Audio Evaluation.

Learning new skills.

When we made our trailer, magazine cover and film poster we used a lot of new technology, which I hadn’t used before previous to this project. The first thing I hadn’t used before were the Macs. However once I played around with them for a bit I soon got the hang of everything on there. Another technology I hadn’t used before was the editing system final cut express. When we edited our 2 minute opening for our AS coursework we used pinnacle which looked a lot easier than final cut express, however we had a chance to actually edit something on there which was our music video. After editing that on there I got the hang of it and realised that it had more options than pinnacle which could benefit in our trailer.

We filmed using flip cameras which I know how to use, having one myself. We decided to use these as opposed to the video cameras because we thought as they were HD flips they would produce the best quality picture. When we came to upload our footage it was very straightforward which was a plus.

We made the soundtrack of our trailer on GarageBand which is a music editing system on the Macs. We decided to make our own music as we thought it would be fun to compose it to make it how we want it. Also we weren’t allowed to se copyright music. The program was fairly simple to use and there were many different options to choose from. We had some trouble in the group decided which sounds to use but I think we made the best choice in the end.

For our poster we had to use photoshop. I was aware of the program and had used it a little bit before, but I am now aware how many things you can do on it to edit a picture. I never realised how many steps people go through to edit something, especially with our poster. We also used photoshop for our GIF’s in the title of our trailer which was a little complicated to grasp at first but with some help with our members of our group I think it paid off.

Target audience research 2

We asked 20 people to watch our trailer and fill in a questionnaire that would help us evaluate it. We asked mostly closed questions so it would be easier to make into graphs. The first question we asked was “what sort of genre would you say this film is?” We wanted to ask this to make sure that we have followed all the typical conventions of a thriller trailer making it easy for the audience to recognise. I was glad that the majority of participants thought it was a thriller, and am not very critical to why some people ticked horror as those two catergories are quite similar. In our first audience feedback questionnaire we asked the question “what film would you prefer to watch”, to which people put horror as their first choice. However we felt that thrillers have more ideas and we wanted to do a more psychological thriller.

Our next question was “of the genre you picked out, does it follow the typical conventions”, this answers the question if people really think the trailer is a thriller and I am glad the majority picked yes.

The third question was a follow up from our original questionnaire question which was “do you like the hero of the film to be a boy or girl?”. Most participants put yes to having a boy but we were not disheartened as we thought there isn’t really a hero in our trailer so it wouldn’t matter. However we found with this question boys liked that the protagonist was a girl but girls didn’t. I think this is just personal preference and the reason the boys said yes was probably because of the attractiveness of our main actress.

We were glad that most people said yes they would want to watch the film and yes it does build tension as those were the two purposes of our trailer; to build tension, and get people to watch it.

 The last question was “do you like the fact that she is a similar age to you”. We asked our target audience this specifically as we wanted to know if that would help them relate to the character more. I’m glad most people said yes.

We decided another way of getting feedback was by putting the trailer on facebook and letting people comment on there. We were aware not everyone on facebook is the same age as our target audience but it was a chance to show if anyone not in our age group would want to watch the film. We were very pleased with the result most people had very positive feedback. Some people had criticisms about some of the filming and continuity but there were very minor and we managed to change that quickly or tell people why that was meant to be there. I was pleased with someone’s comment “I like how the whole chess theme is incorporated into the plot like ‘one wrong move’ and ‘your turn’ it gives the storyline a strategic, logical psychological vibe to the film” this was very positive feedback in my opinion and I am glad people understood what was going on and liked how we used chess in the trailer.

We decided also to show our media studies class our trailer, post and magazine front cover so we could receive feedback from other media experts. This was good because the media students were doing the same tasks as us so they would understand more then the members of the public. I was pleased that we got a lot of positive feedback for our trailer, poster and magazine cover one person said they "loved the bath scene". However it wasn't all positive as one person said the storyline was "unclear" but we thought that our film may not make sense to everyone as it doesn't appear to what genre or film they may enjoy. On our poster lots of people liked the chess on top of Megan's face however a few people said it made her eyes look strange.

All in all I think our feedback is mainly positive but has a few criticism for minor things.

The effectiveness of our main product and ancillary texts.

We decided that our trailer, magazine front cover and film poster where all aimed at a mainstream audience. We found that there is a high demand for thriller films and it doenst cater for certain types of people, as males and females can all watch.

How do the three elements work together?
I believe all three of our products have similar themes to them that make them work together successfully. We knew that our magazine front cover and poster was going to be seen by a lot of people so we made sure we put a lot of effort into them so they looked professional and eye catching for the audience. We came up with a colour scheme of red, grey and black which we kept the same in all three elements. We used three colours because we saw on our magazine research that most magazines use three colours of font. Another thing we kept similar was the font. We wanted to use a unique interesting font so we went on to a font website and tested a few out. Although they were effective fonts we thought that they were to excessive for our product so we decided to use Perpetua on Microsoft word. We made sure any text we used on the products was all the same. Another thing that is seen on all three products is the use of the title ‘Checkmate’ and Megan. As Megan is the only actress appearing in our trailer we thought it would be best just to keep her on the magazine and poster. We kept Megan in character in all three products, the magazine front cover is from a scene in the movie, and the poster is her looking distressed which is a big part of our trailer. The use of ‘Checkmate’ on the products is important to show the audience exactly what the film is and make them want to watch it.
Although the magazine cover and film poster show Megan in character they are two very different shots. When we did the magazine cover we took many different photos of her in character but also out of character, however when coming to choose a photo we thought that the out of character shots were too posed and didn’t show what our film was about. We settled for this photo because we liked how it was slightly out of focus and the colours in the photo make it look effective. The poster however is quite a stage shoot but I think it really pays off because of the extreme close up of Megan’s face and the use of a chess piece. These are two very different photos; however I feel that they work well in attracting different types of audiences because of the contrast of the two.

I think the element that is successful in the trailer is the use of the different speeds of cuts made throughout the trailer. We wanted the pace of cuts to be slow at the beginning but then get faster and faster by the end. We found in our thriller trailer research lots of trailers did this and we thought that it looked very effective. I personally like the montage of cuts near the end of the trailer as it contributes to the story of the film a lot as it shows the mental breakdown of Megan. I think a great asset it the uses of dialogue on top of these cuts which help explain the film further. We saw of trailer research that this happened a lot, where a character would be talking on top of the clips which would help the audience understand what was happening in the cuts. We also used this speeding up of clips to keep the audience hooked and to shock them by what they saw. We hoped that by doing this it would make them want to watch it. One of the difficulties we had to overcome in our trailer was the bathroom shot. When we filmed this we didn’t take into account that it needed to be dark for this shot to work, however when we came to editing we saw that this was a problem. We still wanted the scene to be in the trailer as we thought it was good at helping the story flow. We decided to use an effect on the shot to make it go dark when the light switch was turned off. I think this worked and it was the best we could do as at the time we were running out of editing time and still had rest of the trailer to edit. I think if we had more time I would make a suggestion to re film this.

Another element that worked well in our film poster is the use of the chess on top of Megans face. We made the decision to put the chess on top of Megan’s face to show how much of an impact it has made on her life, almost like it follows her wherever she goes like a ghost. The chess was made transparent for that reason, as originally we weren’t going to have the chess transparent at all. I like the extreme close up of Megan’s face as you can see the expression on her face and the smudged makeup it shows vulnerability and even panic she is showing. I think personally it looks like a real poster, it has the billing block at the bottom and the title and main actresses name at the top. I think one of the weaknesses of the poster is the quite pronounced outline of the chess on the left side, I feel that if we blended it a bit more it would look more ghost-like, however we didn’t have enough time and my group felt that it was the best it could be so we didn’t change it.

The thing I like the best about the magazine front cover is the layout of it. I feel that all the choices we made, helped it look like a real front cover, from the use of different sized fonts and colours to the layout of where everything should go. We researched many magazine covers and found that they used different sized fonts the bigger the font the more important the text. We incorporated this into our cover and I think it worked well. We made sure the title of our film was large and Megan’s name as well. We added all the things that are found on a magazine; the title and date, the text on top of the title, the bar code and the cost. i think one of the main difficulties of the magazine was where to put the text on the magazine and what photo to use. We all liked different photos for different reasons however we went through all of them individually and pointed out the pros and cons of it so we could make a decision systematically. We also had differences where to put the text, half of our group felt some of the text wasn’t big enough and there wasn’t enough text to begin with and the other half of our group though that by adding more text it would make the cover look to crowded. In the end we did add more text and felt that this decision benefited the outcome of our poster.

 I feel that our products do have some weaknesses to them, however they were mostly due to individual differences, time management, editing skills and experience. However I feel that we put a lot of time and effort to make theses weaknesses as minimum as possible and tried our hardest to overcome them.

Evaluating Our Trailer.

The first print screen is the first shot of our film. We decided on this shot specifically as we didn’t want our trailer to be telling the story of the film, also it automatically creates obscurity. We added the chess straight away so the audience would know how the chess fits in with our film, after reading the title checkmate. The shot shows our actress Megan waking up to find the chess in her room and looking confused as to why it’s there. We decided to put the chess was very close to the camera as we wanted it to be as if it was the same size as Megan and therefore implying that the chess was going to have an impact on her life. I think the red light coming through the curtain is effective as it makes the scene look quite eerie. I also like how the chess is quite translucent creating a sort of ghost like feel to the shot.  The chess is on a tilt as we knew from watching many different trailers and TV shows that if a camera is on a tilt it creates a sense of uneasiness within the audience.

The next print screen is a quick shot of Megan coming out of the door. I personally like this shot a lot as  we filmed the leafs in front of the camera to make the audience feel as if someone is watching her and doesn’t want  to be seen. From the thriller trailers we researched we found that some had shots where it was from a characters point of view, and we thought it would be a good idea to add this. In this shot you can see the costume Megan was wearing, we wanted the audience to be able to relate to her as our target audience is 15-20. We thought by having her wearing he current fashion it would be easier for the audience to relate.

We originally thought of using a split screen in our trailer after watching the trailer that inspired us, Disturbia. We liked how it was a four way split screen showing different parts of the movie and helping the audience understand the trailer better. We thought this shot, of Megan acting crazed and the camera walking around her was a good shot to make into a split screen. We had trouble deciding what to put in the other half of the split screen and in the end we thought we could just use the same shot, but change it by reversing it. I think it worked quite well however I think it would have been better if it was a completely different clip all together.

The next print screen of our trailer is Megan in the corner looking very distressed. This was part of many short shots we added towards the end showing how Megan is slowly breaking down. We decided to film this shot in the corner as we thought it was a stereotypical shot of how to show someone breaking down; they rock in the corner. We decided to have a mid tilted down shot to show the vulnerability of Megan, it is also on a tilt to show apprehension again. I think this shot worked well because of how we filmed it and the inclusion of the chess (in her hand) shows that it is finally affecting her and displays the change between her confusion in the beginning of the trailer to now.

This is our title to our film. At the beginning when we were doing the storyboards to our film we had some trouble thinking of a way of displaying our titles so it looks interesting and not just a black screen with ‘Checkmate’ appearing. I thought of maybe having smoke as the background and then ‘Checkmate’ appearing but then my group questioned ‘what has that got to do with the film’. We did however like the idea of smoke and began thinking of ways of incorporating it into the trailer. We came up with having smoke appear and then having it fade until there is a shape of chess in the smoke. We also realised it had could mirror our trailer; a lot of havoc and then it turns into chess mirroring how it always comes back to the chess. We stuck to the convention of having the titles at the end of the trailer as most of the trailers had the titles at the end. We also left the font of the titles quite simple as most trailers did this; also we thought it would look a bit busy if we had an extravagant title and the smoke GIF behind it. We had sort of messages through our trailer to help move the story along but also stay with the theme of chess. One of the messages was ‘one wrong move’; we made sure the font of this was the same as the titles so there was some continuity. We chose this font because it was bold and easy to read. I am very proud of our titles I think it sums up our trailer perfectly and keeps in the theme of chess, the only criticism I have for it was that I wished the smoke would travel into a chess shape more smoothly and not just fade into it.

This is one of many shots we have of a chess board. We decided to have many different shots of these all the way through the trailer as it uses the main prop for our trailer, the queen chess piece. We have seen in other thriller trailers how one prop makes more than one appearance in a trailer and is important to the plot. We liked that idea and because our film is called checkmate we thought by adding this it would show that the chess somewhat determines how Megan’s life turns out. This shot is at the end of the trailer and shows a checkmate move taking place. We added a light to create a disconcerting image to the scene. In this scene one of the pieces is being knocked over by the queen. We decided to slow this scene down to show how dramatic it is, but also keep the sound of the chess hitting the chess board to show the impact. I think this scene works well as it shows how the trailer has reached its climax and adds to the mystery of ‘what’s going to happen next?’.

The next two print screens of Megan in the bath and a close up of Megan looking in the trailer are the pinnacle parts of our trailer; they are an important part of the film showing how Megan has completely broken down. We used a bird’s eye view for the shot so we could see all most of Megan’s body and see the emotions in her face. I have seen in psychological films how a character becomes so crazed by something and goes to drown themselves they stay in their clothes. We decided to stay with this convention firstly because it would be less awkward for our actress to do and secondly to show the audience how much this one small thing has affected her life so hugely. I think this shot works well; we also kept the sounds and dialogue to a minimum in this shot to show how shocking it is for the audience. The shot of Megan looking into the camera is right at the end of the trailer. We saw in films like ‘Paranormal Activity’ they have a fast clip at the end to shock the audience. We decided to stick to this convention and I think it paid off as comments from our audience show that they liked that part of the trailer. We decided to use a extreme close up of Megan’s face to the audience could see the emotion in her face, w also made Megan look into the camera so it would be more personal to the audience.

As we wanted to make our trailer as similar to real trailers we added a billing block and the date to the end of our trailer. We used a simple black and white colour scheme as so many trailers use this. We added all of the production companies to the bottom of the billing block and all the main people that had connections to our trailer. We have tried and made the billing block the same shape and size as ones in trailers.

All in all I think our trailer does follow man conventions of thriller trailers but also some of our own ideas that we think help the trailer be successful.

Behind The Scenes Video.

I decided to film a behind the scenes video on my digital camera so we could watch the process we went throught when filming our trailer 'Checkmate'.

Final Trailer

This is our final trailer.

Animated Version of Film Production Company Logo.

When we added the Nightview production company logo to our trailer we realised that it didn't look very effective just being a picture. We had researched all different types of independent production companies and found that they were all animated. We all decided that we would make it animated by making the cat eyes blink. We had previously made a GIF  before in our music video task however when we were trying to make it again we couldn't work our what we did before to make the GIF move. We then decided to get lots of different screen shots of the picture at different stages of the eyes blinking. We added this to Final Cut Express and added a transition so the eyes would appear. It was a bit disappointing that we couldn't make the eyes blink but all in all i am happy with the result and hope it looks good in our trailer

Filming 2.

Originally for our trailer we wanted to film our actress at a friends party having fun and showing her getting drunk and maybe having an argument with a friend. We planned to do this because we wanted to arrange a 'suspect' that the audience would suspect when watching the trailer. We also wanted to film Megan walking home from the party and bumping into a friend that she had upset earlier. We thought by adding these two scenes we would help the audience to suspect people of stalking Megan. However after discussions with our group we decided we didn't need those two scenes in our trailer at all as we wanted to add mystery and wanted people to want to watch the film. We decided to make a list of possible things we could film that would fit the gaps in our trailer. We realised when watching our trailer again most of it was set in her house. We then decided to film at school to change the scenery and it was easiest for Megan. We decided to film Megan looking at the chess as we decided we didn't have many closeups and we wanted to show Megan looking at the chess confused. When we filmed this it was a bit tricky as Megan kept getting 'camera shy' and laughing but we filmed it a few times so we could pick the best one. We also wanted to film a part at school where is shows that Megan cant escape the chess so we came up with a shot where Megan opens her locker and finds the chess there. We decided the way to go to film this was putting the flip cam in her locker and then getting her to open it to reveal a confused face. The problem with this was we had to try and balance the camera on something and also it took quite a lot of time before Megan opened the locker so we had to make sure that we cut it at the right place. The last thing we filmed was a shot of Megan running away to show her anxiety increasing. I think these few shots really helped our trailer flow better, even more so than the party scenes.

Progression.

For the last few weeks now we have been editing our trailer, i think we have made good progess, we have managed to decide what clips to use and we have cut them where it is needed. After editing some clips we thought that they didn't flow together very well and that something was missing. We decided to start making the music using GarageBand because we thought that would help us envisage how our final trailer will look. GarageBand is quite simple to use, it has all the sound effects from drum beats to people clapping. We had some trouble finding a base of the soundtrack as not everyone agreed with the chosen choices. However after many different types of music we finally decided one that sounded quite sinister and staying in the theme of the trailer. We decided to stick more with the strings and beats and less piano because we thought that sounds more thriller music. The print screen one shows our original music soundtrack, and how much we changed it to print screen two. We decided not to use the original soundtrack because we thought it was too busy and there was too many sounds. We also realised it didn't really fit with our trailer for example when the shots start speeding up and becoming more tense the music wouldn't mirror that.  After editing our trailer a bit more we decided to start fresh and try doing the music again but this time try not using many different sounds and adding tense music when needed. This way the music isn't the main focus of the trailer and doesn't overpower any dialogue we have in it.

print screen 2

print screen 1

Final Film Poster.

This is our final film poster. I am personally very proud of it and like how we have edited it. The idea we had for our poster is not what it turned out to be in the end. Firstly we weren't going to make the checkmate opaque, we were just going to have it on half of Megan's face like shown on my photo shop post however after playing about a bit with the chess piece we found that we liked the chess opaque as it created a sort of ghostly feel to it. We wanted to be behind this so she is sort of hidden from view which makes her appear vulnerable. We still wanted our shot of Megan to be quite picturesque so the audience would be interested in what they saw on the poster and hopefully want to watch the film. We made sure the continuity of the fonts were the same on the billing block, title and title on our magazine cover. We opted to go for a blood red colour title so it would stand out and it matched our colour scheme on our magazine front cover. We decided to have our magazine cover black and white as we thought this was the most effective colour for it and it matched the whole checkmate chessboard theme. I compared this poster to other real posters and found that we included all the conventions they had put in, like the billing block, the date and the main actress at the top of the poster. The only thing we left out was a catchphrase, but we thought the poster was effective enough not to have one. I am overall very happy with the decisions we made for our poster and hope our trailer turns out just as good.

13th of February.

On the 13th of February we filmed scenes for our trailer 'Checkmate'. overall I feel that the filming went well, we made sure we re filmed the same scenes more than once so we had a variety to pick from. We kept to our schedules (see previous blogpost) and we managed to get done everything we wanted to get done, and a bit more that we decided on the day. We haven't edited any of the trailer yet, but I took some videos on my digital camera and am hoping to edit them together as a little 'behind the scenes' video. Here are a few stills of what we did when we filmed.

Splitscreen (development)

Whilst editing our trailer we thought that an effective way to show one of the shots that we wanted to use but wasn't sure it was filmed well, was by putting a split screen in. We originally had a split screen in our animatics however we realised we didn't need that scene specifically for our trailer to make sense to the audience. So instead we used his scene where our actress Megan is slowly loosing control of her mind. We filmed this part by walking around Megan as she looks anxious and scared. After we watched this scene back when we were editing it we found that the camera was a bit shaky so the solution we came up with was to make it into a split screen. We decided to use the same shot in each split but have one going backwards and the other forwards. Also we split both clips up and sped up the shakiest part so it would appear minimal. We put the clips on top of each other and then altered the size of them so they were along side each other. I think this editing we used makes our trailer more effective and shows the variety of shots we can use.

Filming Preparation

These two print screens are lists of what props we need and the schedule for the day we are filming. This will help us be extra prepared and know exactly what we need to film. We hope our filming runs smoothly and there is no need to re-film any part like we had to do last year with our AS coursework. 

Analysis of Film Trailer.

The film I will be analysing is Disturbia. I chose this film to analyse because we used ideas from this trailer as inspiration for ours. Disturbia is a thriller/drama/ mystery about a boy who is under house arrest and becomes convinced that his neighbour is a murderer. The trailer is considerately long 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

The trailer opens with the main character Kale having a tag attached to his foot, there is a quick pan showing his face. Us, as an audience are automatically wondering what this boy did to get a tag. Non diegetic music is being played from the beginning. Then the productions companies come up and it goes to the judge sentencing Kale to 3 months house arrest which is important information for the viewers to know for later in the trailer. The scene cuts to Kale looking very bored making a tower out of food. There is a quick extreme close up of a gavel being struck against a sound block. As soon as that sound is played the pace of the non diegetic music changes to more up tempo. Text comes up on the screen next saying 'for the next 90 days'. This was a convention that we are using in our trailer. We decided that this was effective to help the audience to understand what was going on in the trailer.

The next shot it of kale putting down objects to make sure he stays in the safe zone. The scene first is an establishing shot of the garden, then a ground shot tilted up showing Kale,  and lastly a ground shot of his tagged foot  showing a red light and him placing down a garden gnome to show where he can go before the red light goes off again. Text again 'all kale has is the window'.


 The tempo of the non diegetic music changes to more drum beats and there is a voice over from the movie of Kale talking to his friend. As this is going on there is a split screen of four shots of what Kale is looking at through his binoculars. This was another shot we took as inspiration for our movie trailer, we were thinking of using a four way split screen of when our main character is walking.


As the trailer progresses the non diegetic change at certain important parts and there are a lot of fast shots in each scene. The non diegetic changes one last time to just beats and the shots change in time with the music. After this the non diegetic music changes completely to more serious dramatic sounds and the shots become a lot slower. This is 58 seconds into the trailer. We liked this convention that it throws the audience off what genre of movie Disturbia is. The trailer goes into more longer shots and a voice over of Kale speaking. There are some spoint of view shots from Kales camera filiming his next door neighbors house. The diegetic music becomes really high almost climatic and then stops completely. This is a usual convention for a trailer to have. The diegetic music returns and this time sounds like a heart beat as Kale tries to escape and find out what his neighbor is up to. The shots of the scenes become fast paced again and there is some fade outs. The text says 'the quieter the street' and there is a light beneath the text which is different to at the beginning where it was just a black background. The diegetic music speed up so it sounds a bit like a drum roll, and then it stops completely. As the trailer develops the clips get faster and they start to flicker to create an uneasiness with the audience.  The trailer ends with a climatic scene where someone is hacking at the door. The title credits comes up and then it ends. I think this trailer is a big influence in ours as we liked some of the conventions they used like the 4 split screen and the change in pace with the music and the clips. We also liked the text as it helped explain the storyline a bit more.

Animatics.

After completing the storyboards for our trailer and are happy with what we are doing we made the animatics. As we haven't done the background music we just added sound effects and dialogue. We found that when we uploaded the clips they were very short but we knew they were going to be longer when we do the actual filming. From our AS coursework experience we know that we may not stick to the storyboards fully because we may think that some shots may not fit or are not filmed very well. Of course if the shots aren't filmed very well and we need them we would have to re-film, because we did that in our 2 minute opening last year. The animatics have helped us visualise what order our trailer is going to go in. I think we need to write a script for Megan to follow because we just improvised in our animatics. We made sure we had different angles to make the trailer more interesting. We discovered on final cut that we could do a split screen and thats what we are planning to do in ours. I feel that with the animatics it will be a clear plan to follow when we film

Final Magazine Front Cover.

This is our final magazine front cover. Overall I am happy with the result I think it has all the conventions of a film magazine. We researched a lot into 'Empire' and 'Total Film' and saw they had lot of different sized fonts and sizes. They usually had a colour scheme as well for the font its usually 3 colours. We decided to go with the colour white, grey and red. We chose the white and grey because they appeared more times than any other colour in our magazine research. The red went with our picture as the background has colours of orange and yellow. We chose this particular picture because we liked how the background was slightly smudged and out of focus creating an uneasiness and suspense. We also liked how her neck was on show so it showed vulnerability as the neck is the most vulnerable part of the body. We decided we wanted a character shot rather than a shot of the actress because most of the  pictures in the magazines are character shots rather than a beauty shot.

Magazine Planning.

Theses are two drafts of our magazine cover from the pictures we took of megan. We made sure we had a lot of different shots of Megan so if we didn't like our original idea of Megan that we had, we could change it. This is one of my favourite images of Megan that i wanted to use as our final picture, however we didn't use this because there were several things that didn't make the picture effective. First of all most of the picture is of Megan's coat so people would have their eyes drawn to her coat as opposed to her face. Also she isn't using 'the gaze' which we wanted originally as we wanted the shot to be in character as if Megan was in the film. However by having Megan not look at the screen you cant really see much of her face and people may not recognise her. We liked the effect of part of the picture being blurry as it creates an uneasiness in the picture. But we decided that this isn't the picture that we could use because of the position of Megan and her facial expression.

Learning to edit using Photoshop.

In class today we learnt to edit our posters and film magazines on photo shop. As we had already taken pictures for our poster and arranged them how we wanted them on PowerPoint we knew what kind of image we wanted our poster to have. We first got our image of the main character, Megan and edited the picture a little, airbrushing her face a bit and getting rid of any parts of makeup we disliked about the picture. We chose to crop the image a lot so the poster would literally be filled up with her face and nothing else. We did that so we could see the vulnerability in her face and eyes. After editing Megan we decided to get an image of a chess piece from the Internet. In our final draft of our poster we wouldn't use a image from the Internet, we would take a picture of the chess ourselves, but we just wanted to see what it would look like. I used the magic eraser on the chess piece to get rid of the background and sharpened the image as it went blurry when we increased the size. After that we added text using fonts from Photo shop just because it was too complicated to get a font from a website and edit it so there wasn't any white spaces as the fonts were quite intricate. This is the finished product of the poster. We were experimenting with the colour of Megan's picture and when it went black and white we decided we liked this better than when it was in colour. obviously because this is still a draft we are not completely decided that we like it in black and white so we might change the colour again for our final poster.

Film production company.

20th Century Fox is a very popular film production company. the most notable films produced this company are Star Wars, X-men, Home Alone, Night at the Museum and The Sound Of Music. All these films are family films and I think 20th century fox is quite mainstream doing very popular films and not many independent artistic films. I think we will not use 20th Century Fox as our production company because it doesn't really fit our genre of film.

Paramount Pictures is different to 20th Century Fox in the fact that it produces a lot of different genres of film. the most notable films of Paramount Pictures are: Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, The Godfather and Forrest Gump. These films are very different to each other with the genre and age certificate. For our As coursework of a film opening last year we used Paramount Pictures as we thought it was fitting to a Romantic comedy but I don't think we will use it again.

Dimension Films is a production company within Miramax Films. Dimension Film company is not as known as 20th century fox and paramount pictures and we liked that. Dimension films have produced films such as: Scream, Spy Kids, The Others. From my research I have concluded that Dimension Film do more horror/thriller films than any other. We have decided to use this production company because the genre of films they produce are similar to ours.

9th December- taking pictures for our magazine and poster.

On Friday we took pictures of our main actress Megan for our magazine front cover and our film poster. I took a few 'behind the scene' photos to show everyone what we got up to that evening.
In our group discussion we decided for our magazine front cover we wanted to do a picture of Megan in character and one out of character-as an actress. We took photos of Megan as an actress first and chose quite shimmery neutral eye shadows and pink lips.

We put up a black background for our shots so it would be quite dramatic.

We used a light reflector to change the contrast on Megan's face and make her eyes stand out more.

We all took turns so we could all have a go at taking the photos. We tried to put Megan in different scenery's so we would have as many photos as possible to choose from. We also did a few shots outside where Megan was in character.





For the photos where Megan is in character we added some makeup to make her look like she was crying and all her make-up was smudged. We had to use onions to make Megan cry, so i hope the photos turned out well!

Production Company Logo.

This is our production company logo. we realised that we couldn't re-use our production company from last year because it was a romantic comedy and we are doing a thriller trailer. I thought of the name Night View because it appealed to the thriller genre. We thought about how we wanted to lay out our logo and someone suggested we use cat eyes. We got an image of cat eyes and made the background black so the eyes would stand out more. Then we added the 'night' on top of one eye and 'view' on the other. I think this was very effective. We saw on other production companies that the word 'production' is usually spaced out and we liked how that looked so we added that on the bottom of the eyes.

Film Magazine Research.

This is an example of a film cover from the magazines 'Total Film'. The title looks like it is made out of metal, which makes an impact and makes the letters stand out. The title is quite big and takes up about a third of the page. This allows the reader to easily read the title. However the people on the front of the magazine are covering part of the title which shows that they are the main focus. The font all seems to be the same which is unusual for magazines as they use two or more different fonts on the front cover. The colours of font only use two colours white and peach. From my research into magazine covers I’ve concluded that magazines use two colours of fonts, usually white and another colour. The background of the cover is very dark and it looks like there is an X in the background. It looks like the Cerebro door from the X-men films, which fans would recognise. The text has a theme of ‘X’ on it, with words such as ‘X-plosive’ and ‘X-tra’ which is a pun of the title X-men First Class. The text on the cover seems to go in a ‘G’ shape with text at the top, side and in the middle expending in front of the actors advertised. There are four actors advertised on the cover which is very unusual because there is usually only one or in some cases two, but four is strange. They are all using the Gaze, the romantic or sexual pose. There are two men and women which makes the magazine appeal to both males and females. One of the women is a mutant which informs the audience about what the film would be about if they are oblivious.

Magazine Draft.

As well as doing a draft for our film poster we decided to do one for our magazine front cover too. We researched conventions of a magazine cover to decide what to put on there. We found that on magazine covers, the title is big and bold usually at the top of the page, the font is not the same on the whole magazine, different colours of fonts are used and there is always a bar code on it. We chose the name 'CineMag' because its short but memorable and it also tells the audience what the magazine entails. We decided to turn the word 'mag' on its side so it wouldn't look so cluttered. we also added some text above the title because we saw some magazines do that. When we were researching magazines we found that some magazines have a lot of text on it and some had very little. We decided that we would have little text, just the important things so you could see more of the photograph. We used red, white and grey for our colour scheme. We used the red for the more interesting words so it would be more eye-catching. We added a picture of a new upcoming director because we saw on other magazines there would be more than one photograph. We used our main actress's name Megan Curtis instead of her character so we could introduce her as an actress more than the character she plays. We put her name in big writing so people notice it.
We're not sure if we want the photograph on the cover of our magazine to be Megan in character, or as the actress. We decided we would take pictures of both and see which one works better.

Poster draft.

We decided to make a draft of our film poster so we know what we need to take pictures of when we come to making the real thing. we thought it would be useful to look at too see if the images fit together.

We liked how half the face of the girl is shadowed, and thought that it showed mystery and suspense.

We researched different fonts on dafont.com. We couldn't decide what font we wanted to use because we liked them all, but we decided that after we have taken the photo we would choose it then.

The Gaze.

According to Wikipedia 'the gaze' is "analysing visual culture...that deals with how an audience views the people presented. Simply its just about who is doing the looking. A key feature of the gaze is that the subject of the gaze is not aware of the current viewer. there are many different types of gaze:

• The spectator gaze- this is the type of gaze where the viewer is gazing at an image of a person, animal or object in the text.
• The intra diegetic gaze- the gaze of a person at another in the world of text, often portrayed in a point of view shot.
• The direct or extra diegetic address to the viewer- a person gazing as if he was out of the frame of the text and gazing at the viewer, with certain gestures.
•  The look of the camera- the way the camera appears to look at people photographed.

Advertisements aimed at women use the mirror affect, where the women is encouraged to view themselves as the photographer views the model, therefore by buying the product the model is advertising they think they become more like the model.
As well as theses gazes Marjorie Ferguson found four types of facial expression in the cover photos of British women’s magazines:
1. The chocolate box: this is where women pose with a half/full smile, with their lips not visible. The mood they are trying to achieve with this is a pleasing warm perfection.

2. Invitational: this is where the emphasis on the woman is on the eyes, mouth (slightly smiling), position of head (tilted to one side or looking back at the camera). The mood they are trying to achieve with this is mystery or mischief .



3. Super-smiler: this is a full face, very smiley type of pose with the head thrusted forward and the hair wind swept. The mood is shown as slightly aggressive but innocent and demanding that they look at them.

4. Romantic or sexual: this includes a male and female with the pose of dreamy expression, with heavy lids and unsmiling faces. the mood comes across as sexual or 'available'.


Facial expressions of females in advertisement:

1. Soft/introverted
2. Cool/level
3. Seductive
4. Narcissistic
5. Carefree
6. Kitten like
7. Maternal
8. Practical
9. Comic
10. Catalogue

Facial expressions of males in women's advertisements, theses are similar to the woman's facial expressions:

• carefree
• practical
• seductive
• comic
• catalogue

A female model typically averts her eyes, expressing modesty, patience and a lack of interest in anything else but a male model looks up. His look suggests an interest in something else that the viewer cannot see; it doesn’t suggest any interest in the viewer like they are barely acknowledging the viewer. In the cases where the model is looking up, this always suggests spirituality, he might be there for his face and body to be gazed at, but his mind is on higher things.  Male pin-ups more often than not do not look at the viewer. When they do, what is crucial is the kind of look that it is, something very often determined by the set of the mouth that accompanies it. When the female pin-up returns the viewer’s gaze, it is usually some kind of smile, inviting. The male pin-up simply still stares at the viewer.