Final Website

Due to complications my domain name does not end with .com.
Instead the website can be found at the following URL

http://www.unexplainedwebsite.info/

Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

  In my opinion, my websites uses the codes and conventions of other websites well. I have made the layout easy to look at by having my content in the centre of the page, with each article clearly divided into different sections. The space that doesn't have an article is normally the place where there is an advert for something that relates to something unexplained or is a link to the horror genre, for example a book entitled 'The Devil and His Works.'

  The colours red, black and white feature heavily throughout the website as these are the colours that I used for my logo because of the connotations for red and black being evil, danger, blood and mystery. The white is mainly used for the font and as backgrounds for the artist interpretations for the cryptid creatures. The only exception to white being used for the font is the article relating to Jack the Ripper's 'Dear Boss' letter, in which the article is written in red font to symbolise blood. I also tried to incorporate this colour scheme into the adverts placed around the website.

  This was based around the websites London Paranormal (http://www.londonparanormal.com/) and Unexplained Mysteries (http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/). I also tried to enhance it by making easier to look at by adding pictures to the articles they linked to and then only having small section of the articles shown and the user would have to click on a link to see the full article.

Pictures of the websites that influenced my choices are below:

I chose it have it more like londonparanormal.com This is because it seemed less cluttered and easier for my audience to understand and this can be seen in my websites design.

2) How effective is the combination of your main task and your ancillary texts?

  My website, newspaper advert and double page spread work well together because as they all share the same pictures to show they are connected. The main picture they share is of me as the character of Jack Bates (based on the real person Josh Gates, host of 'Destination Truth' on the channel 'SyFy'). This was done when I went out to film the shots needed to create the opening for 'Identify the Unknown', which itself is a reference to 'Destination Truth', which is what I based the whole idea on in the first place.

  They all follow the same colour scheme, each using  predominately red and black, with white occasionally being used. The obvious exceptions to this is the double page spread where the only colours used are Red and black (plus whatever colours are in the photos used on the spread) and the sign post representing the sign outside Area 51 in Nevada, which stands out because of its blueish background. I chose this colour because it stands out from the black background as well as helping the red text to stand out.

  All these aspects help in attracting the target audience, which is anyone interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, the supernatural or the horror genre.

3) What have I learned from my audience feedback?

  When I conducted a survey to get information for my website/channel, I found that the channels most people watch are either comedy channels or film channels, with horror channels coming joint third with sports channels. These people said that they were attracted to the channel by it programming the channel aired but three people said that exclusives drew them towards a channel. These answers helped me decide to base the channel on the horror genre with exclusive programming like 'Behind the Blood' and 'Tales of the Unexplained'. Another question showed that people's favourite television programme genre was action which aided in the creation of 'Identify the Unknown' which is a sort of adventure programme in which the host travels all over the world in search of cryptozoological creatures or supernatural entities

4) How did you use new technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

  In the research stage I used technologies such as iTunes podcasts to find information on a variety of topics for the website stretching from a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Berenice' to America's first murder (Who was America's first murderer? By Stuff You Should Know). I also frequently visited the website Casebook.org which I had heard about on a podcast about Jack the Ripper, which helped me learn more about the Whitechapel Murderer and their five victims. I also have visited Howstuffworks.com for a lot of information including serial killers and Ripperology.

  In the construction and planning stages I used Blogger.com to log all my ideas and thoughts about what I was doing and why I doing it. To create the website, I used Kompozer to build the pages and then quickly developed my skills when I learned how create links and add videos to the pages.

  To create the videos I used both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker to edit the video clips I had taken for the final video. These were two very different editing programmes and I found Windows Movie Maker more of a challenge because nowerdays I use iMovie more to create videos. I uploaded the videos to Youtube in order to add them to the 'Entertainment' page of the website by embedding the video's code into some cells on the Kompozer page.

  I had to create or enhance some picture for adverts for newspapers and a double page spread. To do this I needed to learn how to use Photoshop and, like Kompozer, once I had learned the basics I could easily operate its tools and settings. I used this to create a poster for the new film adaptation of Berenice that I had reported o in the 'Movie Gossip' page.
  I have used Prezi to show easily what steps I took and what software I used in order to create the website, which can be found on the following link.

http://prezi.com/i6ehltlgtfh4/new-technologies-used/

All these skills together helped me to create my website, newspaper advert and the double page spread to the best of my ability.

Evaluation (First Draft)

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

  In my opinion, my websites uses the codes and conventions of other websites well. I have made the layout easy to look at by having my content in the centre of the page, with each article clearly divided into different sections. The space that doesn't have an article is normally the place where there is an advert for something that relates to something unexplained or is a link to the horror genre, for example a book entitled 'The Devil and His Works.'
  The colours red, black and white feature heavily throughout the website as these are the colours that I used for my logo because of the connotations for red and black being evil, danger, blood and mystery. The white is mainly used for the font and as backgrounds for the artist interpretations for the cryptid creatures. the only exception to white being used for the font is the article relating to Jack the Ripper's 'Dear Boss' letter, in which the article is written in red font to symbolise blood. I also tried to incorporate this colour scheme into the adverts placed around the website.
  This was based around the websites London Paranormal (http://www.londonparanormal.com/) and Unexplained Mysteries (http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/). I also tried to enhance it by making easier to look at by adding pictures to the articles they linked to and then only having small section of the articles shown and the user would have to click on a link to see the full article.

2) How effective is the combination of your main task and your ancillary texts?

  My website, newspaper advert and double page spread work well together because as they all share the same pictures to show they are connected. The main picture they share is of me as the character of Jack Bates (based on the real person Josh Gates, host of 'Destination Truth' on the channel 'SyFy'). This was done when I went out to film the shots needed to create the opening for 'Identify the Unknown', which itself is a reference to 'Destination Truth', which is what I based the whole idea on in the first place.
  They all follow the same colour scheme, each using  predominately red and black, with white occasionally being used. The obvious exceptions to this is the double page spread where the only colours used are Red and black (plus whatever colours are in the photos used on the spread) and the sign post representing the sign outside Area 51 in Nevada, which stands out because of its blueish background. I chose this colour because it stands out from the black background as well as helping the red text to stand out.
  All these aspects help in attracting the target audience, which is anyone interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, the supernatural or the horror genre.

3) What have I learned from my audience feedback?

  When I conducted a survey to get information for my website/channel, I found that the channels most people watch are either comedy channels or film channels, with horror channels coming joint third with sports channels. These people said that they were attracted to the channel by it programming the channel aired but three people said that exclusives drew them towards a channel. These answers helped me decide to base the channel on the horror genre with exclusive programming like 'Behind the Blood' and 'Tales of the Unexplained'. Another question showed that people's favourite television programme genre was action which aided in the creation of 'Identify the Unknown' which is a sort of adventure programme in which the host travels all over the world in search of cryptozoological creatures or supernatural entities

4) How did you use new technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

  In the research stage I used technologies such as iTunes podcasts to find information on a variety of topics for the website stretching from a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Berenice' to America's first murder (Who was America's first murderer? By Stuff You Should Know). I also frequently visited the website Casebook.org which I had heard about on a podcast about Jack the Ripper, which helped me learn more about the Whitechapel Murderer and their five victims. I also have visited Howstuffworks.com for a lot of information including serial killers and Ripperology.
  In the construction and planning stages I used Blogger.com to log all my ideas and thoughts about what I was doing and why I doing it. To create the website, I used Kompozer to build the pages and then quickly developed my skills when I learned how create links and add videos to the pages.
  To create the videos I used both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker to edit the video clips I had taken for the final video. These were two very different editing programmes and I found Windows Movie Maker more of a challenge because nowerdays I use iMovie more to create videos. I uploaded the videos to Youtube in order to add them to the 'Entertainment' page of the website by embedding the video's code into some cells on the Kompozer page.
  I had to create or enhance some picture for adverts for newspapers and a double page spread. To do this I needed to learn how to use Photoshop and, like Kompozer, once I had learned the basics I could easily operate its tools and settings. I used this to create a poster for the new film adaptation of Berenice that I had reported o in the 'Movie Gossip' page.
All these skills together helped me to create my website, newspaper advert and the double page spread to the best of my ability.

Finishing Website

  Today I finished the website section of the course fully. I made the finishing touches that included adverts for products outside of the website, for example books, television programmes and links to websites like Casebook.org and Facebook.com.

  To make the adverts I used Microsoft Publisher, printed them out and took photos of them and then put those photos on my Mac at home, so they would be compatible with the software in school.

  To add the links to my website pages: 

•   I highlighted the word that would hold the link.

•   Right clicked for the selections to appear.

•   Clicked on Create Link

•   This is when a box appears for you to put the link you want to create.

 So you then put the link in the box and then hit 'OK' at the bottom of the box. this will now take me to a video on Youtube about the beer I'm writing about.

this link takes the user to this video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdI4kAwR4Wg

  I have also created a link on the picture below, this would then take the user to Casebook.org, the official site for the Whitechapel Murders.

  I found this picture on Google and then added the words on Microsoft Publisher, I then blacked out the face to add more mystery to the figure showing Jack the Ripper in this picture.

Double page spread

Today we looked at how a double page spread is laid out. We found out the best place to place an eye catching image is on the edge of the right hand page because it is the first part of a page a person sees when they are flicking through a magazine.


We started by looking at examples of double page spreads, the one below was found in an issue of Empire magazine, and shows the stars of the 'Lord of the Rings' franchise as they are reunited, to celebrate the prequel film, 'The Hobbit', being close to release.

My Double Page Spread

To make my double page spread match my channel I wanted the colour schemes to be as similar as possible. I used the red font on a black background so that is stood out and matched my logo which is used in the upper right side. I placed a picture of Jack Bates in the bottom of the right page because when a reader is skimming through the magazine the first part of a page they see is the bottom right corner. This is why I also put the channel launch information in the same corner. the big picture in the middle was the hardest thing to position because of the amount I had to move around to try and find a place for it, so in the end the middle of the spread seemed to be the best idea so that everything else I needed could be positioned around it. 

The way the hat covers part of the logo was inspired by one of the covers from Doctor Who Magazine part of the Doctor's hair covered part of the logo on the cover. 

I used a ripple effect on some of the writing to strengthen the connection between the paranormal world and the channel itself. this was done by the same process of adding the cloudy background to my logo. By selecting which layer I wanted to distort, I clicked the filter tab, scrolled down to the distort selection and clicked the 'ripple' effect.

This was used on, 'Enter the world of' and 'With Jack Bates'.

I used this in order to help a reader understand what the double page spread contained and the use of the word 'exclusive' could help the channel get more viewers if this was in a real magazine.

This 'Programming' block was used in order to show what kinds of programming there was on 'Unexplained' the mixture of red and black keeps up the trend of the colour scheme being creepy/mysterious. 

I used page numbers at the bottom to add as much realism as possible to the two pages, so on the left page I put the number '30' in the bottom left corner and in the bottom right, I put the number '31'.

For some of the pictures I had to get rid of what was around the character of Jack. To do this I used the 'selection brush tool' on Photoshop. This allowed me to select sections of the picture and delete them as I needed.

Advert for Newspaper

  Above is my advert for my T.V channel, I chose the black background because of the edges of the logo itself, further implying the idea that a torch is being pointed into the darkness, that I spoke about before, and the word 'Unexplained' being illuminated and standing out. I used the red text because it stood out against the black background and because of the colour pallet of the logo. Aside from the recreated Area 51 sign, so far all the pictures have been used on my website and that is why I decided to use them again. When it came to looking at which artist interpretations to use, I chose Mothman and the Bunyip. This is because Mothman matched the logo's colour scheme and so I thought it would look good in one of the corners and the Bunyip was, in my opinion, the best one that I had drawn and even though it was mainly white I still wanted to use it because of the attention to detail I had worked hard on.

  I decided to use an actual photo on the advert. So I used one that I had taken from my laptop when I was at Ogmore Castle recording parts of the 'Identify the Unknown' opening. This is because I still had the coat and hat on at the time and took the photo has the character, just for fun.

I have received feedback from my teacher and this has influenced the way I designed my advert and the new design is below.

this was now based more on an advert for Top Gear Live I had seen in a newspaper when i was researching adverts codes and conventions.  This influenced the main look with the pictures going down the side and having the logo in the middle.

I had to include details that showed it was a promotional advert and so added channel numbers, but after checking them with my double page spread realised that they were different numbers and so had to change them quickly otherwise there would have been a very noticeable continuity error throughout the work I had done.

Finding Information On The Creatures And Occurrences

For most of my information I used Wikipedia for the easy information, like where they are found, what they do and what people that live in the area do to stop or care for the things.

These are some of the websites and URL's I have used to find information.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunyip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yowie_(cryptid)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ropen


Other Websites
http://www.casebook.org
http://www.jack-the-ripper-walk.co.uk
http://www.livescience.com/2196-dna-decide-headless-killer-faked-death.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdI4kAwR4Wg
http://www.chud.com/63356/newcastles-werewolf-blood-red-ale/
http://www.ghostdatabase.co.uk
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/new-alux/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-HSu5QUZYc
http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/jack-the-ripper.htm


I have also watched television programmes such as Most Haunted, Destination Truth, Weird or What, Mystery Hunters and Conversations With A Serial Killer. I have listened to some podcasts about things such as 'How the Real Jack the Ripper Worked' and 'How Ripperology Works', from 'Stuff You Should Know'.