1st Draft Movie Magazine

Self, Peer and Teacher Feedback of My First Poster Draft:

• Make the masthead stand out more
• Reposition barcode
• Add more cover lines
• Manipulate the image
• Add a tag line underneath the 'Scarlett'

1st Draft Poster

After looking into existing movie posters of the horror genre, I gained a thorough understanding of the codes and conventions which I needed to follow in order for my poster to look realistic. I found that many had heavily edited images which had been cropped, placed on a dull background and been darkened to adhere with the mystery and isolation which entices the audience. I chose three colours (red, black and white) to use for my poster as I thought they represented the horror genre best. My initial manipulation of the image has allowed it to become darker and appear fitting with the colour scheme. Furthermore, I decided to include a prop in the poster as this is also something many posters do. Whilst a 'ring' isn't a typical paradigm for a horror movie, its significance in the trailer is immense and may lead the audience to question it's subliminal significance. 

Self, Peer and Teacher Feedback of My First Poster Draft:

• Re-position image of Scarlett (Helen) - see how it looks central and enlarged slightly
• Change font size on ring - the credit writing is too big , the two top lines are too small
• Re-position the font on the ring - the two top lines need to be more central and aligned
• Add more text on ring - the credit writing looks unfinished
• Change positioning of 'Scarlett' - move it down
• Add contrast to Scarlett's (Helen's) face - to make it stand out more as it looks too dark in comparison to the colout of her hands
• Edit the image - crop hair on right hand side to make it look slicker and more professional
• Add social media images - twitter, facebook, instagram - things that attract different audeince demographics

Taking Pictures for Magazine Cover

1st Possible Image

Blurred Image

Image that I used

For my magazine cover, I decided to use a medium closeup of the girl who portrays Scarlett in our horror trailer. In order to do this, I researched appropriate locations to do the photoshoot as I wanted a dark location in which I could manipulate the lighting to make Scarlett's face the focus of the shot. As the Art department in my school have a dark room which is used for photography, we asked to use this location after school to shoot the photos for our magazine cover. Once we obtained the room, we had to find a time which myself, Christal and Helen would all be available to take pictures. We also obtained flash lights which we thought would work to create the light on Helen's face, however, when I went to take these pictures I found they had a yellow glow. I then had to improvise and use my phones flashlight to create the white light I was looking for. I took a large amount of pictures which I have filtered through to find the one I wanted to use. Some of the shots were out of focus, others I didn't want to use for the front cover of a magazine as I believe they don't fit the conventions of Empire magazine which I am attempting to mimic. Overaall, I think the shoot was successful as both me and Christal took our magazine images on this day.

Shooting Problems

The production of our trailer came to a halt again for a number of weeks due to a number of issues.

As one of the actors in our trailer is a teacher at our school, we had to get permission for her to be allowed to film outside of the school premises. In order to do so, we had to draft a letter to a senior member of staff stating why we require Libby to be in certain locations (such as Christal's house), what the intention of our film was (for our A2 Media coursework), when this would be taking place and if there would be other adults present during the time of filming. This was a lengthy process as drafting the letter took a large amount of time, and also receiving permission was something we had to wait to be confirmed as it had to be approved by a number of other channels. However, we managed to receive formal permission for us to be able to film outside of school based on us conforming to the guidelines that we ensured would be met. During this time, we also looked into finding an understudy if we were unsuccessful in obtaining permission to film elsewhere with Libby. Christal spoke to her neighbour about the possibility of being a part of the trailer and she agreed. Now that we have resolved this issue, we will continue to finish filming our trailer in the coming weeks.

Case 39 Poster Analysis