Almost Finished...

Now that we have completed our teaser trailer, film magazine front cover and film poster we are in the last stages of our coursework. All that remains for us to do now is the evaluation of the work that we have already completed. Some parts of the evaluation will be hard but I think that we have done enough work on the blog so far that it will make it easier for us to produce a successful evaluation.

Poster Analysis

It is now clear after analysing all the work we have done that our main product and ancillary products link together and are in sync with each other they do this by representing the same ideologies in each.No product is ever marketed alone so we had to be sure that all our products were easily collaborated together.We are happy with our finished products,and are now sure we followed the codes and conventions precisely whilst changing some aspects of the products to fit in with our representation and genre.

Poster Final Copy

This is the final copy of our film poster, we are satisfied with what we have created because we feel that we have created a poster that matches the ideologies and represntations of our trailer. The images we have included in our poster make sense with what the film is about and what goes on in the trailer. We have developed our poster from the last time we added it to the blog by adding the institution logos and taglines and other pieces of text that are found on film posters.

Further Development

We have been continuing to edit our film poster in Adobe Phohotshop and we have added some more things to it that are found inother filmposters. We think that it has improved but we will question our audience to find out what they think still needs to be added. Here is our poster so far.

Development of our Poster

This is how our poster looks at the moment. We have combined the image of my red eyes to one of our location shots after editing it to make it black and white. We have faded them slightly together and made the edges of the eyes image less harsh to make it blend into the trees more. We have added our billing block to the bottom of the page. We still need to add a lot of text to the poster to make it look like a real media product. Our poster may change from this and we may change the position of some of the features on the page.

More Editing

We have used one of our images and continued to edit it. We used the brush tool, blur tool and burn tool to enhance the image and make it more noticable and sharper. This is our current position...

The next step we will take is to combine this image with a photo of our location or a forest to make it relate further to our film.

Edited Images

We have edited some images to see how they look, here is what we came up with...


We don't know whether we will use these images for our final poster but at the moment we are experimenting with different ideas and it is helping us get to grips with photoshop. Our favourite at the moment is the red eyes so we will continue to edit this image and combine it with some different images.

Taking Photos for Film Poster

We have been taking photos for us to use in our film poster. We took some from different angles and in different poses and positions. We will now go onto to Photoshop to see if there is anything we can do to them to make them look good on our film poster and to see if they would fit the genre of our film. Here are some of our favourites...

Ideas for our Main Image

We have been brainstorming ideas together to work out what main image we will use for our film poster. These are some of things that we have considered using either alone or combined...

• Extreme close up of eyes
• Hand reaching out towards viewer
• Trees during the winter
• Close up of main character
• Main character looking over her shoulder
• Storm clouds
• Forest scene
• Blood tears
• Hand over main character's mouth

We will experiment with these images and take some photos to see what works best with what and go onto create our film poster.

Film Poster Layout

This is the layout that we will refer to whilst creating our film poster. It gives us a brief idea of what to include on our poster and the positioning of these things. We may make some changes to this layout during the process of creating our poster because we may think that something looks better in a different place on the page.

Ideas for our Poster

Here are some things that we have thought about putting on our film poster because we either think that they would go well with our ideology, or we have been inspired by other film posters.

Mise en scene: We discussed and looked back at our research and these are the ideas that we came up with for what to include in our poster. All of these objects represent either our film or the stereotypical representation of the horror/thriller genre. We wanted to stick to this code and convention because we felt that you can not avoid using these things when creating a film poster for the horror/thriller genre as they a directly associated with this genre. When questioning our audience we found that they prefer to see these things on a film poster for a thriller film because it makes it easier to identify the genre of the film.

Colour Schemes: We listed the possible colour schemes that we could use for our poster. We chose these colours because they are related to ideologies that are found in our trailer and the one we want to portray. The colours are quite dark and gloomy which go with the codes and conventions of other film posters from the horror/thriller genre. Some colours also relate to themes in our trailer. E.g. Greens=forest, Red= gore, danger, blood. Blue=nighttime, mysterious.

Ideologies: We wanted to portray the same ideologies in our film poster as we did in our trailer, and make our poster the representation of our film. Also, we want our film poster and trailer to relate together so they do not seem like two separate products. This could be the main issue when creating our poster because from our research we found that all trailers and posters are related strongly together.

Effects/Edits: These are very important when creating our poster because effects alone can make a image match our ideology. They can also give a surreal feeling which will also relate to the trailer. We may use image effects like black and white because from our research we found that this is extensively used and strongly relates to the horror/thriller genre.

Slogan/Tagline: These are the possible taglines we may use in our poster because we found that many other film posters use taglines. All our possible taglines relate to our film and help to create suspense and panic.

Moving On..Again

Now that we have completed our film magazine, we will now move on and start creating our film poster to go with our trailer. We have already finished our research of film posters and recognised many codes and convetnion in them that we could take inspiration from, or manipulate to make them suit the genre of our film.

Spotlight Textual Analysis

As we have completed our final copy of our magazine, we decided we would each analyse it as we did with the magazines in our research. We named our magazine ‘Spotlight’ due to the fact in has a direct correlation with the film industry. The word spotlight has connotations of limelight, highlighting and drawing attention to, therefore portrays the message we intend to .The genre of this particular issue of spotlight is horror/thriller because it is advertising our film ‘Nowhere to run’. The issue is themed around that genre with it being named a ‘thrill issue’ as we placed a triangle in the top corner to depict this. The colour scheme of the issue is kept constant it has three prominent colours red ,blue and black ,the colour white is briefly used. These colours are eye catching and represent the ideology of a dynamic film magazine, and these colours can be kept constant between genres to create a premise between issues. This was a technique I noticed in my research, it makes the magazine instantly relatable for the target audience. The Masthead is another item that must be immediately recognised. We create ours in Adobe Fireworks .It has a blue and black colour scheme therefore keeping it in sync with the issue. The masthead has an effect of a spotlight shining down on it, this relates to the name and in turn the issue, the title is larger than the rest of the text to make it immediately noticeable.

Under our title/masthead there is the tagline ‘the beginning, middle and end in movies’ this attracts the reader because it gives the effect that the magazine includes everything you need to no about films ,it also loosely relates to Todarovs Narrative structure of films. Beside the tagline there is some information you find on all magazines regardless of type. The price, date, issue number and website are all shown this indicates the magazine is professional and follows the codes and conventions of all other magazines. As I have mentioned at the top near the masthead in the corner there is a caption that says ‘Thrill Special’ this reveals the genre, this particular issue is specifying in, there are some examples along the top of new films to make the issue current and fresh, these films relate to the genre and our film. The main image is a medium close up of the main character of our film ‘Nowhere to Run’. The lighting of the image adds to the ideology of our film and the magazine because there is a shadowed effect on the face adding to the mystery, we knew the central image was important to draw the audience in, and from my research I gathered they were generally the same shot type as ours to allow the audience to connect with the eyes .

The main cover story ‘Escape is futile’ is eye catching because it is in a white font on a black background therefore it stands out ,instead of just doing a block background we decided to do a different shaped one to add a different dynamic to the magazine. It represents our film well because it links in with the title ‘Nowhere to Run’ and represents the ideology we want this issue of the magazine to portray, we decided to use a quote like this instead of just having our title as we felt this was a code and connotation of other film magazines we analysed. Above the cover story it says ‘meet the star Abbie Smith...’ This lets the audience know that inside there is an interview with Abbie and below the cover story is the statement ‘LOCK you doors you’ve got Nowhere to run’ This represents the genre of the film again and also reveals the actual name of our film rather than leaving it off the cover entirely. We used statements to draw the audience in such as ‘exclusive interviews’, we got this idea from our research in which film magazines generally use proclamations like that to draw the target audience in and make them feel the magazine is unique in its interviews. The other stories we used on the cover of our magazine regularly include the mention of celebrities, as people who are fans of these particular celebrities will defiantly want to read about them. We used famous people who relate to both genders to give ourselves a broader audience .For example the mention of Megan Fox would draw males in and Taylor Lautner would appeal to girls. We used a small picture of Taylor Lautner as well as our central image to make the issue of vibrant and less ‘wordy’.

We wanted our magazine to be more entertaining than serious because magazines such as sight and sound are very professional and wouldn’t appeal to our target audience. We used an extra column at the bottom as this is very typical of all magazines. It gives the illusion that the magazine has lots of content and lots to offer therefore making it seem more engaging and appealing .Slightly above that is the quote ‘The most thrilling film in decades’ this is a quote from a film critic which adds extra recognition to our film and make people want to watch it. The word thrilling is underlined to add further emphasis on it. The overall layout of the front cover is quite stereotypical ,it has stories down the side and a central image as many others do. We felt it would be best not challenge these because they generally work. After questioning the audience and making small changes and taking on board their ideas, we created a magazine that represents our film which is what it set out to do.

The Final Product

This is our final front cover for our film magazine. We feel that with this product we have reached our target audience, successfully portrayed the genre and representation of our film and presented the ideologies that we had in mind. Also, from our previous research we feel that we have filled a gap in the market with our product. After questionning our audience extensively, we feel that they agree with this too.

Questioning Our Audeince

Now that our front cover is almost finished we thought that we would ask our audience for their views and opinions on what they like about it and what they would make better. We asked open and closed questions and they were...

What do you like about the front cover?
Would you change anything on the front cover?
Do you think the main image looks good?
Would you change the positioning of the main image?
Do you think the front cover would be appealing to 16-24 year olds?

"I think that the masthead needs to stand out a bit more from the rest of the text"
"I would change the positioning of some of the cover stories"
"Maybe you could change the clour of the cover story fonts?"
"I like the main image, the eyes really stand out"
"I think that it would be appealing to 16-24 year olds because of the young person on the front and the cover stories included."

We will take this advice on board and apply it to our front cover. Once we have a finished product we will add it to the blog.

Final Main Image

This is our final main image that we will put onto our front cover. As we had to remove the background on our main image we then used another photo we had taken to act as the background. We weren't sure how it would look but we think it looks successful. We will question our audience to see if they agree.

Edited Main Image

This is what our main image now looks like after we have edited it on Photoshop. We used the brush tool to make the eyes more noticeable and the blur tool to make the changes we made to the image less obvious. We then used the magic wand tool to take the background out of the pictures. We needed to do this because the image did not fit the page properly which meant that my face was not in the middle where it should have been and instead it was too low down which means it was too covered by the text. By removing the background it meant we could reposition the image.

What Should Be Our Main Image?

Now that we have taken the photos for our main image on our front cover we must now decide which one would be the best one to use. We asked our audience which one they preffered and 70% said they liked the third image because there is shading over the face which could represent a 'dark side' to the character. We thought this was good because it would show the genre of our film. We will know use Adobe Photoshop to edit the image to make it good enough to go on our front cover.

Trip to the Forest

Today we all went and took some photos for the cover of our film magazine. We knew we wanted the image to represent the genre of the film however we had not confirmed the exact shot we wanted. So we went and took about 30 various images. Some from a high angle and some from eye level. Shot varied also, from medium shots, close ups to long shots.
The images we took were in a forest with Abbie ( the main character). The sun was at its peak during our shoot so we had to be careful with where we were directly the camera. However, the sun worked towards our advantage as the shots created a shadow making it seem more mysterious and fit the thriller genre.
Once we felt that we had taken suffcient amount of images and were happy with them, we looked back at them and deleted the ones which did not fit the ideology we were aiming for. After deleting and more deleting we ended up with 3 images we were very pleased with.
Here are the three images:
We will ask our audience which one will be most suitable for the cover and then we will begin editing it in photoshop! So lets see how it goes!

Magazine Analysis