Magazine Cover Progress

I put both magazine covers in a word document to see how they look like together. You can now clearly see how they are suppose to look when put together. They contrast each other but still link together with the heart. The heart symbolizes the love throughout the trailer. When you separate both covers it symbolizes the separation in love between the characters in the trailer. You can also clearly see the distinction between the bright 'happy' colours and the piercing 'bad' side.

FINAL MAGAZINE DESIGNS - 'GOOD' pullout part1

This is the final pullout of our 'good' magazine cover. On this particular cover we wanted to convey a "normal" type feel and used existing magazines such as 'Company', 'Heat', 'Now' and 'Elle' as examples. We wanted to follow the conventions in order to make the cover look as professional as possible. We also wanted it to appeal to our target age range as these are the sorts of magazines they buy. We wanted the 'good' cover to appeal more to females and the 'bad' side to appeal more to males. We wanted to appeal to both genders in order not to single anyone out.

We used bright and vibrant colours to attract the audience as well as emphasize the 'good' aspect. We also stuck to quite a limited range of colours in order for the cover not to look too busy and over crowded. We used a lot of pink to relate to the valentines theme of the cover. We used yellow too because it is bright, bold and stands out.

We put the name of the cover at the top of the cover because this is an obvious convention we picked up on for research. Our magazine is called 'Roxy' because it is simple and is similar to existing magazines such as 'Elle'. We felt it was short and snappy and fitted the genre of the cover. We also searched for current popular girls names and Roxy was one of the most popular.

We added a variety of stories on the page in order to make it look as "real" and professional as possible. We tried to make all the stories relationship/valentines related in order to link to the valentines theme.

We used a "happy" image of the main character Isa in order to convey the good side as well as keep to the conventions of existing magazines. We wanted it to have a real contrast to the 'evil' pullout therefore we emphasized the "happy" facial expressions.

FINAL MAGAZINE DESIGNS - 'EVIL' pullout part2

This is our final design for our magazine cover. We designed a 'good' and 'bad' cover. This cover is the 'bad' cover based on magazine covers such as 'Empire'. We wanted to portray clearly a 'sinister side' to our magazine. We used a colour scheme of red and black which we have used throughout creating all three products. We chose to focus on red and black because they relate to the love and death theme which is key as well as complement eachother well and stand out.

We stuck with conventions of magazines by placing the name of the magazine at the top of the cover. We not only stuck to this convention because existing magazines do but stuck with it because we felt it was the best place to stand out to the audience and to be one of the first things that the audience see which is what we want. We also decided to colour the title in red, not only for the connotation reasons I have previously stated but that it will be instantly eye catching.

On this side of the magazine cover we decided not to use too many stories on the front page opposed to what you would usually see on existing magazine covers. The reason for this is because we made the 'good' side of the magazine cover as similar to existing magazines as possible because it was the one we wanted make it as "normal" as possible. However the 'evil' cover challenged conventions because it was more to relate to the film opposed to the 'good' one. We still added one story in a red bubble in order to stick to conventions but we didn't want it to be too similar to the pull out it will be attached to.

We used an image where the model is giving direct eye contact to the audience. We did this not only to stick to conventions of magazines we have researched but to try and intimidate and scare the audience. Normally in magazine covers eye contact is used to relate and connect to the audience which is what we have done with the 'good' cover however we want to make the audience interested in the film with the second cover.

Overall i'm pleased with the cover because I feel as if it conveys the horror genre well. The limit in colours also help it to not become too "busy" and "confusing".

Viral

As I have previously stated we have created 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' profiles to promote our film and reach our target audience. Here are some screenshots of the sites. We wanted our trailer to be easy to access and easy to share. Social networking is a great way to find out about new things. It is easy to upload or share links on these site too!

Completed Trailer

This our completed film trailer.



Today we added the finishing touches to the trailer. We did not have much left to edit. We just made sure that the trailer followed a chronological order as well as making sure that the plot line was made clear. We also reviewed our sound effects making sure that they fitted in with the plot. We added a growl at the end of trailer in order to shock the audience after they think the trailer has finished. We have always had a clip of Isa's face running up to the camera but today we added a blue effect on the clip to add more mystery and clearly show to the audience that there is something not so right with what happened. We decided to add a growl to this clip in order to make it not so ordinary and normal.

Overall we are pleased with our trailer and how much it has developed from the first couple of trailers we have looked at. We are very pleased with the fast paced editing as well as how the sound fits in with the clips. We are also pleased with the captions that have been used as we think they help to convey the plot.

Evaluation - Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

This clip explains some of our research;



This clip explains some of out planning, construction and evaluation. There are some mistakes I could not edit out because the editing program would not enable me too however there is not many mistakes.



In research for the poster we used film websites such as www.empireonline.com, www.imdb.com and www.lovefilm.com in order to see what films are popular at the moment as well as what drew us to certain aspects. The bright colours and bold text attracted us. This showed us that aspects like this need to be conveyed in our poster in order to entice audiences. The images on the websites also caught are attention. This showed us that the image we use on the front cover of the poster needs to stand out and make the audience interested and eager to find out more. We also typed in "horror film posters" in search engine google in order to see a variety of scary posters we would not necessarily have heard about. This enabled us to see the different style of posters existing and what worked and what didn't. This also helped us to see the basic conventions such as bold and large text, titles positioned at the top or centre and close up images. We also became aware that the images on the poster were often giving us direct eye contact or very mysterious.

Other technologies we used in research for our magazine was magazine websites such as www.company.co.uk and www.elle.com in order to see general conventions of magazines. We wanted our 'good' poster to fit the general conventions of magazines. We also looked at www.empireonline.com for inspiration for our 'evil' cover. We wanted to see how it differed from "girly" magazines such as company.

We also used youtube.com in order to research existing trailers to see what is popular currently and where there is a gap in the market. Also on youtube you are able to "like" and "dislike" films therefore we were easily able to see how popular the film was. Movies such as 'Paranormal Activity' proved popular therefore we tried to take inspiration from the film. We included the mystery and shock aspects. You are also able to comment on trailers on youtube which helped us see feedback on the trailers we watched, what the audience liked and didn't like. We also looked out for trailers on television. TV channels often show film trailers and teaser trailers. By watching these we were able to see what needs to be in a trailer and what needs to be kept from the audience in order to not spoil the plot. We also used social networking sites such as 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' in order to see what is popular. On 'Twitter' there is a function called 'trending topics' which allows you to see the most talked about subjects. Films are often most talked about. This showed us what was popular in the UK as well as other countries. You are also able to type in a search which will display everyone who has talked about a particular search and what they have said. This helped us to see positive and negative feedback on films we researched such as 'Let me in' and 'Hide and Seek'. A lot of comments were negative. Social networking is a great way to see a variety of opinions.

In construction we used programs such as Photoshop and Indesign for the magazine and poster. We used these programs because we felt that they were the best programs to manipulate images as well as layer text. Photoshop also has a filter gallery which we found very helpful. We used a 'diffuse glow effect' which helped us portray a 'spirtual' and 'ery' effect. We also made images look 'scary' by making them dark which is a common convention in horror films. We also decreased the contrast and brightness in order to make the poster look scary. We created layers in Photoshop in order to change and postion aspects so they looked correct. We briefly used illistrator but felt it didn't work as well for our products. We also used dafont.com in order to get fonts for the poster and magazine which fitted our genre and storyline. We used 'Friday13' as it was bold and creepy. We also used 'TX_love' because it had hearts and linked to the love theme.

When constructing our trailer we used Imovie. All group members were not familar with Imovie which proved quite a negative. We were quite unsure how to use it but once using it a few times we became better at it. We struggled with connecting the clips and sound effects together however we got the hang of it. We edited the clips together on Imovie adding in captions and effects. When collecting our footage we used a handheld camera as well as a camera on a tripod. We wanted to use a handheld camera in order to get a "raw" and "natural" variety of clips. We used a camera on a tripod in order to get footage of a near professional standard. We used a mix of the two but audience feedback proved that the handheld camera was a negative on the trailer. We were going to record footage on a blackberry mobile phone but decided the quality would lack.


In planning we used a blog (blogger.com) to note down all our inital ideas. Throughout the planning process our ideas changed rapidly so it was important to log our ideas so we could go back to them if we needed to. We also drew storyboards in order to write down our ideas and plan them how we imagined them to look. We put them onto our blogs using a scanner. This was so they were logged and we could go back to them and develop them at later stages. We also made mind maps on paper and on word in order to remember our ideas. We also used 'Twitter' to search for current and popular ideas. We also used youtube to do this as well as lovefilm.com. We also the internet to search pictures of locations as well as using our mobile phones and handheld cameras to go and take photos in specific locations in order to get a variety of ideas.

In evaluation we used youtube, facebook and twitter in order to get feedback from people we knew as well as people we did not.We thought this was a great way to get a variety of honest feedback. We also showed people our trailer on youtube and asked what they thought. We also used prezi in our evaluation in order to display the comments and feedback in an exciting and interesting fashion. We also sent links out on twitter asking people to watch and comment on the trailer. We also recorded some feedback from other people.

All blog entries are on the group blog which includes every group member talking about all three final designs ; http://a2media10.blogspot.com/

Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from audience feedback?

On this question the text I will be focusing on is the trailer.

Audience feedback is a key part of making sure that we are reaching the target audience and connecting with them. We wanted to make sure the audience clearly understand what was going on in the trailer as well as being scared by it as that is the theme and genre. We asked a variety of different people in different forms to comment on the trailer after watching it stating what they felt was both strong and weak. We wanted both good and bad comments in order to get constructive criticism and so we are able to know what we could change in the future to make our work appeal more to the audience.

Firstly we posted our trailer onto 'Youtube' as well as social networking site 'Facebook'. We chose these two websites to post our trailer onto because these websites are frequently visited by our target age range for the film which is mainly teens. We got a variety of comments which the majority were quite positive. Comments included 'scary' which is great because this is what we aimed for. If we didn't scare the audience then the trailer would not be fulfilling the brief. Comments also included that the music was a positive aspect of the trailer as it helped to build suspense and was of creative use. The audience also stated that the text and subtitles were effective. When they were asked why they felt as if this was an effective aspect as they didn't expand on explanation, they said that it helped to convey what the story was about which was that there was a relationship that got torn apart. However the text and subtitles convey this without it being boring and to formal.

Another piece of effective feedback that we got from 'youtube' was that "it builds tension with the use of music as it fades, then comes back and speeds up, it's quite unpredicatable, and I liked the old-style flickering camera style, it helped to build mystery and suspense". This piece of feedback helped us see that the music has proved to be a positive aspect of our trailer and is definitely one of the aspects that the made the audience scared and conveyed the genre in a clear enough way. We also wanted to portray a sense of mystery and this comment proves that we have succeeded in this. We didn't want to give too much away but wanted to interest the audience enough to want to watch.

The feedback we received also helped us to make final changes. As it became clear that the audience found the sound effects worked well we added a "growl" sound to the last clip of our trailer which is when 'Isa' runs up to the camera. We felt from previous feedback that this sort of features work well and decided to try it. When asking a few audience members whether they thought this worked well they said it did because it made it 'scary' and 'shocked' them as they thought that was the end of the trailer.

Audience Feedback on Prezi

However a negative piece of feedback we received said that "the camera control lacks in stability". When we filmed the pieces of footage for our trailer we wanted to to look authentic, raw and natural so we did use handheld cameras as well as cameras on a tripod. This piece of feedback is probably based on the handheld camera footage. Looking back at the clips I can see why this has been commented on as a couple of clips do look 'wobbly'. In the final trailer we did not use many handheld camera clips for this reason as well as we felt the pieces of footage filmed whilst the camera was on a tripod were more effective and looked more professional.

The feedback we got did change some things but not everything. We kept the sound effects in because the audience seemed to like them and thought they fitted well with the genre. We also felt that this was a positive part of the trailer. However one comment said that the lighting was too dark in some clips. We didn't change this because we wanted a couple of the clips to be dark in order to not give anything away and convey a sense of mystery. However on photoshop we did increase the lighting in order for the audience to be able to see what is happening in the clip.

These are some print screens of some of the feedback we got on 'youtube' and 'Facebook'. The comments were helpful because they helped us realize what worked and what didn't. We got most of the feedback after the trailer was completed so we did not change much however we did add in sounds and fast paced clips in order to cater to what the audience found effective. However we did ask for verbal feedback whilst still in the editing stages of the trailer asking whether what we were doing was making sense and if it was making the plot clear. One comment said that the plot was confusing therefore we improved on structure when editing on Imovie in order for it to make sense.

All blog entries are on the group blog which includes every group member talking about all three final designs ; http://a2media10.blogspot.com/