around the inserted image was something I learned during the lesson using the correct techniques. I added different title fonts for each column to make it stand out.

Final magazine

I made this magazine spread in Adobe InDesign, using the same techniques as before, but this time, I added a large title for the page, and page numbers, and used my own landscape composite design to write up a place that would be written on an actual magazine.

The caption above the composite landscape image was written in a way to describe the image perfectly for readers who can't understand or couldn't comprehend what was going on in the image.