Film Magazine analysis

The film magazine which i am going to be analysing is an issue of the magazine Empire, which primarly focuses on new films which have just been released or hot new titles which the magazine thinks will get their readers interested. It is a good example as it is one of the only magazines focuses on everything in the cinema from British cinema to Bollywood, there is something for every film lover in that magazine.



The main image is pulled into focus and is considered a higher priority than the title to the reader as the main image of the film sin city serves to block out part of the title for the magazine, it makes good use of the image which it has obtained by blowing it up to make it stand out and not allowing it to be dwarfed even by its own title.

It uses big bold text in order to grab the readers eye and puts it in white to make it stand out fromt he rest of the magazine. The title however is in the signature red of Empire which is an eye grabbing colour on almost any background, this is a good move especially on colours such as dark blue, black or white because the colour really stands out and speaks the the audience about what is being advertised e.g. as shown here it is a dark blue with the red title suggests a film which is quite action packed and possibly thriller in some parts, as does with a white background it would suggest something calming and possibly funny.

Another point i quite like about Empire is that it does not just devote an entire front page just to one fiom, it does split the page, allbeit a little unfairly, but it uses a comical film reel to place images of other films and stories to use later on the magazine, this is a feature which i plan on using on my magazine as it would allow for more films to be advertised on the front page of my magazine cover.

Film Poster Development and Final piece

The product itself was started after filming for the trailer stopped, after achieving some of the pictures that i wanted to get, i set to work editing them.

I was using a program which is very similar to photoshop, but as their was not a version of Adobe photoshop readily avaiable i had to improvise, i was forced to download an image manipulation program called "GNU gimp" this served as an adequeate program to cut, and create the images which i needed and mold them into a new poster for the world to see.

The process was not difficult in creating the film poster. Once i had my conventions and intentions correct i had to set about reshaping the images that were before me. The first two images are of the two main characters (Alex and Nathan) and the third is a small background image which would require more than just cutting around.

In order to create a poster similar to the Aliens vs Predator one i needed to first cut around my two main images and get them onto blank canvas. Using the magic wand tool to highlight huge sections of the image which stood out from each other, the intial process of the cutting only took a few minutes but it was after the wand could not distinguish between the character and the background that the manual cutting needed to be done. Using the loop cut tool, i set to work cutting around the edges of each of my images, this process took alot longer than it would have done if the wand could distinguish between the smallest colour detail on an image. The manual cutting required me to go around the image lines in the smallest of detail to get a precise cut on what i wanted.

Once the images were both cut out with accuracy i had to then copy them onto a blank canvas. Originally i had intended it to be on an A4 piece of canvas, unfortunatly the images would need to be stretched far more than they could have been without making them pixelated and blurry.
Eventually it was decided that i would put it on a 600 x 400 pixel page in order to the best fit to be achieved.

The two images were then positioned at the very top of the page looking directly into each others eyes, much like the Aliens vs Predator poster this creates a feeling of tenseness within the people who read it as they ask themselves "why are they fighting" "who are they" "could this be epic". The image of the luggage which was also cut out has been added to the background in between the two characters eyes which makes it look like the luggage is their focus.

Once the images were all in position it was time for the main text to be put into place. Using a custom font called "agent orange" which gives the poster a more comedic feel the main title was put in bold red letters at the top, this was followed by the tagline "whoever wins....gets the job" this parodies the tagline from Aliens vs Predator which was "whoever wins....we loose". After that I chose to parody Aliens vs Predator even more by using a font which looks remarakably similar to theirs called "AVP2" this was used to write the letters "AVN" (Alex vs Nathan) a parody of "AVP" (Aliens vs Predator).

The final pieces of text to be added in were done the defaul Ariel font to add a sense of seriousness back into the film and to allow it to be readable at a passing glance. Rather than have an entire cast, production and crew list at the bottom of the poster I chose to use just the names of the key stars in order to not draw too much attention to the poster at this early stage in development.

The Background was kept white to deliberatly use the comedic style which most posters use in this day as it means it draws attention to whats going on in the poster rather than what is happening around it.

Film Poster Analysis

I will be analysing two film posters to get a grasp of what im going to be creating. The first film poster i will be looking at is the one of the film "Employee of the month".

The film closeley relates to what i am doing for my trailer and it is a comedy film itself, so it makes a good choice to be one that i can review by pointing out all the key features of a comedy poster. Looking at the poster initally we can see that there is no visible background image of sorts, with films with a specific purpose, such as an action poster, it would usually feature a background image involving something central to the plot, however because most comedy films do not have an intricate plot to entangle the viewer with, it can be kept simple and easy.

We can also notice the inclusion of the main cast on the poster, unlike some films who litter their posters with all the actors and characters they will have in the film (especially if the film uses big name actors and acresses) this film focuses primarily on the main cast and does not break focus from that. This could also be because it has no prequels as such it does not need to give the audience any information about it as they believe it is as revealing as it needs to be by just showing the playful image of the cast on a shopping cart, setting the tone, context and giving away some plot details coupled with the title.

At the bottom of the poster we also see a tag line to give the film a purpose, the tag line is usually used to help reassuree the audience of the filsm purpose with such classic as "just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water" for the film Jaws 2 or "there can be only one" from the highlander film. Those lines give away a little about the films purposes such as thriller or action. This ones tag line is "on october 6th, shift happens" this parodies the line used in most action films when someone must justify a characters death being "shit happens" from this line we can tell that the film is most likely going to be a comedy film.

Putting all these features together makes for a good poster and i will definitly be needing examples like this due to the genre of my poster being a comedy one aswell so i will need to know how to use the white space.

As you can see my second poster to analyse goes outside of my cosen genre, and is the poster of the film Aliens vs Predator. I have chosen to analyse this film poster as it is one of the only ones which can provide a good source for a parody poster which is what i plan on making my poster rather than a generic comedy film poster such as the one above, although i will still need to use similar conventions to the ones used in Employee of the Month.

The one thing that i really want to take from this is its use of the main characters, although they do not have specific names they represent two titans being brought together for a clash to end it all. The way in which they lay out this poster is what appeals to me the most, it brings the two main icons facing one another in an attempt to create tension between the two, this is a similar form to what i wish to do with mine but bring it more focussed towards a comedic tone. The way it brings the two together and fits the title into the middle is the same kind of layout which i want to take from this poster and incorportate into my own. While the previous poster has the comedic value and tones which i want from that one, this one offers an excellent oppertunity to parody a film/scenario which many people have wanted to see for so long, much like Freddy vs Jason or Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus.

Film Trailer

The film trailer has been finished and fully edited to its needs although a few snags were encountered.

The trailer uses most of the features which i talked about beforehand in my analysis of existing trailers and incorporates them into my trailer. A full summary of everything will be given in the evaluation.

Unfortunatly due to the program adobe premiere pro 2.0 the trailer is not at its full potential, while all sections of the trailer have been edited to the adequete length and arranged in the right way, the program refused to allow certain parts to be shown once it was converted into a video. In order to rectify this problem i had to import it into movie maker and use that to save it as a video and get a lesser quality video than it would have been. This is visible when some scenes show and are darker than others, although this could also be due in part to the camera quality too.

Reason for no recent updates

Unfortunatly Blogging has been at a standstill recently as i have been preparing all my work for one big upload later on today sorry for the inconvenience.

Editing begins with issues

Editing began on the 10th of March 2010 with a few issues regarding the camcorder and issues with the PCs operating system and drivers for the camera.

First issue was exporting the film onto the computer, as i am going to be editing from my laptop, the easiest option, i thought it would be easy, unfortunatly the maximum operating system for the camcorder was XP and my laptop runs using Windows 7, this meant the drivers for the camcorder could not be installed and I initially thought i would have to re-shoot using another camera. Luckily my home PC which my family share uses XP and i was able to install the necessary drivers and software onto that so i could obtain my footage.

The next problem i have encountered is with the footage itself. Becuase of the cameras age, it has some problems with audio/visual lag, as such the audio is out of sync with the video. While this seemed to be a problem initially, it only applies to the opening of the trailer, where the original audio is needed. Using Adobe Premiere Pro's editing system i was able to separate the audio onto a separate line on the timeline and make up for the audio lag by syncing it to the video. This is the final problem i havfe encountered thus far.

All that remains to do now is to put the comedy sketches in using rapid editing and find some music to go with the film, as i was planning for a christmas release, perhaps some christmas music? i will see what i can find.

Here is but one of the issues i have encountered allthough it is the most common one, the program Premiere Pro will continueously ask me to locate files which are being used as it cannot find them, and it will freeze and not respond alot aswell.

Review of Ideas in light of Filming

Ok so the filming took place on the 9th of March 2010, due to certain restrictions of time and the quality of the camcorder being used, some of the ideas which were listed below could not be performed, although most of the essential parts still remain, health and safety prevented the trolley riding scene from being filmed. While some scenes could not be filmed, the physical comedy side of things still remained. Here is a list of the scenes which i have filmed.

• Opening shot in a bar of two friends making conversation, one in each shot



• Panning shot of deputy manager walking into the bar



• Point of view shot from one of the friends of the manager telling them one will be fired



• Voice recording of further bad news



• Shots of each friend looking at one another competitively



• Spillage scene of one luggage boy dropping a case and spilling the contents everywhere



• Smack scene of one luggage boy being hit in the face with a case by the other



• Scare scene of one being scared by the other in a hall



• Mystery scene at the disclosure of the cast they wish to keep this one private until the finished project

Filming went off very smoothly and with only a few minor problems of laughter during some of the scenes which meant some substitutions had to be made

Storyboard is now available, could not be rotated on the blog