Decision Day

To begin with, I prefer to do my project with a magazine, and although the magazine industry is in a downturn, as one article states, in reference to the current state of magazines, “Readership is painfully low, budgets are notoriously tight, and many journals are struggling to stay viable, let alone relevant,” I still choose to do a magazine because I feel I can express my ideas through words, with an magazine, better than with a short film where every second of this film is up for interpretation from the audience.  

However, telling a story with room for interpretation has been a part of our culture for generations. The author of Our Place in the Universe: The Importance of Story and Storytelling in the Classroom, says that through generations our stories have been a part of our societal development, referencing how we have used Le Morte D’Arthur as a metaphor for the “Dying age of chivalry,” and now we still use these stories for guidance, referencing 13 Reasons Why to express the major impact of bullying on mental health, especially among our youth. These are points that support choosing to express my ideas by picking a short film for the project.  

On the other hand, words are a very straightforward form of discussing ideas through text. The magazine industry is at a crossroads as of late and have had to use unorthodox tactics to produce content, as referred to in Survival of the Fittest: Four Editors on the Future of Literary Magazines. The editors have had to have individual writers enter into contests for their articles to be published in magazines. Instead of having writers on payroll, they obtain their content by picking finalists out of a contest. However, information from this article should not have an effect on my decision because there is no money for me to make from my project.  

Based on what I have seen on the in-class tutorials of the software and what I have used on my own time, I think that Premiere Pro is vastly more complicated than InDesign because everything is divided into the different aspects of creating a film; there is a section for editing audio files, inserting images into the video, etc. However, the goal of InDesign is not to edit audio; it is simply to produce an image with content. As such, all of the features are laid out in one place for easier access than Premiere Pro, which is one thing I appreciate about InDesign. I also like that it is not difficult to edit images and place things right where you want them.  

So, I will do a magazine for my portfolio project because I can express the main idea better and because the software is more fitted to my needs and strengths than that of Adobe Premiere Pro.