Practical: Newspaper Article

For this practical task, I had to create a newspaper front page showing an article regarding a female burns victim on a killing spree in order to create a sense of foreboding in relation to the pending murder scene (Dramatic Irony). The following images highlight the process taken to complete this.

Task: 

The image on the left shows the original news paper article I used as inspiration for my front page. I used The Times as the brand of paper as this is a more series broadsheet newspaper containing more serious news stories compared to tabloids such as The Sun.

 

This screenshot shows the beginning of the construction of the newspaper article. From the original one above, I used the smaller articles and the paper logo in order to make the practical look authentic. Using the Internet, I then used two photos, a before and after of a female, to act as the paper attachments.

I then cropped sections of the main article text from the original image to pose as the news article for the front cover to coincide with the images. Since the prop will only be viewed from a distance, the actual text written on the article is not significant and therefore this method is still acceptable.

I then printed the newspaper out onto A3 paper (a similar size to many standard news papers). Using a bowl of water and a tea bag, I then stained the paper to make it look more aged and worn out, as if the paper had been published a while ago and thus, make more sense being pinned on the wall of the killer's lair. Once at the venue, I then put the article on the floor and had the other group members walk on it to allow it to become more dirty and screwed up, again adding to the age and authenticity of the newspaper.





 

This image shows the finished article. To add to the look and authenticity of the paper, I also took along an old Sun news paper to the location which I then used a few inner pages scattered on the floor to show that the article was a part of a full broadsheet.

Evaluation:

• The article looked authentic as if it was taken from an existing newspaper.
• Research was carried out in order to understand the common layout of many newspaper front covers.
• The brand of paper chosen was suitable for the genre.
• Although not visible from a distance or in the images, when printed, part of the picture caption was cut off and so I had to fill in the text using a black fine-liner. If close-ups of the text were needed, this would have looked unprofessional however for the purpose of the paper, this could be overlooked.