Planning for Preliminary Task

Before taking the photographs for my front cover of my magazine, I had to plan it out and design it first of all.

Planning the Photo
Planning the photo was quite time consuming and difficult. To begin with, with taking photos, i just took a photograph of everything that i saw, which ended up to be good practice, but not useful for my Preliminary Task. I had to consider all sorts for getting the cover for the school magazine, including the angle in which I was going to take it and how many people I wanted in the photo, to see if it was going to be a group photo or a individual shot. I took photos of the most random things at the beginning, to try to get the technique, and to see how to properly take and work the camera, taking photos in different angles, shots and movements. However, when taking the main photos for the front cover of the magazine, I took all the wrong photos. I took long shots, close ups, medium shots, then realised that the Preliminary Task stated that I had to use a medium or a medium close up shot. I went through all my photos and realised I had problems with a lot of them, as they were either blurry, out of focus or my main problem was the fact that I had take photos landscape, rather than portrait. The angle of the camera which I had used to take the photos was mainly landscape, and I suddenly realised this when uploading the photographs to the computer, which meant that I had to go out and take more, to which I was then successful and took photographs which i could use effectively to my school magazine.

Thinking of a magazine name
Starting off designing my school magazine, I really had no idea about what to call it. I was thinking all names possible, including "Wilmington News" before realising that if I named my magazine that, it would include both the girls and boys school, but this could not be relevant as I chose a photo from Wilmington Boys, and included the Boys schools logo to my document. Similarly, I simply changed "Wilmington News" to "WGSB news" meaning that it linked and was more relevant to the boys school.

The month of the year I was going to use
Deciding the month in which I was going to use for my magazine, did really affect it a lot. This linked to the articles and the subtitles the front cover was to display, and effect the stories. I was close to choosing September, as being a start of a new year, I could have included the new year sevens, going into sixth form, and about starting a new year, but also December would have been a good month, due to the Christmas break up period. However, I realised that a few people were probably going to do these months and I wanted something different. I decided on the month of May, as it would be a unique month that not many would have chosen, and it let me include the Summer type months.

Designing the articles for the Magazine
Thinking of the occasions occurring in May, was a hard choice. I had to think of story lines to include for my magazine, and I thought that I could include stories just like the exams. I knew that this would be a large topic as all the years would be having their end of year exams, and the A-level and GCSE students would be taking very important exams, so to help them, i thought that maybe help with a study time table would be beneficial. other stories in which i chose to add included games and competitions, which allowed all years of the school to enter to and to take part in order to win prizes.