Shane Dermott

Writing Practice

I think that identity theft is absolutely shit. There are 27 million people who have been victims of identity theft in the past five years. I’ve have never known anyone to be a victim of this and I have never been a victim of this annoying way of theft but knowing that you have some ‘rat’ roaming around shops and the internet or even airports acting as you! It annoys the life out of me thinking about it.

In this paragraph, I have used a first person narrative with a very low amount of mild taboo. This gives the reader a feeling that the writer is feeling confident but also shows how irritated the writer is with identity theft.

My friend Sophie was a victim of identity theft. She said , all that’s involved is buying something from an inappropriate website, carrying your passport in an unsafe place such as your trouser pockets and unsafe locations such as a ‘troubled’ side of your town.

Above, I have used third person in my paragraph as identity theft can happen to anyone so using ‘you’ could make them feel like they’re already a victim. I also made it more formal as identity theft is more aimed at an older target.

Your one fucking cunt if your a victim of identity theft! My mums about 90 years old and she hasn’t even been a friggin victim yet. Well, she don’t even have enough swag for anyone to steal... She’s just a lonely bitch. She keeps her purse you see, she’s be strutting her shit like a nobhead but keeping everything safe!

Above is a second person narrative. I used this along with very strong taboo as it will be aimed at people more likely to be a target of identity theft (18 years+). The second person and taboo express direct aggression towards the audience about their views on ID theft.

Induction Project Evaluation

During this project I have learnt a lot of skills while working with Photoshop.

I have learnt that when you want to create a magazine that guide lines have to be put in place so that all of your images or text is aligned. This automatically improves the tidiness of the magazine cover. I feel that some things I already knew and it was mostly inserting a text box or text. However, this did show how inexperienced I was with Photoshop because a majority of the things I didn’t know were very advanced and complicated. I believe that quite a lot of the skills that need to be developed are editing images but, I do know how to enlarge and image without stretching or deforming the image. While we have been working on FX, there are still quite a few options that I don’t understand and there are some that I haven’t worked with yet so I need to develop my skills further. I believe that I excelled at using text boxes; this was because that was the key components used on my magazine. This made it a lot easier to develop these skills. However, I think that what I need to develop is the use of creativity; for example, for making different fonts flow together.

Using a complex camera was fairly difficult at first but it didn’t take long to get the hang of it.

When given the task to produce some good photography, I hadn’t worked with a ‘real’ camera before so a lot of the skills I used I had to learn from scratch. I believe that I worked well and developed these skills well. The main feature on the camera I had to use was the focus; at first this was that I worked well and developed these skills well. The main feature on the camera I had to use was the focus; at first this was difficult to control but after a few shots I began to use it well. You could tell that my experience with cameras wasn’t very good as a lot of the photos were fairly blurred which left me with no option but to take some more – I managed to overcome the blurring of the images by spending more time focusing to get it right. Another feature I had to use was the zoom lens which I found fairly easy as it is found on a lot of digital cameras which I had worked with previously. In darker areas that I took the photos, I had to use the flash which was also very easy. However, what I still have to develop is keeping the camera still while taking pictures as some photos were blurry (not because of the focusing but because of movement. As I work further through the year I hope to develop my skills with a camera further.

Skills Development

Some of the photographic skills on my Skills Development sheet have been identified as not being worked with before. However, now that I have used a range of photographic skills, I now know how to use manual focus skills such as zoom and focus. I quickly learnt how to use the zoom well, but it took a few attempts to get the focus right so it wasn’t blurry – this is what I expected. I also said that I haven’t used Photoshop and now I have I believe I am pretty confident with a lot of the components on Photoshop. I think I am strongest with inserting FX on a piece of text, but I haven’t done this on an image yet and I hope to soon. I found a very ‘outstanding’ weakness on my cover; this is that my masthead doesn’t relate (colour wise) to the rest of my magazine. For example, the font is a lot stronger compared to my subheadings. The work that I am blogging illustrates the improvements I am making and shows that I am progressing with my skills as I keep uploading the progress I make. If I was to do this project again I think I would make a clear, detailed plan of everything before I start with the work as I find coming up with ideas from the top of my head very difficult and the outcome is sometimes not as good as it could be.

Target Audience

The target audience for my blog was teenagers and the age ranges from 13-18. I chose this age group for my target audience because having being a teenager myself, I can relate to the audience because I know their interests and what news they want to hear. My new target audience is still teenagers but the group that I am targeting are people who are interested in soul R&B music because once again, I can relate to these as soul R&B is what I am interested in. I found it fairly easy to link my magazine cover to my target audience by stereotypically using what looks like ‘R&B font’ (graffiti looking). Also, there is a sub-heading which says “Exclusive interview with Adele!” who is a soul singer. Also, the colours I have used are silver and black; I would say that it would be better to use gold for R&B because ‘bling’ is mostly gold. I believe my project is at a good standard but if I had the change to improve something on my cover, I would change the colour scheme and use gold and black instead of silver and black because gold is like ‘bling’ – said earlier. Also, I would take a photo using props that could relate with my target audience instead of using a hat. Also, I have said that my magazine is aimed at teenagers into soul R&B but all I have as sub-headings on my cover at the minute are soul, I think to meet the needs of my audience I would have to insert a few more R&B lures. This project has helped me understand audience segmentation systems a lot because it has allowed me to link my magazine to a target audience which is a key skill for media producers.