Production Journal

Print advert

When creating my print advert, I first had to do my research and gain inspiration and knowledge on how to create a good print advert. After gathering examples of existing festival posters on my Pinterest account, I then did a review on three different print adverts, identifying their strengths and weaknesses as well as the codes and conventions used when creating it.

After this, I began planning out how I would create my own print advertisement. I decided I wanted to have the background look like a night sky above a forest, and I wanted to use rainbow colours on my fonts to represent the style that was popular back in the 60's and 70's. Once I had done a few sketches to gather ideas, I opened a new document on Photoshop and set the measurements to 297mm to 420mm, and named it Festival in the Sky with Diamonds.

To begin with, after creating the document, I added a layer and colour filled it a dark purple. This would be the base for my night sky, as I wanted it to be colourful yet slightly dark. I then went onto Brusheezy, and downloaded a set of star brushes to use as decoration for my background. After downloading the .zip file, I extracted it, uploaded the brush type onto Photoshop's brush tool, and covered the next layer with stars.

After this, I downloaded more brush types from Brusheezy. This time, I downloaded tree brushes, to create the shape of the forest along the bottom of my poster. After adding these to Photoshop, I added another layer and decorated the bottom of my poster with grey and black tree silhouettes. This added a nice three dimensional effect, and created a base for me to write my text on.

The next step was to choose an appropriate font. I went for a classic 60's style hippie font, and wrote my title in it. I downloaded the font Bell Bottom from Dafont, extracted the .zip file, closed Photoshop and opened Fontinstaller. I then added the font to Fontinstaller, and reopened Photoshop. I used this font to type out my title word by word, and each time I rasterized the text so I could use the magic wand tool to colour the text in using a rainbow gradient. I then warped each of the words individually, to give them more of a psychedelic effect, before adding a black drop shadow to make them stand out more from the background.

After this, I listed all the musicians and cove bands I would want to play at my festival. This included a Beatles cover band, Rolling Stones cover band, and other more modern singers like Rathoy and Lana Del Rey. I chose the same Bell Bottom font that I used for my title, and wrote out each band or singer individually. Afterwards, I rasterised each text layer, and used the magic wand tool to pick each individual letter. I used the gradient tool to put a rainbow gradient on each word, and then placed the text beneath the title with the move tool.

I then moved on to adding further details onto my poster. I added the date and place that the event would be taking place, and I decided to use a different font from the one I had used before. I downloaded a font from Dafont named Rockin’ Record, and used that to write the date and place. I then rasterised the text layers, and used the magic wand tool to select all the individual letters. I then used the gradient tool to add a yellow to orange gradient on the sentence, and placed this text directly between the title and line ups for the festival. As a finishing touch, I used a drop shadow on the text and added a black stroke.

As my final text, I used the same Rockin’ Record font to write where my customers could buy tickets from. After rasterising the text and selecting the letters with the magic wand tool, I used the same yellow to orange gradient on it, and moved it to the bottom of my page.

Now that the text part of my poster was complete, I moved onto the finishing touch. I selected the custom shape tool, and chose the peace symbol. After rasterising the shape, I add a rainbow gradient to it, and duplicate it. I then place one at either side of my title, and warp them both slightly to give them a three dimensional effect. The last thing I add is a drop shadow to each shape.

Radio advert

Firstly, I had to do lots of research into how to create a good radio advertisements. After listening to several of them for inspiration, and looking up the codes and conventions used in them, I did a review on a select few that I had chosen. I identified all the good features of them, so that I could make sure I used these features in my own radio advert.

After this, I began planning out my radio advertisement. I begun to write a script, including each person who would speak in my advert, and any sound effects and music tracks I would choose to use. I made sure I wrote enough material to last at least 30 seconds, and made notes of pauses and sound effects that would be used.

As I have never created my own radio advert before, I had to learn how to use the correct software in order to make one. The software is called Adobe Audition, and I did a tutorial on how to use it after I had completed my planning. I also decided to record my voice recordings before I chose my music, so that I could select music that would sound good with them. I did this using , and after doing the recordings in a soundproof room, I removed the SD card from the  and put it into the computer.

Next, I saved all of the recordings I would need for my advert to my memory stick, before clearing the SD card to be put back in the  . I then opened up YouTube, and searched for 'copyright free music'. I found a track I liked, due to the fact that it sounded modern but at the same time used instruments that made it sound like it could be from the 70's. I downloaded this onto my USB too, ready to upload to Adobe Audition.

The next part was opening Adobe Audition. After doing this, I uploaded the music track I had selected, so I could edit it appropriately. I make it slightly quieter using the dial at the top of the page, so that the noise of the music would not overpower my speech recordings. I also added a fade in effect to the beginning of the music, to make my advert flow more smoothly. As I did not yet know how long my advert would be, I did not crop the music track down.

Individually, I uploaded each of my 7 voice recordings onto Audition. I edited them to make them louder, as they were quieter than the music track. After adding a fade in and fade out effect to the beginning and end of each of them, I added them to my music track and arranged them to play one after the other.

To make sure that people could hear the fast part of my advert at the end, I made the music extremely quiet. I also separated it, so that there is a small pause between the rest of my advert and the terms and conditions. After cutting out the excess music, I added a fade out effect onto the end of my advert, gave it a listen through a few times, and it was complete.