Print screenings of finished pages....

Final adjustments

We made several final adjustments to three of our newspaper pages:

1) We justified all of the pages' text as this seemed a common newspaper convention.

2) In the adjustment of layout, the font in July's newspaper had to be reduced by two sizes.

3) On July's front cover, we had to increase the font size and use an ampersand symbol rather than the word 'and'.

4) Because of the bigger font in July's issue, we had to move the text column along to the right slightly to increase accommodation space.

5) We inserted a thick line between the text column and the 'other stories' column.

6) We drew a thick black line around the photo in September's front cover picture (the traffic lights). 

7) We changed the pull quote in September's 'Spun Gold' story; the sentence did not make sense.   

'AJ's Salon' advert

Unfortunately, there was not enough room to fit this particular advert onto the page. Hairdressers are a common business type that are advertised in local newspapers.  

Poster final

To make the book on our poster look more like a book we added lines at the top of it so that it looked like pages and gave off more of a 'book look'

The black lines against the light colored background made it stand out more which on a poster is important as it needs to catch the readers eye.

Final adjustments...

After looking at our book cover on our poster we thought we would experiment with a few colours.

We thought of the idea of having a two tone book cover sort of like the red one that we analysed. We tried this and thought it went quite well. It gave the impression that the characters were in a 'dark way' as the darker colour was at the bottem of the book and faded as it reached the top of the book. We also changed the font of the name of the book. The font that we first used looked a bit 'childish' when we wanted it to look a bit more sophisticated and grown up.

Paint job

When we did a test print we noticed that one of the Watkins photos on the first front cover had a problem...



This was that you can clearly see the flash against the backgroud in which it had been taken



This problem was easily solved by opening up the picture in pain and simply filling the part where the the flash was with the same colour as the backgroud. The Spray can tool helped our majorly with this proces...

Disaster on front cover 2

When we did a print out on front cover two we noticed many things that didnt look right and that needed adjusting.

The main thing that we had to re arrange was the location of the picture as it was in the wrong place. This is because the story next to the picture went down the wrong side and didnt flow properally to the continuing part of the story beneath.

Old layout....

New layout...

Another thing that we changed was the font size as when we saw the print out the font looked a lot bigger compared to the font size on a ordinary newspaper. This you can see the difference in the pictures above with the top one being a size 14 and the bottem one being a size 12. With the font changed and the story already written we had to adjust the size of the picture so that it would still fit in the space we allocated for this front cover. We cropped the photo up from the bottem and widend it out abit so it fitted properally. You can also see that the collum sectioning is a lot more neater on the on the new layout. We were able to judge this by using margin lines on microsoft publisher to get the sectioning and equal spacing between each collum. Another problem we spotted when we done the print out was that there was no caption underneath our photo of Portishead lights.

The caption we came up with was;
" Portishead traffic lights covered up to help prevent traffic jams along the high street and cabstand area " We thought this was a good caption to put in because it told us how the picture related to the story, for example the traffic lights being covered causing Portishead to have 'no safe roads'

Another part of this front cover that we changed was the font size on the second story down the side as again it to was big compared to normal font sizes on other newspapers. We also made this title bolder so that it looked more like a headline.

We also put an 'exclusive' sign in at the top of this story so that it for one it gave more colour to the page and also we found this was quite a common convention used on local newspapers.

We also inserted a black line between the Portishead traffic light story and the drug raid story so that the look of our newspaper looked a lot better and also it made it clearer for readers that it was two seperate stories.

3rd.....

After studying our poster a bit more we thought there was still a few things that we could improve on...

The first major change we made was we put in a background colour. We did this as we noticed on most of the posters we looked at had a background colour and we thought it would make our poster look a lot less plain. We also put the words 'when you collect 4 tokens' in a bubble. We did this because before we thought that we words didnt flow that well and it was a bit 'bitty'. We took away the capital on the word 'when' so it didnt look like a new scentence and it flowed a bit better. We also took away the one banner and put in 2. We did this so that the words 'FREE BOOK' stood out more. We also changed the colour as the salmon colour of the other banner didnt go well with our background so we had to choose a colour that went well with it. The final thing we changed was the angle that the book was placed on the poster. We did this as we thought at this angle it fitted in better with the text.

2nd draft.

After looking at our first draft we changed a few things;











We kept the font and what it said we just changed a few things on the book to make it look not so empty. We changed the colour of it as we thought the colour on the previous one was a bit simple. We made it not so bright so we tonned it down abit and we also added a texture to it so its not so plain and looks like there is abit more going on.

Below the title we also put in a line from a magazine as we noticed this was a common convention done on the front of books. We made it two words so it was catchy and to the pont.

1st Draft.

After putting all of this together we came up with a first draft of what our poster may look like;





As you can see we have made the word 'FREE' a lot bigger than the rest of the font on the page. We put the banner in at the bottem so that it adds a bit more colour to the page and so its not just a plain white background. The 'When you collect 4 tokens' is on its own so it isnt crowded by to much as it is quite important information. The title of the newspaper along with the logo is placed at the bottem. This was our first draft as we wernt completely happy with the poster and thought a bit was needed on the books front cover.

We chose the name 'back2back' as we thought it went well with the photo and perhaps indicated that they were close (back2back) but something happened going by the look on their faces.

Layout

We looked at the layout of newspaper posters and noticed a common convention was that they nearly always put the title of the newspaper at the bottem. This was proberally because you would read all the imformation and then find out which newspaper it came from.

When somthing is advertised whether its free or a cheap price they will always make that the first thing you see to bring you in and make u read more and thats when you find out that there may be a catch. Using this technique we figured we would have to do advertise that this book would be free but that there was a catch to it.

The catch that we were going to use to link it to our newspaper was that you have to collect a certain ammout of tokens that will be in our newspaper to be able to claim this book as a free book.

So altogether we put together a list of all the things that would need to be advertised on our poster;

• The free book you can claim
• The word 'FREE' in a large print to it grabs readers attention
• The fact that it was a author who lives in Portishead so the readers of the Portishead Beacon would take more of an interest and has a link to our local newspaper
• The catch to getting the book free, collecting tokens
• What local newspaper it is linked to.

photo on book...

Now that we had done research on front covers of books it was time to start designing the front covers of ours.

We decided to do a picture of a boy and girl on the front cover similar to one that we analysed.

The boy we used in the first photo didnt look right. He was quite a lot taller than the girl and it looked way out of proportion.

Learning from this mistake we then had to arrange to use another boy model for the photo.

We found a new model for our photo. This model looked a lot better than the previous one as both of their height was similar so it didnt look out of proportion. We didnt use this photo but it was close to what we wanted. With the models being back to back their body language shows signs that they dont get on, disagreement and perhaps that something has happened to leave them being like that towards eachother, making the reader suspicious that something has gone on. We didnt use this photo as their facial expressions wernt right and the boy was facing to much to the front and not enough to the side. The girl was smiling when really we wanted her to have a worried look on her face showing that something has happened between the two of them.

This was the photo that we decided to use for the front cover of our book. We thought the posisioning of the models were in the right place as they were back to back but not completely so you could still see their faces and their body language. With both their arms crossed you get the impression they are in an uncomfortable place with eachother and are keeping to themselves. The girl has a worried look on her face while the boy has a smug look indicating the fact that they have history and dont get on.

After taking the photo we edited it on photo shop. We cut them out away from the background as we didnt want this to be on the front cover of our book. The plan is to put them on our own background.

research on front covers

Now that we had decided to do a book, It was up to us to design the front cover.

To do this we did some research on what front covers of books looked like;

This was the first book cover analysed. There wasnt any major photo on the front it and the background was just a basic colour with a darker red at the bottem then faded out nearer the top of the book. The font used was a basic font where the letters were rounded and the colour was just white. This indicated a plain look towards the book. There was a bit of writing at the bottem of the book, but apart from that there was nothing much going on. We liked this as although it was so plain it gave a feel to it as if there was going to be a lot going on. Also the title 'The Almost Moon' had no relevence to the picture of a falling chair at all which made it a bit suspicious.

This was the second book we analysed. Already we could see it was very different to the one above in many ways. Firstly the background of the book was convered in one photo. The title of the book was placed at the top of the page and wasnt displayed that clearly. The authors of the book stood out more than what the title did which i dont think was right. With the photo you could see straight away that it was about a boy and a girl. The impression you get is that they are perhaps together as a couple but as they are leaning away from eachother, maybe they arnt that close.

Poster

For our second subsidary task we had the option of doing a webpage or a poster, we decieded to do a poster.



We started off by looking at posters that newspapers had produced on various differend events. We looked into what sort of things they advertised and made a poster about. We came accross posters that advertised the Brdigewater carnival, saving the cadbury factory, keeping a green environment and advertixing jobs.



We did consider doing a poster like the one we had seen on the Bridgewater carnival until I remembered ages ago an advertisment in the Bristol Evening post about a range of books you could order along with the evening post and you would recieve the first one free.


























We took a liking to this idea and thought it would be a good idea to do a similar advertisment in our poster.

As our newspaper was based in the town of Portishead we had to make what was advertised on our poster link to Portishead.

So as we were keen on the idea of advertising a free book, the next step was to link this 'book' to Portishead. Our first idea was to advertise a book about Portishead, but then we remembered theres already a large leaflet that goes out often advertising many things about Portishead. Our next idea was to have the book as a story and somehow the story would link to the town Portishead, but we didnt think this would have a mojor link to Portishead. Our final idea and the idea we decided to go with was to have this book written by a Portishead author, so it is fully linked to Portishead and would take a major interest to the readers of the Portishead Beacon.

Radio adverts

For one of our subsidiary tasks, we had to create a local radio advert to help promote 'The Portishead Beacon' newspaper. Before attempting to write and record our own advert, we analysed genuine radio adverts that either had been played in the past, or were being played regularly on local radio stations, in order to gain some inspiration. Here are a few examples:

http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/operations_and_initiatives/relentless/radio_ads.aspx

http://www.186media.com/media/miscellaneous/Write%20Kit%20sample%20radio%20script.pdf

Having read the adverts listed above and listened to local radio adverts, we discovered that few radio stations promoted a local newspaper. Additionally, we found out that several common conventions existed within most radio adverts. These were as follows:

• they were generally very 'cheesy' and cheap, thus making the advert recognisable
• a tagline was employed to distinguish the product/ company/ message from other competitors
• the company/ product/ message, its telephone number, its features and its e-mail address were repeated constantly
• various sound effects were used and reflected the mood and/or subject
• conversations were fast paced

Having analysed the radio adverts listed above, we set to work on creating our subsidiary task. We began by brainstorming plot ideas. Several ideas were thought of, for example a conversation between a mother and daughter, whom the little girl tries to persuade her mother to buy her 'The Portishead Beacon,' having failed to persuade her to buy her chocolate and a 'gossip' magazine, but ultimately, we decided to use a conversation between a captain and a lighthouse keeper as our radio advert plot. In the radio advert, the captain asks for a news update around the Portishead area, to which the lighthouse keeper replies that the latest edition of 'The Portishead Beacon' has been printed. He highly recommends that the captain should buy his copy as soon as possible and following on from this, the pair discuss the content of the newspaper e.g. local heroes. Towards the end of the radio advert, the captain is so excited about buying his edition of 'The Portishead Beacon,' that he sails off course right in the direction of large rocks.

Below is the transcript for our radio advert:

Captain: Ahoy there lighthouse keeper, what's the news in Portishead today?

Lighthouse keeper: Well captain, the new Portishead Beacon, it's just been published and I reckon you should get your ands on one immediately!

Captain: Aye, what's in this Portishead Beacon then?

Lighthouse keeper: Well, we got all the latest news; sports reports on all the local teams, upcoming events in the Portishead area ... oh, and you can find out about all the local heroes

Captain: local heroes, what's that all about then?

Lighthouse keeper: Its a regular feature on all those good folk that make Posset such a gurt lush place to live.

Captain: Shiver me timbers!; I'll buy one of these Beacons as soon as I moor up.

Lighthouse keeper- Hold on there matey, watch out for them rocks!!

Captain: Why you scurvey dogs, we be hold below thw waterline! Abandon ships, every man for himself!

Boat going aground, sound effects etc.

Tag line: The Portishead Beacon- shining a light on you.

We recorded the radio advert using an iMac computer application (Garageband). The software allowed us to record multiple tracks and interesting sounds. We began by recording the voices of the captain and lighthouse keeper. The voices were recorded from a distance to achieve a long distanced conversation sound, using the iMac's in built microphone. The voices were then manipulated to further achieve the sound of a long distance conversation i.e. 'large arena' master track. The sounds of a fierce storm and a washing/ swashing sea were recorded using the 'nature sounds' facility on garageband (no effects were added). The sound of the captain's ship going aground was recorded live from a sound effects website; exactly the same process was followed when we recorded the fog horn effect.

We attempted to emphasise the locality of 'The Portishead Beacon' in several ways. For example, the Somerset accent is sounded during the characters speech, which is a stereotypical convention amongst the population of Portishead. Also, the word 'Posset' is spoken in the radio advert, which is a local slang term for Portishead, again demonstrating that our newspaper is a local publication.

Of course, the radio advert had to be adjusted and changed throughout the production process. Initially, the gaps between speech were too long, but we decided that quick transitions between the captain's and the lighthouse keeper's speech would match the pace of a genuine radio advert.

Audience feedback- we asked three members of the Portishead public to comment on the radio advert. We asked them to discuss with one another some key points:

• whether the advert was informative- we asked this question to find out whether the radio advert achieved its main goal or not (informing people of the 'Portishead Beacon' and its conent).
• what they thought of the West country accents being portrayed- some people may be insulted by the steretypical West country/ Somerset accents; we would not want the advert to be offensive in any way- it is purely to promote the Portishead Beacon.
• whether they thought it was memorable- If people remember the advert, then the stronger the likelihood of them remembering the 'Portishead Beacon' and wanting to buy it.
  
  

Overall, the feedback was very positive. Firstly, no person in the group was concerned about the stereotypical West country/Somerset (In fact, some embraced it as comedic!!). This shows that in some cases, residents of the Portishead area accept that many people are stereotyped to talk in this way and would be happy for this generalisation to be broadcasted (pride?). The ultimate goal of our radio advert was to promote the newspaper. Our test confirms that this was aim achieved, as all three agreed it was informative and told the audience what the 'Portishead Beacon' strives for and encompasses. Finally, all three agreed the advert was memorable, which increases the chances of peopple wanting to buy the newspaper. Through this test, we discovered the importance of audience feedback.

Photoshop job

Unfortunately, the photo we took of two students performing a lift and the teacher observing, was set against a black background. The girl was unfortunately wearing black trousers and ultimately her overall shape was lost in the black curtain. At this point, me and Alice had two options: either re-shoot the photograph completely, or manipulate the image. After some consideration, we decided to manipulate the image. Using Photoshop software, we cut out the main image, which proved to be a major issue. Due to the blending of black trousers and the black curtain, the dancer's toe was completely lost and appeared detatched from the leg!! We addressed this issue by drawing a fake leg and attatching it to the 'floating' toe. Once this was completed, we took pictures of several potential backgrounds, for example blank walls, as the dance studio was unavailable. When we placed the dancing image over a background of a blank wall, the overall effect was suprisingly authentic. We outlined the models using the burn tool to produce a shadowy effect. Overall, we feel the effect is very effective.

Only a few changes had to be made to the group

photo (lighting and contrast levels) and again we feel the overall effect is authentic.

photos continued...

After taking the group photos we then moved on to taking photos of them dancing and performing some moves. This photo was slightly more difficult to take as we had to try and get the angle right for it to look good.

This was one of the first ones that we took. We didnt use this one due to many reasons. Firstly the angle of the photo wasnt correct as you could'nt see their faces properally and could only really see the side of them. The clothing that one of the girls is wearing also blends into the background so its quite hard to establish where she is and the shape of her body.

Also there are people in the background who arnt ment to be in the picture and objects that wernt ment to be there which makes the photo look messy and unprofesional. Also the lighting in this photo isnt brilliant. There is direct sunlight coming from the window at the top of the photo which draws attention when it shouldnt.

This was the second the the dance photos that we took. We prefered this one a lot more than the other one for many reasons. Firstly the angle and position of the camera when taking the photo was a lot better as it was infront of them so you could clearly see their faces and the moves that they were performing. Also they dont blend to much into the background like the other photo, as the girl in the red stands out quite brightly. Even though this is quite a good framed photo, the girls feet at the front are cut off which doesnt look very profesional and a bit odd.

Second photo shoot

As we wernt completely happy with the first lot of photos that we took we arranged another photo shoot to see if we could get better ones with more people in so it looks a lot more like a dance group


The photo shoot was with dance class in our school so it wasnt too much trouble to arrange.



Like the previous photos we wanted a group one and one of them dancing.












This was the first group photo we took of the group. The first thing u can see is the the colour of the picture is a bit dark and isnt that clear. Although the girls are in the right position we wanted them to be the girls along the front row are laughing and not looking towards the camera. For this reason we didnt decide to put this photo in our newspaper as we wanted it to be more serious and for them to be smiling.












This was the second group photo that we took. We felt this one was a lot better than the previous one for many reasons. One of the reason was that it looks a lot neater and tidyer than the one above. This may be because the girls either have their hands together or behind their back. They are also all looking at the camera and similing which genually makes the photo look a lot better. Although the lighting in the photo is still a bit dark this can be adjusted on photoshop by adjusting the brightness and contrast of it.

Finishing off local heros page 2

Now that we had done quite a lot of work for the second local heros page, there was only a few things left to do...this included the headline for the page and the caption for the main photo.





With the headline it took us a few attempts to get this right.





The first headline we thought of was 'local millionaire saves youth club.' The problem with this was that the way that the headline was laid out on the page it didnt look right. As the 'local' was above the 'millionaire' it looked out of place and the word 'club' was left on its own at the bottem.

We took this into consideration and realised that some of the words were going to have to be the same length to make it work. Also we realised another problem with what the headline said... as our story was mainly focused on the dance group we would have to make that the main focus of our headline.
We kept the word 'millionaire' as this was a main focus in our story and changed the word 'local' to 'Portishead' so it would fit better in the layout. We also kept the word 'saves' as it indicates something a 'hero' would do and changed the words 'youth club' to 'young girls dreams' so that it has more of a focus on the dancers.

With all of this put together, our overall headline was

'Portishead millionaire saves young girls dreams'

Another thing left to do was the caption for the photo. As our main photo was a picture of the group of dancers we had to say something about them and how they felt about the donation of 'Pete Jones'

We came up with....

'Portishead dance group, Audacity looking overwhelmed in their dance studio at the youth club'

Another common convention used in newspapers was at the end of a story most of the time they would put the editor and their email adress. So for this we made up names and made up email adresses for these people to make our artical look more authentic. This was put at the bottem of both of our local heros stories.

Writing the story

Now that we had taken photos for this page the next step was to write the story.

We started off by basically summing up the story in the first paragraph by briefly saying what the story was about.


Pete Jones, the towns famous millionaire has decided to save the day when donating generous amounts of his own money to save the local youth club.

We then moved onto give a brief history about 'Pete Jones' and what else good he had done to the town of portishead.

Pete Jones, 59, is well known in and around the town of Portishead for his generosity and donations. When he heard that the youth club was being demolished as of lack of funding he decided to take instant action.
Mr Jones has been living in Portishead for 30 years and has contributed hugely to the town by donations to the Portishead health centre and summer activities for young children.

We then mentioned next a brief history about the youth club and what goes on there as saving the youth club was quite a big part of the story.

The youth club has been around for 15 years and is used massively by young children and adults throughout the town. Its open Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays for different age groups to go down and engage in a range of activities from just hanging out with friends to making a mix of their own music.

After saying a brief bit about what goes on down the youth club we moved straight into who the main focus ws on, the dance group.


On Monday and Thursday evenings it is used by the portishead dance group, Audacity, to come down and rehearse their performances for competitions and other events that take place

Like everything else we then gave a breif history of the backgroup of the dance group so people could understand the dance group a bit better and feel more involved.

The dance group, Audacity got together about 2 years ago. It all started with some of the girls going down the youth club on a Tuesday and Friday evening to practice dance routines that they had made up themselves, when a local dance teacher Kim Bill spotted them. She said “I knew instantly that these girls had talent. When I found out they had no teacher I went straight in and asked them if they’d like the opportunity to take up dance lessons and enter the competitions held nearby. I was extremely excited to take up this challenge.”

After talking about the dance groups backgroud we moved onto say what they were up to now and what they have achieved so the readers can gather an insight into how much dancing means to them.


The dance group is now made up of a number of girls aged between 11 -16 who meet up for two hours on Monday and Thursday evenings to go through dance routines with their Choreographer, Kim Bill to get ready for their next competition which will be held in November.
So far in the two years that the dance group has been together they have won 5 gold medals at the Weston competitions and have also taken part in performing in local events such as the opening for the open air pool and events held at Cadbury house.
Kim stated that “if this youth club got demolished the girls would be devastated. I no my self and the girls are extremely great full for Mr Jones’s donation as it has allowed us to carry on with our competitions and succeed with the girls dreams.”

We were close to finishing our story but there was still a few things left to put it in...

We then had to mention what good would come in the future of 'Pete Jones' donation...

Kevin Smith, owner of the youth club said “we are exceptionally pleased with Mr Jones’s donation and that we can now keep the club up and running. We know that there are yet a lot off good things to come from the Children. Audacity are hoping to put on a show for the town of Portishead at the Victorian evening held in December to show their appreciation for Pete Jones’s contribution.
With the donation we can continue to carry on with the girls rehearsal and with a lot of hard work they aim to appear on the 2010 Britain’s Got Talent show.

Dance group photos

We arranged with our local youth club if it was possible for us to arrange a time for us to go down and take some photos of them, luckily for us they agreed and i (alice) went down.

The ideal photos we were looking for was perhaps a group one of all the girls and maybe one of them dancing.

This was one of the first photos that we took to be for our group photo. Straight away you can see that there is a red light reflecting on the photo. There arnt as many girls in the picture as we had hoped. This was because they had changed the night of their dance training last minute but we thought we'd still give it ago and see what the outcome was like. Using the ammou of girls there we set up the picture so that you could also see the name of the dance group. The lighting in this photo isnt great but the room that the photo was taken in was quite a dark photo.

This was the second group photo taken. You can still see that there is a red light reflecting on the photo which we wanted to try and get rid of, also the colour of the photo is still quite dark but there was nothing we could really do about this. We could find away around the dark colour, this would be to edit it in photoshop and to see how that would turn out.

This is the third and final group photo that we took. So far it is one of the best ones we took and if we were to use these photos then this would be the one we would use. The colouring in this photo was a lot better than the previous ones. We managed to get rid of the red light and the brightness of the photo was genuinally a lot better than the ones above.

This was one of the 'dance group in action photos'. I shot this one as i thought the dance moves they were doing looked quite good. A problem with this photo is that the two girls on the right are to close together and look a bit bunched together where as the one on the left is on her own, it just looks abit unbalanced.

This was the second 'dance group in action photo'. With this one we thought we would experiment to see what it would look like and we didnt really like the outcome. The angle that the photo was taken was a bit odd and didnt get everyone in the photo. Also you cant really see the other girls faces it just looks like that the picture is focusing on the one girl at the front.

We wernt completely sure if we were going to use these photos or if we were what ones we would chose.

local heros page 2

As this was going to be the same feature as the previous one it would still have some things in common;

These things being the elements at the top of the page, for example the name of the newspaper, the date and the title of the page.

Start of local heros page 2

For our second local heros page we also wanted to focus on another person who had done something good in the community of Portishead.

We thought of the local youth club as this is an important place to the people who live in portishead and holds many activities. We heard about a local dance group who train down there and took an inspiration from this.

Using the local dance group we needed to come up with a story that associated them with a hero/ someone who has helped them out. We came up with the idea that the youthclub was going to be demolished and that someone was helping to save it and then associate this in with the local dance group who train down there.

Complete local heros page

With all of this put together we were able to put together the first of our local heros page;

Finishing off local heros page

Now that we had written the story and taken our photos there was only a few bits left to do and some adjusting.

We decided to put in a pull quote as we noticed this was a common convention in newspapers. We made the quote slightly different to what was actually said in the article so it isnt exactly the same. With the pull quote we made it a slightly different colour to the rest of the page so that it would stand out. Using a pull quote helps the reader get a better idea of the person who the stories about and what to expect.

We also noticed that the main photo on this page needed a caption. We came up with;

' Proud Claire Crutchly with gold medallist James Thompson '

This tells you abit about who the people are in the photo and abit about them.

The "Spun Gold" pun- this comic reference is supposed to encompass both the spin of a table tennis ball when struck and the gold medal of champion player.  

Story on 'local heros' page

The next step on this page was to write the story.



We started off by saying who the story was going to be about and some of the achievements that she has earned. We thought by putting this at the beginning it gave her a good look throughout the whole story.




In the twenty five years since she began coaching table tennis, Claire Crutchly has enjoyed many notable triumphs.
For example, six of her students have represented the club in the Bristol and District league, three others have competed for the South West region in the ETTA (English Table Tennis Association) veterans’ Grand Prix league and a selected few have competed in the English Open, an international championship run by the ETTA.




We then moved onto the history/background of 'Claire' and how she got in to her love for table tennis.


Claire has always had a love for table tennis. Between the ages of seven and eleven, she joined the Portishead under 14s club and on many occasions, represented the team in the Bristol and District League, often obtaining first place in division one (the highest category for her age group). During her teenage years, Claire’s ever improving talent was spotted by John Higgins, head coach of Grantham Table Tennis Academy. “I walked into the hall where the club was training and I saw this fourteen year old girl playing incredibly well” says Mr. Higgins. “I thought that if she were to join our academy, she would achieve great things”.
Once under Mr. Higgins’ wing, Claire trained extensively with rigorous exercises. Five months later, she was at a standard to compete in the English Open.


We then started to talk about a disaster that had happened to claire to make it quite a heart hitting story.




However in 1992, whilst playing a physically draining quarter final match against then champion Terry Hutchings, Claire’s leg gave way. She was rushed to hospital and was diagnosed with iliotibial band syndrome, a lateral knee pain that prevents any kind of sport participation.
However, with her positive attitude and her love of the game, Claire refused to give up on table tennis and decided that she would become a top level coach. “Seeing as I couldn’t play, I wanted a new challenge.”


We then moved onto saying how she had become a 'local hero' and everything that she has done for the people she trains.




A year after her accident, Claire qualified as a Level Four ETTA -approved coach, (the highest coaching grading.) She booked a regular slot at the Portishead Redcliffe Bay Hall and purchased table tennis equipment. There was a big turn out for her first session and numbers continue to grow today. The ‘Portishead Spinners’ (the clubs nickname) runs on a Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, 6:30-8:30 at Redcliffe Bay Hall and invites players of all ages and abilities.
“It’s really great to see so many people getting involved in a sport that can be both fun and
competitive.” Claire said, smiling proudly. “I feel happy in giving the players the opportunities that others have given me during my table tennis career.”
“Claire’s a great coach” says Sarah Coggins, a division one competitor. “She’s very patient and she manages to balance fun activity with competitive play.”



Instead of just finishing the story here we thought we'd mention one major acheivement clarie has had with one of her players and how she has made that happen for him.




‘The Portishead Spinners’ club has had its fair share of top quality players in recent years. James Thompson, 17, entered the Stiga Masters championship in 2003 and finished with a gold medal around his neck after beating the reigning champion Dom Johnson in a close scoring
match of 19-17.
“It was a hard match against Dom, but it was definitely worth it. Every time I look at my medal I think of my achievement but I am extremely great full for Claire’s faith in me and all the help she’s given me to accomplish this.”


We finished the story up with saying why she is such a local hero today and the rewards she gets from doing what she does best.




In 2005 Claire received an MBE for her outstanding contribution to the sport. The reward was presented to her by none other than John Hilton, 1980 European table tennis champion. During his speech, Mr. Hilton said that Claire is “an outstanding player, but an even better coach”.
We hope to hear more of Claire’s successes in the future.

inside page continued...

On the inside pages of newspapers we noticed that they continued to have the same convention throughout. This was to have the name and logo of the newspaper at the top of the page, also the date was displayed at the top alongside the title and logo.

We decided that this would be a good idea to do on our newspaper. We also wanted to put the name of this page at the top so people could recognise it to be a local feature. We decided to call this feature 'Local Heros' as this is what we were putting in it.

To do this we copyed and pasted the title and logo and placed it in the top right hand corner of the page. This part continued to have the font as it was the name of the newspaper and would continue to have the same font and would not change. For the date we looked at how dates were written on real newspapers and displayed our date in the same way. We put this part in the top left of the newspaper. As the name of this page was called 'local heros' we put this part in the middle and made it a lot larger so that it would stand out. The font for this was was off of the website www.dafont.co.uk . We got a different font for this name as we thought it should look different to the other fonts on the page. We made the colour of all of the fonts navy blue as this was the main colour used for things like this on our newspaper and wanted to carry it out all the way through. This colour was also used for the blue lines at the top of the page. We inserted these blue lines as it would brake up this top part of the page and the story below it.

second lot of photos

Although oringinally our first idea was to have just the one photo of the teacher and her student, we decided to experiment on getting an action photo aswell to put in on this page

When shooting our previous photos, at the same time we got some action photos of them playing a game of table tennis.

This is the first photo that we thought we would try. We tried one of just him on his own playing in a game of table tennis. Although it looks authentic and you can easily tell that he is playing in a sports hall, we wernt compeltly happy with this photo.

This is another one we took of Phil in action playing table tennis. Again for the same reasons we wernt happy with this photo either. Also his face is quite blurred and you cant really see his table tennis paddle which is one of the main things that we wanted to see.

We then changed the angle of Phil to see if this would be any better. We prefered this angle a lot more than we did in the ones above but there is still a few problems with this photo. The teacher is half cut out of the photo which doesnt look good, if we were to crop her out of it then phil would look like he was playing on his own which woulnt look right and not what we wanted. Also there is a bit to much backgrounf of the sports hall on the right which we wernt happy with.

This is another photo we took in this angle, again there are still some problems with it. Firstly Phils hand is covering his face which doesnt look very perfesional and would not look good in a newspaper, especially him being one of the main people in the story. Another problem, which is the same problem we had in the photo above. This is that the teacher is still half cut out of the photo when idealy we would like to have her playing/training with him.

In this photo the teacher is a bit more in the picture but still a bit cut out. The angle of phil is good except that he seems just a bit to far away and distant. There is a good view of the table tennis table but the colour of the photo is a bit dull and bland and looks abit dark.

After all of this consideration and adjusting we were able to take the photo that we wanted to put on this page;

We thought this was the best photo that we had took as of many reasons. The teacher was well framed in the photo so you could get a clear view of her and phil training/playing table tennis. Also the lighting in the picture is a lot brighter than previouse ones so it doesnt look so dull and dark. Phil isnt to far away and you can clearly see his paddle and the ball flying through the air. With the back ground of this photo you can tell that they are playing in some sort of sports hall which makes it look profesional. Also from the teachers position you can tell that she is throwing the ball for phil to hit and that he has his bat ready to hit the ball. We thought this was good as from a glance of the photo you can clearly see what they are doing.