Matthew Burniston created a poster and thumbnail for a production. He used techniques like overlaying solid noise layers and adjusting brightness/contrast to improve quality. When cutting himself out of a photo, he used the polygonal lasso tool. Later, he tweaked the poster by focusing brightness in areas, adding more color layers in overlay mode, and adding a smashed glass effect in screen mode. He also sharpened the piece, erased unwanted stars, and painted shadows. For a pre-title sequence, he adjusted color, sharpened, and added a tram line effect. He used animated masks and the screen layer mode to add the BBC watermark and included a homemade soundscape.

1. Production Log
Matthew Burniston

2. Poster
Before actually making a start on
piece, I had the idea to make to
variant products out of this – a poster
as intended and a thumbnail - a
widened version of the same artwork
without the logo – for things such as
if it was put on iPlayer, they often use
thumbnails on the video? So to start
this idea, I used a template cut out -
two black bars either side to inform
me where it'd be cropped.
A cheap trick I often find can help
trick the quality into looking
higher whilst also giving back a
lot of the texture lost with things
like 'surface blur' and 'reduce
noise' is by overlaying a solid
layer of noise above all the layers
– so that it adds noise to all the
layers bellow it.
When it came to cutting myself out of a
photo I took for this (or anything else in
photoshop,) I chose to use the 'polygonal
lasso tool,' to select around myself of the
object, to be taken into 'select and mask...'
- especially with things like hair, which I
often cut out separately – as with the hair
I use a high edge detection, which messes
with the lines...
Adjustments (Layer)
Brush opacity

3. Poster
When coming to tweaking my
poster after completing the
first rendition. I fixed a lot of
the problems it bared – such
as the brightness issue using
the 'brightness/contrast
adjustment (layer,) sometimes
using the mask to pin point
and focus light where it was
needed more – for example
the protagonist to make him
stand out more, as well as
glares from light sources – as
to bring up the contrast and
brightness in areas of the
piece, not mention making it
feel more grimy?
On top of this I included a lot
more colour to piece
(something which with time I
felt it was lacking a lot of.)
To do that I used layer
modes, – like overlay, in
accompany of either 'paint
bucket tool' or the 'brush tool'
- for either focused or general
applied light.
First Attempt Final Product
Also, when coming to adjustments, I wanted to fill up some of
the blank spaces (and somewhat cover up some advice some
pointed out that glares can often be a way to cover up
emptiness,) thus I fell the need to add more, so I added a
smashed glass effect, over the piece, to add to the
grimy aesthetic of the product – using the screen mode, I could
only keep the lighter areas (made easy with a lot of the
searched photos being white on black.)
Furthermore, I sharpened the
piece using the 'unsharpen
mask...` filter, giving that
sharpen look, whilst also
allowing me to work into the
shadows of the piece –
helping the image pop that
much more.
One of the other problems I
had with my piece is that you
could see the stars through
the background, so to get
around this, I went onto the
original layer and used the
'eraser tool' to cut out the
stars that shouldn't be there –
originally left to have the
interion of a cool starry effect
leak, but coming off just more
cheap and tacky...
Another quick lighting
adjustment I did was using the
pen tool (with a black colour)
and painting on the shadow,
to be completed with the
layer mode and often dabbing

4. Pre-Title Sequence
When trying to play about with
turning my footage into night rather
than day and eventually settling on
the darker blue – dusk look that I
had.
To this, I played about with a lot of
effects placed into a layer
adjustment and later – would
mainly be composed of things such
as 'lumetri colour' - to adjust a lot of
the colour and brightness,
'unsharpen mask' - to help sharpen
is as I had on the poster' and 'crop' -
to add a tram line effect to the
product.
At the start of my product, I use frame
wipe, the way I do this is by using an
animated mask – created using the 'pen
tool' across the areas I want to remove into
the transition of the next frame, which
would be placed under the current footage.
To add the BBC water mark over my
product I went online to find a BBC logo
and place it over all the footage and used
the 'screen' layer mode to bring out the
white over the footage, for me then bring
down the opacity down to make it look
more authentic next to actual BBC footage.
For the audio I produced a sound
scape I had created at home and
would later implement into the
actual edit at college.