Magazine Cover: Final Draft

I wasn't happy with the first draft of my magazine and wanted to add a different image from my poster. I also wanted less text on the cover. Here is the final version.

Media: Real Magazine

Media: Real Magazine, a photo by JoshParrott on Flickr.

Evaluation Pt.4

When screening our horror film trailer to a focus group, both positive and negative points were given along with constructive criticism to help with improvement. The part of the trailer, which was enjoyed and highlighted most was the last shot of trailer at the end which includes the generic jump which is built up through out the trailer to the point where the main character Keith takes off the persons mask, this created a lot of suspense as you don’t know who is behind the mask leaving a cliff hanger. Another shot which was highlighted and praised for being successful was the dripping of the dark red blood onto the white snow, this shows a contrast between something associated with being soft and gentle, against dark blood which would connote as violence or horror, elements like these in our trailer made it very rememberable. Our choice of soundtrack was praised as feedback suggested it fitted well with the pace of the trailer and added to the gradual build up of suspense, which helped sequencing the trailer. Small details within our trailer were pointed out as being successful, putting all the elements together worked very well, examples of one of these elements are our choice to use black and white effects when in the transition between flashbacks and the scenes, this helped to clearly distinguish between what was a flash back and what was happening in the actual scene, making the trailer easy to follow and understand, and the inter-titles we used to help make the trailer easy to follow along, it also built up the narrative of the trailer. Although there was lots of positive feed back on how clear our trailer was to follow, criticism was given to parts of the trailer, which were slightly unclear or difficult to understand. For example, the part in which the man was having a heart attack was criticised as not being clear enough to follow. Another element which was criticised was the lack of gore featured in our trailer even though our trailer was categorised under the ‘Red-Band’. Contradicting with the positive feed back we received, some criticised the choice of ending to our trailer, suggesting that it may have been more fitting to our film if we had chosen a jump scene at the end aimed to scare rather than a slow shot which built up tension. In response to the criticism I agree with most points, as there are improvements which could have been made to make the trailer stronger, especially in terms of adding more gore, this would have made our trailer more fitting to the category it was placed in and made it clearer to the audience the genre of film we were intending, especially as it was pointed out how successful the shots of the blood contrasting on the snow were, we could’ve taken full advantage of this and added more gore shots to the trailer. I feel that to make the narrative of the film stronger, it could have been beneficial to take more advantage of using inter-titles as we could have added more detail and given more background information, particularly on Keith the main character, over all this would have made the narrative a lot clearer to the audience. The overall rating of our trailer was 6.5/10 from the rest of the class, this rating is lower than I would have liked and I feel it was strong as a trailer, although from the constructive criticism I can see the points where it could have been stronger and the reasoning for scoring 6.5.

As a group we took the criticism onboard and decided to make changes to our trailer. It was said that we needed to show Keith attacking somebody to further give clues to his motives and actions, so we filmed a new scene and added that at the end in the style of a flashback (to keep in with the other flashbacks). We filmed this scene in one lesson and we used different camera angles and quick cuts to make the scene exciting. We also used fake blood to add gore to the scene, a factor that was highlighted as being missing from the trailer. As a group we added this towards the end of the trailer, so it would stick in peoples minds as the last image f Kieth.

Overall I am happy with our final trailer. There are some aspects that I don't like such as the fonts used on the intertitles and the soundtrack, but overall I am happy with the finished product. I feel that this would appeal to our target audience, the film is supposed to be very gritty and bloody and our target audience would enjoy that type of horror movie (they would be fans of Henry:Portrait Of A Seriel Killer etc.). Our target audience is people who prefer shows such as Breaking Bad, Walking Dead rather than TOWIE or Geordie Shore. They would also fall into the C1 demographic profile so they would probably be a skilled labourer such as a plumber/builder. our target audiences also fall into the 'outsiders' psychographic profile. I feel the character of Keith would appeal to the target audience because of their preference in horror films, and Keith fits into this catergory. My favourite aspect of the trailer is the colour filming. In my opinion this series of shots look good, and contrasted with the snowy conditions, Kieth seems like a more believable character because he is out in daylight, which makes him a more scary and threatening character. i also like when Kieth takes the cloth of his vicitms head, we positioned the cloth on the camera itself so when Kieth pulls it off, it looks like the shot is from the point of view of the victim. We also took advantage of the dark conditions of the shed, so when Keith peers down towards the camera, his face 'emerges' from the darkness and becomes visible. the dark light makes his face seem sinister and scary and leaves a lasting impression and image in the viewers mind. I like these aspects because they ensure that the trailer seems scary and mysterious which matches Kieths character, and they make sure that our trailer ticks all the right horror boxes.

Keith: Focus Group Screening

Group Feedback

Group Feedback

What the Group Liked about the Trailer:

·        They thought that the text was good.

·        They thought that the flashbacks worked well.

·        They thought that the narrative was well built.

·        They enjoyed the suspense.

·        Thought that the music was good.

·        Well filmed, cool shot angles.

·        Production company logo was well made.

·        Good cinematography.

·        Good lighting in shed scene.

·        Shots were well framed.

What the group thinks needs improvement:

·        Soundtrack was a bit dull, needs some more jumps (heartbeats).

·        Not enough jumps, including a jump at the end.

·        Didn’t understand who the man was in the bench flashback scene.

·        Ends abruptly.

·        Scene with strangling/beating up man needs to be better explained.

·        Sound effects on impact moments.

·        Music needs a climax.

·        Narrative needs a better explanation.

·        Some of the shots of Keith were a bit too long.

·        Needs more quick, jumpy shots.

·        Too short overall.

·        Needs a montage at the end of Keith killing people.

·        Need to justify the red band.

Keith (FINAL CUT)

Evaluation Pt.3

Evaluation Pt.3

During the research and planning stage I used a variety of technologies to help me gain information and post things onto my media blog via blogger. Blogger is a good format to use to present work particularly because you can embed videos and pictures which helps to convey your points across to a greater extent. However taking this into account, it isn’t the easiest website to use, I don’t really like the way it open up a new tab every time you switch between the actual blog and blog postings, it can get fairly confusing and clustered and hard to keep track of where you are and what you are working on. Saying this I can’t think of a better format in which to present the coursework unit. Another key technology was the use of YouTube and DVD’s, as I was able to grab all of the clips and films that I needed in order to complete my research and planning, and this ties in well with Blogger because of the ability to embed videos. IMDB was also a great resource for obtaining information. This website contains all the relevant information about films that were needed for my research and planning. On this website you can see who directed each film, the cast, a synopsis of the narrative etc. this proved a very useful resource and helped me out a lot during my research and planning stage. All of these different technologies have enabled me to gather and present a substantial amount of information that meets the criteria for the research and planning stage.

The construction phase was very very heavily media technology based. To make the magazine cover and film poster I used Photoshop as I could use this to edit my photo’s, play around with different effects and add text to make sure my ancillary products looked like how I envisioned them to. The ability to use layers in Photoshop is a major advantage over other software, this enables you to edit different parts of the image separately and make fine changes without upsetting the overall image. I am very confident with using Photoshop so this was no trouble and I have no complaints about the software. Also when creating my movie poster and my magazine cover I used my own personal Wacom graphics tablet, as I found this easier to work with than the mouse and it enabled me to make more delicate adjustments. We used Adobe Premier Pro to edit our video and again along with most Adobe products, this was straightforward to use and was a very powerful piece of software. It enabled us to edit our video clips together to make our final trailer, and also change the colouring of the clips and add transitions to make sure the final product ran smoothly and looked like a proper trailer. In my group I did the majority of the filming, and for this I used my own personal Sony A580 DSLR camera, because of its superior HD filming abilities and the fact that it could shoot high quality pictures as well. We used this because it was much more versatile to use than a standard video camera, because we could change the aperture and the shutter speed and the ISO so we could achieve the desired ‘look and feel’ that we wanted in our trailer. To get sound clips for our trailer we used freesound.org because of the wide range of loyalty free sound clips. We found one that worked well with our trailer and the website was very straightforward to use and we were successful in getting the sounds we wanted. All of the media technologies I used in the construction phase proved to be very useful and they all lived up to their expectations, enabling me and my group members to put together a decent piece of work.

 

I also used media technologies in the evaluation phase which enabled me to support my ideas through the use of images and video. Again the ability to embed videos and images with Blogger has helped me out a great deal, as my media evaluation is backed up with photos and videos which helps to better to understand the text. I also used YouTube again for the evaluation phase to show the focus group our rough cut trailer. This meant that me and my group could pin point exactly what needed changing in our trailer and what people liked about it so that we could make the relevant changes and additions. Another media technology I used was Flickr. I am already a confident user of Flickr because I use it to store and present my photography and illustration work, so using it was not a problem. Experience aside Flickr is a very easy and straightforward program to us and it contains powerful tools to help you present work. I used Flickr to present my movie poster and my magazine cover analysis, the ability to add notes over top of photos that show up when rolled over by the mouse is a great feature, and has enabled me to present my analysis in a neat and straightforward fashion. All of the media technologies that I and my peers have used during this coursework unit have provided us with the tools to create excellent pieces of work, and not one piece of software has let us down.

Evaluation Pt.2

Evaluation Pt.2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When creating my movie poster, I took inspiration from film posters I had already seen and noted what made a movie poster successful. I wasn’t a fan of overly complicated and busy posters, I think that too many pictures and text ion a poster can make it look messy and detract away from what it is trying to convey. I chose to keep my poster simple, with minimal text so people could take in all the information about the film that they needed with just a quick glance. I chose low key lighting and when photographing the image for the movie poster, I made sure that there was a deep shadow on one side of the subject to make the poster look menacing, dark and sinister. I dressed the subject in the same grubby and dirty shirt that we had used to film our trailer so the character of Keith would be recognisable. He looks particularly grubby which is what we were going for, we wanted a gritty and grubby character that would really shock people in the film and I feel we have achieved this. The fonts were carefully chosen for the poster as well, I chose the main title font because of its background that contained numbers and letters and symbols, which almost look like a police report. This connects with Keith’s previous job as a police officer, and gives the viewer clues to his background and the narrative. The tagline gives the viewer clues to how far Keith will go to get his revenge, and like the title font, it gives the viewer clues to Keith's police force past. A poster that this could be compared to is Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986), both poster feature the title and a picture of the main character and not much else, this also fits well because Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer was a main inspiration for the making of Keith, the content of both posters help to categorise both of the films in the same sub-genre of horror.

 












With my magazine cover, I decided to feature Keith on the cover of Empire magazine. I kept the Empire font the same, as well as the barcode position and taglines so it kept within the house style of Empire, and this would enable the magazine to be instantly recognisable at a glance to the target audience. I chose to write about the influences of Keith so horror fans would instantly be able to place the film, and would know whether they would be interested in watching the film or not, and I also included an article that would really connect with the older generation of horror fans who had seen their favourite horror films be remade on multiple occasions. I wanted to create an article that horror fans would really be interested in that would draw them to the magazine. I used the same image from my movie poster on the magazine cover so people who had already seen the poster would instantly recognise the magazine cover, and this would make them want to read more about Keith and what the narrative included etc. A magazine cover that is similar to mine is the Empire: The Greatest Horror Movies Ever special edition cover. This includes the standard font title and tagline, but only has the article title and pictures to do with the article, making it look simple and straight to the point, which is what I wanted to achieve with my magazine cover.

 

My poster and magazine tie in with the style and look of my trailer very well. My trailer is very gritty and very real, I wanted to achieve this with the movie poster and the magazine cover, and I achieved this by the dress of the main subject, his clothes and his whole look and the way the photo has been taken (taking the showy areas and the low key lighting into account) portrays a gritty look, and gives clues to what the film is about and how it is shot. I chose to use a different font on the front cover of the magazine to the one I used on the poster as I wanted to keep in with Empire’s house style, and I felt that the font I used on the movie poster did not fit into this criteria. I chose Empire magazine because I wanted to target the film at a more mainstream audience, and hopefully show them a grittier and more down to earth horror film than they were used to.