Inside Movies Magazine Cover - Final Version

This is the final version with a couple of superficial changes:

1. The font size has been increased across the board wherever possible and so it doesn't interfere with the design
2. The colours of the sub-headlines have been changed from red to white as it wasn't fully visible with the flames in the background
3. The word Blockbuster is in caps to emphasis that this is a big Summer film and will be a conventional blockbuster. This helps the audience decide what type of film this is.
4. The green has been slightly lowered and made lighter so it now blends in better with the background whilst not losing the visual of the face in the flames. The green is virtually invisible.
5. There is now a better use of the space outside of the facial image. The Daniel Radcliffe picture has been raised with the headline underneath increased.
6. The website is also bigger and has been raised from the bottom of the page. I felt that there needed to be a more obvious link to the website.
7. Small grammatical errors have been ammended.

Final Presentation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of Real Media Products on Prezi

I have edited some of the text regarding genre conventions and explaining the teaser samples.
I feel that this is rather obvious and could also result in the presentation lasting too long.
There were still a few grammatical errors which have been edited.

Final Magazine Cover

The total changes that I have made are:
1. The title is fictional as opposed to Total Film
2. All of fonts are now Sans Serif
3. The title/tagline of the magazine are now in 3-colours
4. The "green" behind the picture of Jonathon is now more blended into the yellow of the explosion - this wasn't mentioned yesterday as there were complications regarding the Openzine software
5. The main headline now directly address the image of the star in the explosion i.e. "Who is behind..."

I also got feedback regarding not being able to see the main headline and also the price. The black and red fonts are now in locations that make the text more visible. Also, the price is a more realistic £3.00.

Magzine Cover - Latest Draft

This is the latest draft of my magazine cover.
This will be amended later today/tomorrow

Latest Prezi Presentation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of Real Media Products on Prezi

This is the latest version of my Presentation on Teaser trailer forms and conventions
This will be amended later today/tomorrow

Filming Today

Today after school our group met up in town outside the Said Business School to re-film the walk when the bomber enters the building with his briefcase in hand. We did this due to the feedback we received once we had shown our draft to the rest of our class. They felt Conor had a limp in his walk in this scene which was a distraction to them focussing on the teaser trailer. We therefore filmed the scene again with a different actor (who didn't have a limp) making improvements to the quality of the shot at the same time. We also added another shot in which Conor and our other actor "Abbz" exchanging the briefcase, which will be added in before-hand.

We will now look at these shots on the computer and see if we can make them work together. Also some plans Matty and myself have talked about involve a possible zoom in black-out for one of the titles to show good transition skills.

Post by PG

Filming: Happy Birthday MS, PM and CW

2nd Presentation of chosen evaluation question

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of Real Media Products on Prezi

I have made the ajustments as laid out in the previous post.
I have replaced the Speed trailer with the Faster teaser which has several good points of comparison with our teaser

1st Presentation of chosen evaluation question

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of Real Media Products on Prezi

This is the first draft of my Prezi presentation for one of the evaluation questions.
The improvements suggested by Mr. Wroe are:

1. Need to refer specifically to teaser trailers
2. The videos need to be teaser trailers NOT full length trailers
3. Label each teaser trailer with the title of the film
4. Grammatical Errors

I will amend and then post the new presentation today.

3rd Draft Magzine Cover

I have made the changes suggested by Mr. Wroe and I outlined in my last post.

One of these have been to the title - Blockbuster sounds like a magazine that would be similar in content to Empire and Total Film and would meet their conventions i.e. would celebrate film rather than criticise; look at big budget films not just arthouse cinema.

I have changed the grammatical errors and finally the colours so all of the text was move easily visible

2nd Draft Magazine Cover

I have made the following changes to the first draft of my magazine cover:

1. Image - I wanted an image that reflected the action-thriller genre. I chose an explosion as a bomb is at the heart of the film. Given the events of the past week, I had to carefully choose my image so that it would not be offensive. I also was not keen on the old image as it didn't reflect what is happening in the film.

2. Star - I needed an image of the "star" but as Jonny is not recognised as a celebrity, I thought it would be interesting to mix him into the explosion. This also mean't I had to change the headline to reflect the "mysterious" nature of a brand new star. It is a more Unique Selling Point than the original poster image.

3. Tagline(s) - I wanted to link this in into the image. As it is difficult to see who the star is, the tagline should reflect this. The other taglines are generic film magazine taglines that are more interested in promoting films rather than challenging or criticising them.

Changes:

1. Change the title to a fictional one.
2. Change the colour of the taglines so they are more easily visible
3. Grammatical errors.

magazine cover

This is a basic draft of the magazine cover for Total Film. I will edit this later on but at this point, it contains some of the key elements that I will keep for the new draft.

The magazine has to incorporate several key elements such as:
1. Masthead - Title of magazine so the audience is aware of what the magazine is called
2. Sub-heading - This is to give further detail on the magazine's content and elaborate on the theme. In this case it is a modern film magazine and the tagline "The Modern Guide to Movies" helps confirm this. This makes Total Film distinctive from magazines such as "Sight and Sound" which focus on older, classic films.
3. Main Headline
4. Barcode - Is a standard convention of all magazines
5. Price and Date - This needs to be included to inform the readers

The main headline is obviously about our film. The main image is taken from the early draft of the poster. However, in future, we may use images of the stars (Matty or Jonathon) as this is what magazines do to sell the magazine to their target audience. Stars are important of getting an audience outside the target audience and the bigger the star, the more likely that you will getting more sales.

The headline is designed to focus on the biggest film at that point in time. This again may change as we may add a more catchy tagline that perhaps is even a pun on the title.

The next major headline below this is the Summer preview which links into our film. The Oscars headline is trying to attract an audience who perhaps do not like blockbusters film. The remaining headlines are designed are focusing on big films (except for my headline!) to further attract and capture the film-loving audience.

As this is a commercial magazine, most of the headlines reflect films in a positive light.

We will perhaps change the colours although the red, black & white tie in nicely with the poster. However, the purple and yellow will probably be changed. Also, I think the font is rather dull and may need to be changed

Total Film Analysis/Research

I have chosen to focus on the film magazine "Total Film". I am looking at the production details, Audience, mode of address and representation.

PRODUCTION DETAILS
Total Film is produced by Future Publishing in Bath. Future produces over 150 magazines worldwide including magazines like Classic Rock, Xbox 360 Magazine and Total Guitar. Their magazines are produced in over 30 countries around the world.
Total Film is one of their biggest selling magazines with around 85-90,000 magazines sold each month. It costs £4.00 and will occasionally have free DVDs and books accompanying the magazine. It features reviews of new films and old films revisited.
It has a consistent format and layout with the following elements:
a). Cover article - the big feature of the month
b). Buzz - film gossip and news(films not yet released)
c). Reviews - reviews of cinema releases that month
d). Lounge - home entertainment news and features (near the back)
e). Reader's letters and competitions (to guarantee audience engagement)

AUDIENCE
The audience is primarily made up of young men who are film fans. Most of the letters are from men and the advertising is male-orientated. Most of the adverts support the film industry e.g. HMV, Play.com, DVDs due to be released. Men are also targeted for the classified adverts at the back for games, gadgets, technology, cars and phone sex lines. However, the magazine does claim that 25% of its readers are women.

MODE OF ADDRESS
The mode of address is playful, masculine and youthful e.g. looking at Harry Potter lego designs to see if it gives clues for the films. The magazine is not very laddish by including film references and jokes whilst not being too serious. It positions its audience as young, knowledgeable film lovers who are familiar with pop culture references and have a sense of humour

REPRESENTATION
There is a bias towards men which is the same as in Hollywood. Most of the stars and directors featured are male. The women who are featured are presented as sex objects who are all attractive and sexy. It does reject laddishness that is in magazines like Zoo and Nuts. Future conducted a survey several years ago that claimed that the average demographic is 75% male and the median age is 26. The psychometric profile describes Total Film readers as dedicated film goers who see films on the opening weekend and show off their film knowledge to their mates in the pub.

PM

magazine research

I know for the ancillary tasks we are doing Posters, and the website. But I thought as a backup I thought I could do also, a magazine research and a rough draft. For my research I have been looking at couple of websites.

http://www.empireonline.com/
http://www.totalfilm.com/magazine

I have been seeing how they have been laying out, the content, the size of font and maybe other features. I will try and my own on this tomorrow using some aspects of of these websites.

Feedback on Poster

Last media lesson with Mr Wroe we showed our poster to the class and got feedback on it. I was generally quite happy with the comments we had and I now have a good idea where to take it now to improve it. The comments we had were:

- "One of the taglines is all in capital letters whilst the other only has the first letter with a capital!

- "Should mix a tiny bit of colour into it"

- "Add another image into it, possibly an action shot"

Piyal and I will take these comments into account when we meet again to re-think the posters design.

PG and PM

film poster research

As our genre of our teaser is action/ thriller there was one thing which came to my mind researching an actual film poster and that is Casino Royale.

This is a really good poster to look at for many reason. Every aspect of this poster works means something and the attention to detail makes this poster work so well.

So we first see the Facial Expression it looks quite intense, serious and a face of thunder which means business. Bond is dressed in a stereotypical bond outfit. But it also a loose tie which might mean that is going to become a rebel and not play by the rules. He is seen as a focused guy on a mission and he wont stop till the task is done. His body language is not directly at the audience but more to the target and looks like a man to not mess around with. He doesnt look happy and he looks determined to get the job done which we can see through his facial expression and his carrying of the gun.

We also see the Bond Girl in the background. As other films he always has his lover for the film but she isnt you typical Bond girl. She looks serious and seems to be a character who isnt easy to work out if she is playing Bond or helping Bond. But looks like she will play a big part in Casino Royale.

It also has the release dates and the credits at the bottom telling us who produced this film. It has the movie company also put in on the bottom right. It shows that there has been a lot of detail put into making this poster. Covering a lot of the aspects which made it so successful in advertising Casino Royale.

Repercussions Film Poster

After school today Piyal and I met up to create a film poster. Piyal had already created one earlier today. We wanted to include all the conventions of a possessional poster and relate it to our film.



The photo is one I took in the same area as some of the London shots we took for the film (as shown below).



Piyal and I then decided black and white looked really good and therefore got the typewriting text to go with it.



PM and PG

Ancillary Task- Teaser Poster

I have created a teaser poster for our film "Repurcussions". This is just a rough draft and will be ammended later on.

What does it show?
We can see a shot of the City of London at night. It contains several iconic elements such as Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and London Eye. The title of the film is written in big bold white writing contrasting with the scene at night. We put the credits at the bottom in small font so it does not impact on the image. It also shows the release date which is Summer 2012 and will be specific nearer the release date. The early tagline is also included.

What effect do these things have?
The effect of the iconic images states the location clearly and gives the film a sense of time and place. It is serene and clam which is in contrast with the catastrophic events that will occur later. The use of white is clearly states the taglines which make the apocolyptic tagline stand out as well as clearly state the title. This is an early draft but the genre is made clear through the tagline.

PM

analysis other project

Mr Wroe joined up with another school so that we could analysis other people's project from another school.



So I was having a look at this short film. The comments to this film are put on youtube. I thought this exercise would quite useful as we got to look at the mark-scene and be really critical of there work. The skills we learn from that we can use on are own work and making it the best we possible can.

First Draft feedback

Today we showed a VERY rough draft of our teaser to the rest of the class. To get feeback on how we could improve. Here is what was suggested...

It was suggested that we maybe not include the production title logos at the beginning, beliving that teaser trailers don't include them, however from the research I have found, that most do actually include them and normally at the beginning. I also think it shows editing skills.

During the chase scene, some were left confused at the editing of the shots, that perhaps we should do an over the shoulder shot (show more of the person against the walls face). We explained we had framed it like this as we had filmed it in Oxford, but wanted to imply it was a London location, we felt that if we showed too much, that it may be clear that its not in London..

The bomber walking into the building. The choice of clothing was considered not appropiate, that he should of actually been in a suit, looking more office like.

Include transitions to change from one shot to another. E.g. Zooming in on something on one clip, then zooming out of something the same colour. E.g like how we did in our AS prelim task where, we opened the brief case onto the camera to a black out so we could include the titles over. SHMOOOTH.

Fast paced with a beat music was also suggested.

Using a digital clock.. Although this has always been our original idea, to include the clock ticking throughout, with the sound of the beap, and like a heart beat.

It was also thought we could include some kind of tint to images, e.g a green tint to connote action, or a red tint to connote danger..

This is all valuable feedback, what we will use to improve our text.

Yours Sincerly MS

A policeman called me Unfit!

So today MS, PG and PM, got down to doing some filming of some shots today we did some shots of a chase and the crash against the wall. I had to be an actor, as we couldnt get anyone else. So We had the legend himself Jonathan (Jonny) Nesbitt dressed up as an MI5 agent and me in a hoody running away and being pushed against a wall.

So we were filming on the side road next to the town hall, with a police car parked outside (probs protecting it from us ugly, badly-dressed student rabble. But yes after a few takes with Patrick producing a smooth hand held shot while riding along on his bike while Jonny chased after me. So yes a police man got out of his car to check what we were doing, had to explain several times, not a 'TEACHER Trailer' but a teaser trailer, he then said something about covering the camera with a line of T shirts or something ( He May of Recognized us from the protests)..  Then he decided to say I was Unfit.. How rude!!


But yes this post is just to tell you we managed to get some good shots done today. Thank you Jonny for helping us out, I would of normally got a picture of the filming process, but I didn't. I apologise.


Peaceful protest! MS