Unit 5b

Unit 5B

The first step to creating a magazine article is by opening a PowerPoint. You do this by going into to start tab and selecting PowerPoint, this will open the PowerPoint after loading for a short time. After this you select the "blank presentation" in the top left corner of the screen, this will open a blank PowerPoint that is ready to use. I will use PowerPoint because it is an digital method that is easy to use and can produce seemingly professional magazine articles.

As PowerPoint is normally used to give a presentation it needed to be changed so as it can effectively present an magazine article. To do this press the view tab and the press a notes page. We need to do this because the notes page will make the article look more professional.

For the title we need to make it standout and catch the audiences eye so it is best to use Word Art. We will use publisher as publisher is better suited to make a title for the article. To do This Press the start button and select publisher as shown in the screen shot. After it has loaded select the insert tab as shown below and click on Word Art.






For the article I think that the font that is outlined in the screenshot will work the best, as it will stand out and it's colour is a similar colour to the colour of the title of the game Xcom 2



Once you have selected the Word Art a box with the words "Your text here" will appear as shown in the screenshot. This will have the Word Art chosen and will give you a demonstration of what it looks like allowing the viewer to see whether or not they like. As I want to keep this text it will delete the text and replace it with the title as shown below.

After we have selected this text we need to copy and paste the title into the power point slide by right- clicking on it and selecting copy and then going into the power point and pasting it onto the top of the page. This is shown by the two screenshots on the sides of this.

Next we will need to make a text box so that we can write the article, this will also let us place the text where we want it to for maximum effect. To get a text box we need to select the insert tab and then click on the text box. We can then draw the box by holding the mouse and choosing the box's size, after this an empty box will appear as shown below.

Once we are done with this we now need to start writing it. To begin we will have a introduction so that the reader will know what the article is about and make them want to carry on reading to find out what our verdict is.
For now we will use the basic font which is "Calibri (body)" as we will edit this later if we need to but for now this will do. In addition to this we will keep the font black and put the font size to 14.

By adding the introduction we can show the reader the premise of the game while also telling them what type of game it is. Due to us adding the premise of the game if the reader knows nothing of what the game is about they will be able to get a slight idea and then understand more of what the review is saying.



Now that the introduction is done we will start the review of the game. To do this we are going to separate the negative from the positive and put them in two columns. To start this we will have word art as the title's of each columns. Follow the previous steps for the inserting Word Art. We will have the Positive column in blue because blue often connotes good emotions while the negative column in red as the colour red is normally used to show bad things.

Underneath these headings we will make two texts box. One under the Positive and another under the negative. Repeat the previous steps of making text boxes but while making two for positive and negative  and making them under the two headings.

I will first focus on the positive column. The positive column will be in blue because this will match the title. To change colour  go to the home tab of the power point and then select the "A" with colour underlining it and choose the colour. I have chosen this shade of blue because it is dark enough to be seen while still light enough to clearly be blue not black. I am going to have the my points numbered so that the reader will be able to see the amount of points on each side. To do this in the home tab select the button show in the picture below and choose the first one.
This means that every time the enter button is pressed a the next number will appear, making the listing of the pro's quicker and easier. After this I will start writing the positive points of the game.

Once I have finished the positive section of this is will them move on to the negative side. I will do this by following the same steps as the positive side.
Once the negative side is done I will be almost finished with the article but i will need to give a final verdict so that the reader can see a rating and what I think of it overall.





Before I give a score to the game I will need to write a conclusion so that readers will be able to see why I will give the score to this game. To do this I will need to make a text box, so the previously shown steps will need to be repeated. To show a neutral viewpoint on the conclusion, I will write it in black text.

The final verdict will be in black because putting it in a positive or negative colour would show a bias towards it on one way. I will give them game a score out of ten but so it is clear I am going to use a picture from the internet to show it.
To do this there is several steps:
1. Find the picture needed on google.                                               1
2. Right click on picture and select "save image as". Save it in the pictures tab.
3. Go back onto the power point and select insert. After this click on the picture button and double click the picture wanted. This will insert it.
4. Once is has been inserted it will need to be re sized and put in the correct position                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            2                  
                                                                                            4                                                                                                    

                                                                             3                                    
                                                                                                                                             

This article has almost been completed but so that it looks more visually appealing I am going to add more pictures in. Furthermore pictures also demonstrate the game, showing promotional art and also in-game pictures. To do this follow the same steps as previously shown to get more pictures. The pictures that I used were:

Due to the pictures taking up a large amount of room I had to modify the article so that they could fit in leaving the finished product look like the picture below.

Evaluation

Our film is caused Straight out of Compton. A parody on the title of the NWA song of a similar name but while their song is based around Compton in Boston, ours is based around Compton in Britain. The movie was originally intended to be planned Straight outta Compton but this had due be changed to to potential copy write issues with the movie that was coming out soon after we thought of this title.   

I think that our movie was creative and original as what was wanted in the brief. One of the reasons that I believe that it fulfills these criteria because of the interesting shots we were able to include in the section of the movie that was shown. As we had limited resources available to us while doing this we were still able to make several imaginative shots, for example using a Go-Pro to film point-of-view shots from our main characters, like Rhys' escape and Tom's death, this is creative because it adds a personal side to the action due to the audience being able to see what the character can see and puts them in the boots of the character that we see the scene from. In addition to this our filming location is creative as many other movie don't use the school setting that we have used. This helps our movie be creative as we are then able to use the classrooms and other sites in the school to be able to show a wide range of scene setting without having to travel. Our group did use the setting available to us but we could have used these to more effect as we only ended up filming in four different locations (the classroom, the staircase, the woods and the road) but we could have used many more.

I think that our film is different than what was originally planned as we did not follow the shot list and missed several scenes. During filming we forgot to follow the originally planned shot list and so, while similar it is not the same as planned. Although it did lose the pre-planned structure it did give us more freedom to film how we want, for example we were able to have more point of view shots using the Go-Pro. The missed out scenes were chosen not to be filmed as we feel they were not needed. As we had limited time in which all members of the group were able to film we had to choose several scenes not to film. One example of the scenes dropped is the planned end scene in which  Rhys and Ivan were meant to be discussing how to get back but we felt that it would be better to leave the film as a cliffhanger with George chasing Rhys as this would leave suspense and keep the audience wondering what will happen after the extract ends. I think by doing this we further filled put the brief because it was more creative and original by having no insurance that the characters would survive after the film ends. Another change that we made was by not having as many extras as originally planned. We did this because` we felt by having the heroes outnumber the villain and still having the heroes be scared, it would make the villain (George) seem more threatening. If there were several gangsters helping George it would both be harder to organize filming times and George would seem less powerful so we decided not to use the extras. Overall I thinks that our changes did improve our product as we were able to tell the story that we wanted in the extract and made it easier to coordinate, giving us more time on each scene we filmed.

In the planning phase I contributed because I was a major part of the story boarding process. We planned out our movie mainly using story boarding and every member of our group helped with this process, each adding into the extract's plot and the shots we used. Furthermore I made the risk assessment for the group which helped s acknowledge and avoid the possible risks to our production crew. During the production phase I was a main actor until I died during the attempted escape, after this I helped as as camera man. For the post production process I was the sole editor so I put all of the scenes we had filmed together and I cut out parts that were not usable, for example much of the audio had background sound that would have not fitted in with the film, so by cutting the audio and replacing it with music I was able to avoid this problem.

One strength of our pre-production was the storyboard's made. I felt that this was strong because every member in the group participated in the making of this leading to a storyboard that everyone was happy with the story we had produced and the scenes we had planned to film. This was a strength because if one person had done all of the story boarding the other members of the group would not know what to expect in the scene filmed and so in the pre-production tasks there could have been several different ideas of what was going to happen, which would have weakened this part of production.A strength of the production process of our film was the several different camera angles and shots we were able to include in the section filmed. One example of the several types of shot used was in Thomas' death as we first used a point of view shot as Thomas rounded the corner and saw George, then a close up of Ivan's face as he is crying over his friend. A post production strength was the music that I was able to include in the film. Most of the scene's filmed either had no need for audio or the audio was not usable due to background sound but to fix this problem I was able to find copyright free music that fit the pace of what was happening in the shots. This made the movie better because the synchronous sound will get the viewer in the mood that we intend.

In our product there were several areas for improvement. One area for improvement would have been organizing our filming times better during the production stage. During one of our filming sessions we were not able to get Ivan as he was busy with other work, who was a lead actor in the planned scene, so we needed to just film Rhys. This was all of the section after Ivan's flashback. Because of our organisational problems I believe that our product lost some of the quality we were aiming for. During the post production process due to technical problems we lost the ability to use some of the filmed scenes: these were a scene were Rhys and Ivan plan there escape and a tracking shot of Rhys as he is running away. Both of these would have majorly improved the end product but as we were not able to use them we lost this ability. A third area for improvement would have been stopping other sound coming in. Because of the amount of extra sound in most scenes audio had to be cut in every scene but one. This made the film seem less realistic as music covered most diegetic sounds.