Film Poster & Magazine Cover

Above is my first draft for our film. I was happy with how this came out but felt it needed more details to make it feel more like a typical horror film poster.



This is my finished poster for our film, Find Me. When designing this poster I used many conventional techniques which are associated with horror movie posters. I used a landscape poster as I felt that I could portray the mystery of our film better, the blank space makes the reader think more about what they actually can see. In some posters for recent films that have been released I didn't like how the credits and company logo's sometimes dominated the whole poster so I decided to make a strip down to bottom to distance all this infomation away from the main image and text on the poster. I think this works well as it shows more of the picture which itself doesn't give too much away so it keeps the viewer thinking about what the film is about.



This is the first draft of my magazine cover for our film. Instead of creating my own magazine I decided to build my cover around the well known film magazine TOTAL FILM.



This is my final edit for my magazine cover. After researching more thoroughly into film magazines that are already on the market I decided to make some changes to my first draft. First of all I didn't think the pink logo stood out enough, this is the main image on the cover and so I added an outer glow and black stroke to make it really leap out the page. I also decided to give some minor details of what the picture at the bottom of the cover represent. To do this I added some small bits of writing simply giving the name of the films that the screenshots are from. Finally I noticed that many magazines have included an extra circle or shape to give extra details of the issue and what is inside. Seeing these made me think that I should create my own 'bubble' so I used a tv test board as the background and some simple black font so te writing stood out. I am pleased with how m magazine cover has come out and I think it links in with our film well.

First Draft Screen and Audience Feedback

Slasher Films

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Cloverfield Teaser Trailer

This test card adds to the 'amateur' feel of the whole trailer. It makes you feel that you're not actually watching a film but more like video from government records, especially as part of the test card says 'U.S DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE' which adds to the realism and secrecy. This would be a good technique in our trailer as we want our audience to believe they are watching real footage so we had the idea of adding text like this before the footage begins. This is always a simple yet clever way of showing where the film is set (U.S)



The interference and breaking up of the picture gives the impression once again that this is real footage which makes the audience believe this all really happened. The cracking sound also adds to the realism as it shows the film isn't perfect and was filmed exactly as the horror was unfolding. We will use techniques like this to convince the viewer all this is real, this adds to the tense atmosphere and to convince them even more the horror is real.

No sound is played throughout the trailer except from the cracking and brief muffled voices you can hear but you can barely make these out. The only main 'loud' bit of sound is a loud scream-like noise when the figure suddenly appears, this teases the audience with what ths figure might be and that it will be a jumpy film! Using sound to make the audience jump is clever and is something our group will consider using, we think less is more and so small sudden bits of jumpy sound will add to the horror and realism of our trailer.

Film Poster Montage

Lighting
All of the posters are dark with the majority using low key lighting and then a brightened spotlight used to highlight important characters/props on the poster. This creates mystery and gives off a sinister effect making the viewer almost feel uncomfortable not knowing what is 'hiding' in the distance. Not showing too much makes the audience want too see more and know what exactly the film is about because a trailer doesn't say anything about the storyline at all!

Image
Images on horror posters are normally closeups so the audience can relate and connect to the character and instantly feel their fear. Sometimes when taking a second look at the poster more images can be found in the background or sometimes in the main image itself, this teases even more of the story and viewers can discuss what they have seen with others with then spreads the word of the film.

Composition
The main image is usually always in the centre of the poster making it the first thing the viewer see's. The text showing the name of the film is normally above or underneath this image but sometimes it may be found intertwined within the image itself. The billing block is normally found at the bottom of the poster in a small font to not take the attention away from the image and title, this lists the release date, actors, directors etc.

Colour Scheme
Most posters are dark, with blacks, reds, browns and greens being common colours that are used used. Contrasting colour are sometimes used to make both the image and text stand out which attracts you to look at the poster. Red is usually included because it is the iconic colour connected to horror genre and it implies blood and danger.

Quarantine Teaser Trailer

The night vision in this shot is effective as it helps create suspense and anticipation as the characters are seeing barely anything at all so the audience is really connected to them as the audience also aren't seeing much so they feel more part of the action.

This shot shows a live reporter deep in the heart of the action, almost keeping a video diary of events. I think this would be a successful technique to use as it makes the action feel more true.
The TV interference also makes the video seem more like real footage and I think this is important in helping the viewer really connect to the story and characters.

The night vision on this shot works very effectively as all you can see is the main character. You can't see her surroundings and neither can she so you really feel her pain and suffering as the action unfolds for both her and the viewer. This is something our group will consider doing to add supsense and horror to our trailer. The low angle shot is effective as it puts you right in the action with the character, the camera is level with her eyes so you can really connect and feel for her. These types of shots would be effective in our trailer as we don't have many horror props or blood and gore so we need clever techniques to help the audience feel fear. The silence in this part of the clip helps in creating fear, the sudden scream as she is dragged away is jumpy which would make the audience scared. This is another technique we could use in our trailer to add to the fear we want to create.

Questionnaire Results

After completing this audience research our group has discovered that:

- Trailers influence the audience more

- Gore is the most preferred type of horror

- The storyline would encourage the audience to see a horror film the most

- A horror film is usually only watched yearly at the cinema

- Jumpy scenes scare the audience the most

- Saw and Paranormal Activity are the most favoured horror films

Shot Ideas

Dog in woods - just before nightfall



Design idea for title shot

Mood Board

Plot Summary

A group of three friends (two girls & one boy) go walking with a dog in the woods.

One girl keeps a video diary.

They throw a stick for the dog, the dog goes to collect this, but doesn't return, yet the stick mysteriously does.

The boy takes the camera and goes of alone in search of the lost dog.

The camera is suddenly dropped to the floor, yet the recording carries on showing just the forest but you can hear what appears to be the boy being viciously attacked.

Meanwhile the girls are alone in the forest, they then come across the camera that was once taken by their friend, they rewind it to see footage filmed by their friend nd are horried at what they hear. They then take the camera and continue filming as they try to find their way out of the forest, one of the girls is caught and tortured.

The final girl is left alone with the camera in the forest tying to escape the killer.

The Final Summary

The Final
USA 2010
Director: Joey Stewart
Certificate: 18
92mins 36secs

Summary
Set in an American high school, the film follows the story of a bullied group of individuals: Dane, Ravi, Emily, Andy and Jack. They decide to take revenge and so secretly invite their tormentors to a fancy dress party at a farmhouse. At the party they then spike the punch which will knock out the guests. When the guests awaken they are chained up and staring in the face of the group they once bullied, these are wearing sinister costume complete with creepy masks. This group then announce everyone will be tortured and traumatised. One boy is shot with a cattle gun, another set loose only to be fatally hunted down. Dane fatally stabs Ravi after he helps someone called Kurtis escape. Kurtis finds a cop whom the conspirators kill along with a neighbour. The ending is an unexpected one, with Kurtis finally calling the police and then confronts the torturers himself. In the final stand off Dane is killed by Emily and Kurtis is injured. As the police arrive Jack kills Emily and then himself.

This film, although fiction, picks up on the viewers fears about modern day society particularly in America. Things can sometimes be taken this far such as the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

Film Distribution

Film Distributers brings film into the movie market place. It's market is a fast moving and highly competitive one.

Smaller in dependant distribution companies such as Lionsgate, Metrodome, Momentum struggle to gain control of films, they attend film festivals and bid to buy films there. Whereas the large companies such as Warner, Sony, 21st Century Fox receive the film straight from the production company.

Once the distributor has control of the film they have to decide its USP.

They have to be VERY clear about their target audience, the 15-24 age group is the largest audience for films. After all the larger the audience, the larger profit they stand of making.

They then have to decide when to release the film, the date is crucial whether it be the school holidays, Christmas, Halloween.

A budget is very important, companies have to stretch their marketing budget as far as it will go.

ADVERTISING

What are the best media formats to use?

- Newspaper (what one? page number?)

- TV Slots (what time? in between what program? what channel?)

A films marketing campaign must be completely unique from any others.

This will consist of:

- Trailers

- Posters

- Internet virals

- Mobile applications

- Radio adverts

- TV adverts

Some companies may also decide to pay a TV or radio channel to dedicate a day or even week to their film, with actor interviews and special competitions.

The first element of a marketing campaign is usually the poster, this is followed by a teaser trailer and then the full trailer which is vital to selling the film.

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

Below are a list of the new technologies that I used to help create this whole media project, some of them I have used before but this project has really helped me widen my knowledge of the tools that can be used.

Photoshop was used a lot by me in this project. I firstly used it to create mood boards and shot ideas whilst we were still in the development stage but further down the line it helped us to create title shots for the trailer itself and then my final magazine cover and film poster, I would import a real poster or magazine onto Photoshop, one that I knew had worked well for the big films releases and then this would allow me to use a similar layout and compare mine to the official ones to make it look as professional as possible.

Blogger and YouTube were used to a large extent throughout this project. Whilst still in the research stage I could import trailers from YouTube that I wanted ours to be similar to and analyse these for ideas. Once our trailer was in production we were able to hold a preview screening by uploading our trailer to YouTube and then showing our class to get there feedback on the good and bad points. Once these changes were made and we were happy with our final trailer we uploaded the finished version on once again were it can be viewed by everyone all over the world, people are able to comment and rate. Blogger has been the foundation of this project! it has been very useful in helping us all organise our coursework and present it in the best possible way. All the work me and my group have created is on our blogs for everyone to see. At first I struggled to get motivated but as I gradually learnt all the tools and tricks on Blogger I was soon inspired to create a well presented blog.

for the actual filming process of this project our group used a simple hand held cam corder, we had to make sure this had a night vision function though. When all of our footage was captured we uploaded it all to the Apple Mac and it was then ready to edit.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is extremely important when producing an ad campaign for any type of film as it allows the makers of the film to know just how well their film could potentially go down with their target audience. They want to make sure they get everything exactly right and create something that will appeal to the audience there-fore making loads of money! Often preview screenings of films are shown to a small number of people made up of the target audience and this allows the film makers to then see how well the film would be greeted and if any changes need to be made. Film makers take the views of their audiences very seriously as in the end it is thus audience that will be making the money and the whole film franchise successful.

In order to collect as much feedback from our audience as possible our group held a screening of the first draft of our trailer. Each member of the audience was asked to fill in a hand out, answering questions such as 'what could be improved in the trailer?' and 'what is most effective?' Once the viewing was over we gathered the sheets together and summarised the feedback to which me and Louis recorded reading out on a video shown below.



The above video outlines the negative feedback we received and how we could make our trailer better and more effective. More positive feedback we received included the fact we had a good range of shots from close ups to establishing shots and the clever hand held camera work was also applauded. The audience also said the final shot of the girl being dragged along the floor was effective and looked very professional so this was something we were proud of. Overall we were told our trailer was very professional in some parts but of course some other things did need changing too which we expected hence why we previewed the trailer!

Through the designing and creating process of making both my film poster and magazine cover I was constantly asking people around me and my tutor for their opinions and what they thought I could add and what they thought maybe wasn't so effective. The pictures below show my poster and magazine covers before and after I had taken the feedback I received on board.



Above is my poster before I received audience feedback.

Above is my poster after I took the feedback I received on board. It was suggested to me that I made the poster look more professional and so I added some company logo's and changed a few of the colours around to make the whole feel of the poster more typical of what you would really find on a billboard.

The image above shows my magazine cover before I made some changes after receiving audience feedback.

This is my finished magazine cover for our film. You can see I have made some changes and added some details such as text over the photographs and the graphic which highlights the special horror edition.

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

The film distributor is important when promoting the release of a new film. It is the role of the distributor to determine the potential box office success of a film and then devise an appropriate promotional campaign based on a realistic budget which is about 40% of the predicted income. Campaigns vary depending on the film genre, budget and target audience however, generally they include the following: TV, cinema, radio, billboard, web, magazine and newspaper adverts. All of these must be paid for but the distributor will also seek free publicity such as TV and radio appearances, depending on the film. The timing and media mix of the campaign is carefully planned in order to reach the target audience and avoid colliding with similar films.

The marketing may be altered once thorough research has been completed. Audiences may respond to one idea rather than another and this will help the distributor adjust their plans to best target their audience. For example, they could discover that their target audience don't like to find out too much about the film in question and so this would tell the company that a smaller teaser trailer would be more effective then pretty much telling everyone all about the film.




The three posters above show clearly how different film genres are communicated to reach out to their target audiences. The poster for Shrek is bright, colourful and simple, something which children will enjoy looking at. The poster for Superbad is also simple with just the three main characters showed, their facial expressions are comical and so instantly the viewer clicks that this is advertising a comedy. The last poster is for Saw, the colour scheme is dark and the character is facing away from the viewer, teasing them into wanting to find out more. The colour scheme is very dark with typical 'horror colours' used such as the black and reds. Even the small font which says 'it's a trap' is small and hidden making the reader think more about what the film
could involve.

I think a recent viral advertising campaign which worked very well as shown by its box office success was for the film Paranormal Activity. The film gradually became more apparent through the use of social networking sights such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Information was released gradually making people more and more interested. People tend to respond well to something which they discover and which isn't seen to be a part of the mainstream film industry (even though it may be.)

THE PARANORMAL ACTIVITY VIRAL CAMPAIGN STAGES



ONE
(The first image is released with very little information, this teases the viewer making them want to know more.)



TWO
(more images released with information on the film.)



THREE
(All the information is finally released complete with interactive features allowing interesting viewers to really get involved.)

Once the film had been released they still got through to people on the social networking sights, by encouraging people to 'Tweet Their Screams' which is basically writing short reviews on the film, thus making the movie more and more well known until over half of twitter and Facebook had heard about it and has posted something Paranormal Activity related over the Internet. It was the most talked about topic on twitter for weeks before it had even been released!



Above are two horror movie posters posters that inspired my design for my own poster for our film. The are advertising the films 'Paranormal Activity' and 'REC.' Both posters use grainy, amateur images as both films feature homemade 'camcorder' recordings. They are both dark in colour which fits in well with the look of our film. Also the billboard is at the bottom of the poster just like mine. When designing the layout of my poster I took inspiration from the Paranormal Activity poster, like mine, this poster has been split up with a billing board at the bottom with spacing for the name, tagline and credits.



Above are two magazine covers designed for Total Film. It was covers designed for this film magazine that inspired my design for my own cover. On both of the images shown above and many more Total Film design the theme is very minimal with a large image linked to the feature film accompanied by a small amount of coverlines. 


To design my poster I firstly chose a screen grab from our trailer to use as the main image for the cover. This would then outline the colour theme I would also use. I chose a night vision shot accompanied by a bright pink symbol that features in our film. I wanted to use a symbol as a reference for the film because worked very well in the Blair Witch ad campaign. I also wanted the trailer, poster and magazine cover to share the brand identity for the film, hence I restricted the designs to the iconic night-vision, interlaced image. 

FOR MORE DETAILS OF MY FILM POSTER AND MAGAZINE COVER SEE
B. FINAL PRODUCTS: ANCILLARY TEXTS

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our trailer starts with type-written text (and audio) on a black screen which is a similar graphic to that used in the Blair Witch Project trailer. The serif font, plain background and staccato sound  ensure that, hopefully, the audience will understand what is coming up and therefore get their attention. Also, we thought that the intertextual reference to Blair Witch might help to a attract their attention. As well s grabbing their attention, we wanted to create a sense of mystery, to whet their appetite about the mystery to follow. This is the goal of all teaser trailers for horror and thriller films. 

 

For our last shot, we used a similar low angled shot to that used at the end of the trailer for Quarantine. The low angle close up subjective shot allows the viewer to connect with the character and fully see her facial expressions and fear. The night vision works well as it again adds to the real amateur feel to our trailer. These are both conventions that are used in many horror films so the audience will be familiar with the techniques used and this will help them determine whether it is something they would like to see.



We decided to film our trailer in Fritton Woods. This was our plan from the beginning as it is well known for being mysterious and dangerous. In autumn and winter, the colours are rich and looked good in test shots. We have found horror movies such as our favourite, the Blair Witch Project to be successful when they have been set in forests similar to the one in Fritton.

 

We used FCP's bad TV effect to connote amateur footage and suggest problems with filming. This technique is used in amateur style horror films such as Quarantine. We added a white noise sound to this effect and used it as a transitional device throughout the trailer. The more it's used the more the audience fear that something is interfering with the students and their camera. We wanted to heighten their involvement and fear and enhance a sense of realism by using this technique. 



We used a similar low angle close up shot to the one found in The Blair Witch Project. We found the clip in the Blair Witch Project trailer to be really effective and it helped us connect to the character's fear and emotion so much better. Our shot is slightly different in that there is no talking, our character is simply running through the woods but you can sense his fear through the facial expressions and asynchronous ambient sounds.



We showed our characters happy and excited to be in their surroundings, this was to make the audience feel comfortable with the situation but also tense knowing things could turn ugly any minute! This is the same as the Blair Witch trailer as for the first minute or so you see the characters happy and excited about the trip they are about to undertake.



Almost every horror film has a running away scene! We had to include one but we changed ours slightly in the way that our character is still unaware of the events that are about to occur so we have included a convention of horror films but with a twist. I think both of these shots work well. The image from Eden Lake which is set in a forest like our trailer, and looks dark and mysterious. This is the effect we wanted to create for our trailer.