Taking the photos

With our first draft done of the magazine cover we planned a day where we could all get together and when our model was free to take photographs.

   

   

Here you can see we each took turns in taking the photographs and used a light reflector to highlight areas of our model. It also shows the different make up and outfit we had for the different look, one in character and one as the actress. When creating the look of the actress we wanted her to look very pristine and elegant in comparison to the character look which is very messy as she has smudged make up from crying. We also used a black background for the majority of the photos but we did take some outside in the street too as it was the evening and we felt that it was worth trying out different settings to see how they turned out. 

Magazine Draft

This is our magazine draft as we felt we needed to start experimenting with fonts and colours. We have used an image from the internet that is similar to how we want our model to pose like. We came up with the name 'CINEmag' as a group and found out that the 'cine' means film in Spanish. We deiced to put the 'mag' along the side so the title isn't too long across the top of the page. We wanted the next biggest writing to be the title of our film as that is the next important message after the title of the magazine. We also deiced to include our actresses name on the cover as we still aren't sure whether our actress is going to be photographed in character or as herself, this depends on the outcome of the photographs. We have decided to keep to three colours, red, white and grey. This is because we liked how the colours look together and also the red is a good colour to use to make the title of the film stand out. The red also fits well with our film genre as it is associated with danger. We are going to have the title over the top of the image as we didn't want it to have reference to fashion magazines like 'Vogue'. The layout of the magazine was a main focus of ours as it is a main reason for how professional it can look. This is why we have chose to graduate the lengths of the words. As this is our first draft we feel that we will add more writing to the cover and have now decided to not add any other photos on the front as we want the main focus to be on the cover photo. The barcode is a necessity for a cover of a magazine and we still need to add other conventions of a magazine cover such as date and issue number. This is something we have all made note of to improve our cover in our development. 

Film Magazine Research

This is an example of a cover from the well known film magazine 'Film'. The title is in very big, wide, white font which contrasts with the dark grey background. This makes it stand out and this is what the company would want as there main objective is to sell to customers and inform them of what the magazine is about. This is why there is is similar font on the whole cover, some in yellow which again is a very bright colour which stands out to the audience. There are varied sized fonts which is commonly seen on magazine covers of all genres as it makes the cover look more interesting and represents the importance of the different stories from the different sizes. There is a strap line across the top of the cover which gives the readers information quickly which is used to engage them. The text is down each side of the cover which leaves the centre of the page free for the characters in the film that the magazine is featuring. This again is quite commonly seen on all magazines as it helps draw the audiences attention to the actors/actresses. The title of the film that it is featuring is the biggest font after the title which shows its importance. The actor and actress on the cover are still in character from the film and it suggests to us that they both play quite a big part in the film as they decided to use them to represent the film. The two are very close together and looks as if the man is trying protect the woman from something or someone. This makes both if the characters look vulnerable but the woman more so from the mans curled position around her. They both seem to be looking in the same direction, not straight at the camera which gives the sense of the photograph being a snap from the film. The woman is dressed in white which suggests her innocence in the film. The characters are placed over the top of the title which emphasise's that they are the main focus of the page and also tells us that the magazine has become very familiar within the public so they still know what the magazine is.

This is another very popular film magazine called 'Empire'. Similarly the title is in big, bold font to stand out to the audience. Usually the title of the magazine is in red as this is their colour scheme however in this case they have changed it to white because of the overpowering background. There is again the use of yellow to catch the readers eye as it is a bright primary colour. There isn't as much text on this cover as the one i previously discussed as i think the photograph is the main focus of the page and it may have look too crowded as there is quite a lot on the cover from just the background. In comparison to the 'Film' magazine cover the title of the film is in the centre of the page and over the top of the character. This could be because the title is the name if the character. The character is in the centre of the page too and is again over the top of the title of the magazine. The characters position implies that he is a strong character and this is also shown form the characters costume and props. He is looking straight into the camera to the audience which helps engage the viewers and also gives the impression of the character being powerful from the very serious facial  expression. They have taken the title of the film as their influence as the whole page has the theme of America. There is the constant use of the colours red, blue and white which are also seen in the film as these are the colours of the characters costume.The date and price of the magazine is in the middle of the 'M' which means the audience can see it easily but it isn't on the side with the rest of the text. The barcode is on the bottom of the page which is where it is commonly placed. They have also included a small image on the bottom of the cover which is about another feature of the magazine, this tells the audience about what else the magazine includes. The yellow circle on the left hand side is the only part that is slightly tilted on an angle, the rest has a very balanced structure.

Target Audience Results

We collected the data from our questionnaire and produced bar charts on PowerPoint to see our results clearly. We decided to use a bar chart because we felt that this type of graph would be best to show the difference between the male and female view.
Here is the result for the first question:

This result tells us that we are targeting the right audience because there is a large amount of students that we questioned that enjoy watching thrillers. This has helped us feel more confident in our chosen genre.  The graph does tell us that girls seem to want to watch thrillers more than boys who had a more mixed response. 

Question two had a unexpected result as both genders voted for the hero of the film to be male. The results were equal for the amount of votes against a female hero too and I thought this was quite interesting that both genders had the same opinion on the matter. This means that our target audience would like to see a male hero in our film however our main character is a female but she isn't the hero, she seems more of a victim. After thinking about our characters we have noticed that we don't really have a hero which contradicts Propp's theory of the having certain characters within a film.

These results tell us that the girls who answered the questionnaire much prefer the characters to be around their age and when we asked why the feedback was that they felt they could relate to the characters situations more. The boys result was more varied however most still preferred to have the characters their age. This has definitely helped us with our thoughts about the type of characters in our film.

The feedback from this question was that most of the people we asked liked the ending of the film to be unpredictable. This could be because they feel that it makes it more intense when watching the film and surprises them. This result from our target audience supports our idea of our film having an unexpected ending as this will appeal to them.

Target Audience Research

As a group we had an idea of what our storyline of our thriller was going to be and we understood the type of representation we needed to give from looking at different examples. We also knew that we would use people of our age to act in the film as we will ask our friends to help us, with this in mind we decided on our target audience being around our age, 16-19. We all thought this was best as being in this age gap ourselves we knew the kind of the films people enjoy watching and how they feel abou them. To help us completely develop our plot and know that we would apeal to our target audience we produced a questionnaire.

                                     

We gave out twenty questionnaires to people in our year which is 17-18 year olds. This helped us come to a conclusion of our target audience and our represenatations through characters and our advertisement in the poster.

Plan of Our Poster

With the title of our film decided we felt that we could do a first draft of our poster. We each had done research on thriller posters so we knew what type of style is needed to represent our genre so we tried to use these conventions as well as new ideas of our own to make it different. We created the plan using Powerpoint and used images from the internet to help us visulise what the poster will look like, obviously we will take our own photographs for our final poster. This is what we created as a group and howour plan looks at the moment:

                                       

As you can see we have use the common colour balck and white and have carried through this idea of chess fro the title by including the chess piece. Our idea is to cast a shadow on one side of the actresses face which gives a sense of danger and the chaacter being scared and alomst as if she is hiding. When we take our photogrpahs we are planning on have our actress looking upset but smudging make up to look as if she has been crying to show her distress. We think it will also make the audience sympathise with her and maybe shock them to see the character looking so upset. We are going to include a billing block at the bottom of the poster as we noticed this a typical convention of film posters. We also are going to add the name of our actress maybe along the top of he poster but we didnt add this yet as we still havent chosen from our friends who we think will fit best into our genre.

We also tested out different fonts for our title using the website 'Dafont'. We had five different styles and from these we decided on the one we have out in our plan.

We felt that some of the others were slightly to complex with too much deatil to them as we fond from our research that they are usually kept quite simple. However even though we have decided that we would like to use a font like this it might change slightly as this is from the website and for our plan we did a print screen and its very good quality. This is change that we might have to do to our poster.

Choosing a title

As a group we began thinking of the title of our film by doing a brainstorm of ideas. We wanted it to be quite short so it grabbed peoples attention quickly and was easy to remember. Some of the ideas we came up with were to obvious or some we felt didn't quite fit with our genre so we came to a decision of the title CheckMate. From this title we had some ideas of how we can incorporate chess in the film trailer so there was some connection between them. We also thought it could be a play on words as the film is about two friends and there relationship. CheckMate is what is said at the end of the game which suggests that something is going to happen in the end and probably a bad ending from our chosen genre. Another point that we thought could link to chess with our film poster and magazine cover is the use of the colours black and white as from previous research this is a common colour seen in thriller film posters and it will fit the conventions.

Thriller Poster Analysis

After discussions during class, as a group we came to the decision of our genre being thriller. This took us quite a long time to come to this decision because we each had different ideas about plots and the type of representations we wanted to give. When we had finally made our decision we all felt that we needed to do some extra research on this type of this genre, this is why I have explored different conventions of thriller film posters. Here are some examples:

This poster has a very dark background which is a contrast to the earlier film poster I analysed which was a Rom com, this is because thrillers are seen as dark and dangerous and black is the most popular colour to show this style and representation. In contrast to the black there is white text and the characters face is in high contrast to make him stand out and helps the audience understand that he is the main character of the film. The houses that are lined along the bottom part are almost like shadows as they are again black and white to fit in with colour scheme. The only text that isn't in white is the release date of the film as this is what the producers want the audience to notice to try and gain as many viewers as possible. The lens of the binoculars is a bright orange and by having the repeated photo in each lens emphasises the fear on the girls face. The boys face is the main focus of the poster and the title of the poster is quite small so it doesn't overpower the poster. The tagline along the top gives the audience an idea of what the film is going to be about but doesn't give too much away which is what engages the audience.

In comparison to the 'Disturbia' poster there isn't much use of the colour black, i think this could be because the character is young girl which is usually labelled as innocent but in this case we know that she isn't going to a 'normal' little girl and this shows how they are using the character to confuse the audience. This is like the Strauss theory of that opposites work to create this mystery and suspense. Like 'Disturbia' the character is in the centre of the poster and there is the use of white font. There is also a tagline along the top again to make the audience want to know what's going to happen. There is a use of vignetting on the poster which helps draw the audience's attention to the focus of the poster which is the girls face.

This poster again has the main use of black and like 'Disturbia' there is the use of the colour orange. The orange illuminates the characters face and also creates a shadow in the background. The light is in the shape of a six which links to the name of the film. Again like the other two posters the font is in white, i think this is because they seem to use dark colours for the background and this is how they will get the biggest contrast. The name of the well known actor is along the top of the poster, this is to show that the Hollywood star is involved in the film and the audience may want to see it more knowing that it has awardwinning stars in it. The poster seem s to be split in half with Bruce Willis' face in the left hand side and the mysterious shadow on the right. Maybe this is to show how the two are connected in some way, with this suggestion it makes the audience want to watch the film.

From looking at all three posters I have learnt that the most common conventions of thriller film posters is the colours used, black and white, and the positioning of the characters on the poster. There is also the common use of a tagline to engage the audience and I feel that we should use some of these in our work to make our representation of thriller genre as clear as possible.

V for Vendetta Presentation

In class we watched the film 'V for Vendetta' then in a group of three we had to discuss media language through a presentation.

Poster Analysis

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is romantic comedy and this is suggested from the colour scheme in the poster. There is a great deal of the colour white in the poster which is associated with Rom-Com’s as from previous research I have noticed that this is a prominent colour when advertising this genre as some connotations of the colour are happiness, purity, marriage and innocence. The colour blue is also a big part of this poster which is maybe linked to the Greek flag as the colours are white and blue.

The sky behind the characters is very typically suggested when representing a film that has a happy ending as the sky seems perfect. The skyline shows that there is a comparison in the two characters as they are from different backgrounds and also tells the audience where the film is set. By the characters being high up and looking across the skyline could also represent that the couple feel that ‘the world is their oyster’ because they are starting this new life together. In connection with the comparison of the two different characters and their cultural backgrounds the title has incorporated Greek style writing as well as basic font which suggests that the two different characters have become one with their marriage. It also is another way of representing to the audience the difference between them and maybe implies that the cultural differences are sometimes going to be a problem but they overcome them. The words gradually get longer and slightly bigger as they go on which gives the image of a wedding cake with different tiers to it. This links in with the theme of the film and tiers could be a reference to the different layers of their relationship which has come together at the marriage.

The white strip on the left hand side of the poster is filled with members of the woman’s family. We know that it is her side of the family as she is the one that seems to be pushing them out of the poster from her positioning. She is closest to the family members whereas the man is closest to the skyline in the poster which again shows the different culture between them both. All the family members look very happy and enthusiastic which suggests that the family are quite over the top and loud which is a stereotypical view of Greek families. They are all leaning in with no order of how they are placed which implies this idea of the family trying to be involved in their relationship and that they are all very close. The family are from the top to the bottom of the strip which tells the audience that they are a big family and that there is no way of getting away from them for privacy. There is confetti at the top of the strip which is typically suggested with weddings and ties in with the dress of all the characters as well as the title of the film.

All of the characters are presented in dresses and suits which is what is expected from the title of the film. We can see that one of her members of family is wearing blue which links back to the colour scheme I mentioned before. The elderly character is wearing head piece which shows the religious side to the family and that it is important to them. With the clue in the title ‘Big Fat Greek wedding’ we see the woman dressed in a big white dress that is to the floor. It is very fairytale like which implies that there is going to be a happy ending. The man is dressed in a suit like the family members but he’s bow tie is undone which gives a sense of him being very relaxed and calm compared to her hectic family. It also helps with branding him as the good looking gentlemen who saved her from her family.

The family members are all looking at the couple which shows they are happy for them whereas the woman is looking towards us with a smile on her face. The man is gazing as the woman which tells us that he is totally in love with her and gives this idea of him not being able to take his eyes off of her. The woman’s smile tells us that she is happy but maybe suggests that she is overwhelmed to find her true love and from the man’s quite seductive positioning that she finds him incredibly attractive. The positioning of the couple tells us that they are comfortable with each other however from her trying to push her family out shows she is embarrassed by them. From the woman looking directly at us and none of the other characters also suggests that we are going to hear the story form her perspective as she appears to be the main character as all the attention is drawn to her.

The text on the poster ‘Love is here to stay…so is her family’ supports this idea of however hard the woman tries to block out her family they will always be there. At the top of the poster there are the names of the actors and actresses who have a main part in the film. The font is very basic and it is all capitalised to make it very clear. There is again the use of the colour blue but darker so it stands out against the background. It is evenly placed above the title which is in the centre of the image of the skyline. I think it is interesting that they decided to place the title in the middle of the skyline image instead of the poster as a whole. I think this could be to show that it is the story between the couple and the couple are the ones in front of the skyline.

From analysing this poster I believe that the target audience for this poster is women aged from around 20-35 years old as this is where the majority of people in their lives get married and would be able to relate to the film in their own way. However I think most women would enjoy the film as it has humour as well as romance and probably at some point in their lives they will be able to relate to some of the characters situations and emotions.

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick is known for his outrageous style for his time. In 1962 he directed the well known film ‘Clockwork Orange’ which was taken off of screens in Great Britain because of the obscene amount of sex and violence that people of that time didn’t think was acceptable. The public was so shocked with what they were seeing as Kubrick didn’t hold back at all with the amount of sexual acts he involved in the film and how the camera could see all. Kubrick is seen as being quite vulgar as there are many nudity scenes which sometimes involve rape and made the audience feel uncomfortable when they are watching. I think this is what he intended to do as he directed films of a horror/thriller genre and he wanted to surprise people. The film also involves a huge amount of violence and crime which is another aspect of Kubrick’s style as we see this in many of his films. An example of this is in ‘The Shining’ which consists of the use of violence as a way to protect yourself but also as a way to intimidate someone. ‘The Shining’ is a horror so it has a very dark setting and style but I think this also is because it has Kubrick’s approach to horror. In his films we also see an unusual twist on characters and circumstances which makes the plot interesting for the audience to watch. An example of this is when the character Jack in ‘The Shining’ is a good family man and by the end of the film he is mentally ill and threatens his family. In this film there is also a use of spiritual presence which adds to the surrealism of Kubrick’s films.

Similarities

Both ‘Kidulthood’ and ‘Clockwork Orange’ are films that represent youths in a bad way. ‘Kidulthood’ is a much more recent film than ‘Clockwork Orange’ and we see a slight difference in the way the characters dress and the representation of society is slightly different but the films have many similarities.

The youths are seen using violence in both films as a way of getting their opinions across and getting their own way. In ‘Kidulthood’ the gang bully other people by using mental and physical violence. They also influence other people to use physical violence as they see it as a way of keeping their high place in the school ground hierarchy. This is similar to ‘Clockwork Orange’ as they too use violence but they don’t do it for the social hierarchy, they do it to be rebellious and break the rules that adults set.

In ‘Kidulthood’ we see disrespect for adults when a teacher approaches one of the gang and he takes no notice of what the teacher tells him to do. This shows us how the younger people of this area have control over the adults because they are seen as this frightening gang from the violence they use. This is also not what the audience expect to see as naturally you are meant to respect your elders. We definitely see this in ‘Clockwork Orange’ too as the boys are tricking their parents into thinking that they are going to school and working when actually they are getting up to no good. When the boys burgle the couple’s house we see this as another sign of disrespect as they are ruining what the couple have worked for and are extremely vulgar and disrespectful when they rape the woman.

This is another aspect that both directors decided to focus on, how the youths talk continuously about sex. In ‘Clockwork Orange’ there is a lot of desperation seen in having a romance and they seem to rape women at every opportunity they get. However in ‘Kidulthood’ it is all about who has slept with who and it is seen as a huge embarrassment if you don’t know the latest. In both films they make sure that sex is seen as one of the main priorities of the gangs.

Even though there is a big gap between when the two films were released they still both give this bad image of youths by using shocking and inappropriate actions.

Theories

Marcel Danesi believes that youth is seen as very precious and important and from this some mature adults act immature to try and hold on to that youth. People can get this idea of that you should hold onto your youth as long as possible from the media that surrounds us. An example of this is one of the mum characters in the teenage girl film 'Mean Girls'. The way the character dresses and her style is very influenced by the way her daughter dresses. This gives the impression of the character trying to be a 'cool' mum and wants to not act her age. The character even says in the film "I'm not like other mums, I'm a cool mum", this adds pressure onto mature women to try and keep up a youthful appearance. We also learn that the mum has had plastic surgery to enlarge her breasts which shows again how important to the mum character her appearance is and she doesn't want to be seen as a regular mum and she has even gone to the extremes of having surgery. For mum's that have seen this film they must feel that they have to try and look young to not embarass their children and to give their children a 'cool' mum they need to act in this way. The mum character also talks to her daughter and daughters friends as if she is their friend and not a responsible adult. She uses abbreviations such as '411' when she wants to hear the latest gossip from the girls. This shows her dialogue includes shortened words that youngsters use and by using them herself she feels that she is keeping up with the trends, this shows that she is acting immature to appear as a 'cool' mum. She also says "You girls keep me young, ahh i love ya so much" when her daughter tells her to go and fix her hair. This dialogue definitely proves that this character wants to keep young and act like the teenage girls. I think that in this film the character has been exagerrated but mum's watching may feel that they need to keep their youth too to be able to have a closer relationship to their children.