Project Monitoring Week 3

By this point I was working completely differently to what I had planned in my schedule, this week I planned to begin and finish sub-editing my first DPS get feedback on it, then wirte my first draft for my second article. But what I actually did was almost finish my second DPS, do my photoshoot and write the second and final draft of article 2.

The first lesson, was spent continuing  working on my Youtube DPS, I also spent a lot of time on it outside of class, which meant I made good progress and almost completed it by the end of the week. I am happy with how it looks so far, however I think that I still need to work on improving the break-out box, not only in terms of design, but also content, so that I can add something with a little more substance. I play to move the breakout box to the bottom of the page and try and make it look like a ripped page. This is something I will develop over the weekend. I also think that I should add a little more page furniture just to spice up the page a little; things like lines in between the columns. 

My second lesson of the week was spent doing the photoshoots. When it came to actually doing the shoot I didn't refer back to my photoshoot plans at all, and I just used the lighting that was already set up. I don't really have a reason for this other than laziness, so hopefully this didn't have too much of a negative affect on my photos. By the end of the session my goal was to have two photos, one for the front cover of Joe looking nervously to the left, and one of Joe jumping, for my youtube DPS. This is the image I have decided i'm going to use on my front cover:

I think that the actual image it'self is well lighted, and in focus, however the only issue that I didn't notice, until my assessor pointed it out is that he is not making direct eye contact with the camera, which is something that almost every magazine out there does. Once I decided this would be the image I will use, I enhanced it slightly in Photoshop, this was the end result:

I first of all used the Lasso tool in Photoshop to remove Joe from the background. I then used the Liquify tool to decrease the size of his jaw and make him look slightly thinner overall, then using the Clone and Healing tools, I removed all of the spots on his face, and finally I altered the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturations tools to make him look more tanned. I think that this all worked very well. I had never altered the saturation of an image before so this is a new technique I learnt.

I had to take several photos of Joe jumping in the air before I got 1 I wanted, because it was very difficult to time. The studio itself wasn't right for the photoshoot because when he jumped into the air his head escaped the boundries of the backdrop, meaning that when I came to cut him out in photoshop it was more difficult.

This is the image I decided I would use:

Here are some other attempts where my timing wasn't right:

Inbetween the second and third lesson I created the explosion graphic using an explosion I got from the internet and the image from my photoshoot. This is what I came up with:

This was created in photoshop, used the lasso tool to remove the background, and added a subtle outer glow so that it looked like there was a light source behind him. I then placed the explosion behind him and added an overlay to Joe so that he was slightly transparent. 

In my third lesson I wrote a second and final version of my second article, so that I would have all the componants required to complete this DPS. This is what I came up with:

Article 2 Second Draft

One hour of video is uploaded to Youtube every second, that makes getting noticed very difficult. Today we’re gonna be discussing some top tips that will help you get to the top of that Youtube food chain!

Whether you want to be a film maker, vlogger, musician or gamer the basic rules and guides are all the same.  Any youtuber will tell you that the guide to success is consistency, if you want to be a vlogger or film maker you should really upload at least once a week, two weeks max. Gamers on the other hand are expected to upload at least 4 times a week if you want to keep up with competition. If you don’t upload regularly then your existing subscribers will forget about you and become inactive. Less people will watch you if there is less to watch.

However it is important not to choose quantity over quality, it is pointless uploading everyday if there is no real substance behind any of your videos.  There is a whole process behind producing content; coming up with an idea, planning it, recording, editing and marketing. If you put effort into editing your videos (doing things like cutting out boring bits, adding background music), it will make your videos appear a lot more professional, and people are more likely to subscribe.

You might have noticed the word marketing, and thought to yourself “I can’t afford to advertise my videos?!” well doing little things like adding customised thumbnails (the image that appears before you click the video), and using good grammar (capital letters, no spelling mistakes) can make a big different to the amount of traffic you generate.

Once you have managed to gather yourself 100 or so regular viewers it is important to interact with them as much as possible so you can build a relationship with the people who allow to do this. Ask them for advice on what to do next and how to improve, making videos that your viewers actually want to watch is a key to success.

Speaking from experience the best way to succeed on youtube is to practise. Just keep on making content. The saying practise makes perfect is definitely true because the more videos you make the better you will get at all the things I have already mentioned, you will learn more about how youtube works, what kind of videos do well and which videos don’t. Eventually, if you’re prepared to put the effort in and work hard, you will succeed and you will, get big on youtube.

In this current lesson I am continuing to work on my DPS. Now that I have added my article and image of Joe, the DPS is near enough complete, I just have to improve the things I mentioned earlier. This is my DPS in it's current state, I shall continue to work on this over the weekend and hopefully be ready to start my third DPS early next week:

I think that my client would actually be happy with my progress this week, because I have gotten a lot done and my product looks quite good. I am a little worried about my progress this week because I don't think I will have enough time left to make improvements.