Auxillary Task 2 - Creating the magazine cover

The main inspiration for our magazine was 'Empire Magazine' which is the worlds leading movie magazine. It contains breaking film news, as well as reviewing films and interviewing countless celebrities. This is the ideal movie magazine and therefore perfect to get ideas for our own magazine cover.

Empire Magazine uses a different font for almost every piece of writing on the cover of their magazine, this is very effective in creating a professional and intriguing appearance, therefore we used this idea for our own magazine cover. In addition to this we noticed the large bold mast head was coloured red which allowed it to capture more attention. We also decided to colour our mast head in red for this reason. Where we differ from Empire Magazine's mast head is the white outlining the bold reed mast head. We agreed that this enhanced the mast head and made it appear more fitting with the horror genre of the film it is featuring.



We found a barcode on Google images, and incorporated it into our own cover. The positioning of the barcode is correspondent to the one on Empire Magazine.

Above is a screen shot of the numerous different layers the magazine cover had. It shows the progression from the previous image.

Here, you can see all the different fonts for each different side story. We felt this drew a lot of attention, and really made the magazine cover stand out from other ones.

Auxillary Task 1 - Creating the 'Somnium' poster

We needed a main image for our poster and magazine cover of Rosie looking scared. This is a screenshot of planning when we were going to take it. 

The software used to create the poster was 'Adobe Photoshop' which is a professional graphic design software which uses multiple layers and editing. It didn't take us long to become familiarized with the software and understand the variety of things it could do. 

Firstly, we copied the same title 'Somnium'  that was used for our trailer onto the poster to be used as the masthead. Then we searched 'scratch background' on google and found a suitable black image with faint white scratches across it. This was used as the background for the poster.

Then, we added the tagline 'A childhood nightmare brought to life'. Choosing the font for the tagline wasn't easy, as it was hard to find a fitting font which looked thinner and weaker than the masthead, but as bold and scary as the tagline itself. The font chosen was 'Felix Titling'. 

We also added the reviews which are positioned in both top corners. We found the 4 stars as an image on google, initially they were yellow, however after we'd saved the image we changed their colour to white to match the sinister theme, and colour scheme of the poster. The name on the top right review is that of a real reviewer. The top left reviewer 'Lindsay Cole' is made up, and the magazine she works for 'Grande Films' is also made up. 'Grande Films' is our other auxiliary task - therefore by using a reviewer from this magazine it links our tasks. 

Adding the images proved to be the most difficult part, this was because the edges of both images were apparent and stood out against the unique cracked black background. This made the poster look unprofessional and mean that the poster didn't merge well. The two below images show how we managed to merge the picture well with the background. The outcome of this was that the poster now blends into the background looking in place, and also has some of the cracks from the background over her face. This is very effective in giving our poster the professional horror-like look we were aiming for.

Rosie's Photoshoot

We required a main image for both the poster, and the magazine cover. In order to get a suitable one we held a photo shoot, where we were able to gather a selection of images, and chose the most effective one. 

Initially, we had to apply distorted make up on to her face, in order to create a more convincing image. The smudged mascara made it appear as though she had been crying. Belw is an image of us applying her make up.

As we weren't completely sure exactly what we wanted our main image to look like, we asked Rosie to strike a number of poses, therefore leaving us with a choice. Given the story line and genre of our film, we did have some guidelines as to which emotions she should be expressing on her face. For example; scared, vulnerable, hopeless, and desperate. Below are some of the shots we got.

Below is the final image we used in both the magazine cover and the poster. We found that her hands partially on her face created a more fearful and effective look. 

Auxillary Tasks - Planning

Before drawing up a plan for our magazine cover research had to be done. Mainly we focused on analysing Empire Magazine covers. This is because Empire Magazine is the worlds leading movie magazine, and therefore the ideal template, and inspiration for our own magazine cover. Most of the ideas we had regarding the design of our magazine cover have stemmed from Empire Magazine. This includes; using different fonts for each block of writing, large bold red mast head, the positioning of the main image.

Below is the original plan we drew up for the magazine cover we made for one of our two auxillary tasks. In this plan we included details such as the name of the magazine, and what extra stories we would advertise on the front of our cover. The plan was successful in giving us an adequate and effective guideline when creating our magazine cover.

To get an idea of the conventions of a poster and how professional posters appear we searched for the posters for films of a similar storyline and genre to our film. The one which particularly sparked our interest was the poster for 'Insidious'. Throughout our research process this film has been used as a comparison and point of research a great deal due to the similarities in our storylines and conventions. Using this poster as a rough template and a basis for ideas we were able to draw up a plan for our own poster. The poster for insidious is shown below.

The image shown below is the plan we drew up for our poster advertising our film 'Somnium'. The plan considers different aspects of the poster in detail such as color choices, and tag lines. It is very easy to follow and serves as an efficient guideline. 

Music

Choosing a suitable selection of music for our production was quite a time consuming task as we had to ensure it fit correctly, and created the right mood. After a lot of searching we decided on two pieces of music both of which we were happy with.

The first piece of music opens the trailer, and is used towards the end of the trailer, this ties the production together and makes it seem symmetrical. The music is quiet, soft, and chime-like, almost like a lullaby or nursery rhyme, which could reflect the innocence of Rosie. 

After Evylns first appearance a more eerie piece of music with lower tones is introduced. The pace of this music is quicker and more intense allowing a build up of tension. From this point on the scenes are more haunting and scary.

We added sound effects to our production to build tension and scare the audience further. For example, loud bangs were used in appropriate places to make the audience jump, and be on edge. The scare factor is important in the horror genre, and sound contributes massively to this. 

"Music adds the emotional quality of the film. There is some empirical evidence to support this: fast and loud music arouses, slow and soft music calms. Motion and emotion are often entwined." -Meyer 1956   

Title and Fonts

Our title 'Somnium' needs to be presented in a way that immediately defines the film as a thriller/horror. In order to establish how our title could capture this, we researched different titles from films of the same genre as our trailer. 

Immediately it became clear that the majority of films of this nature had used a black background, and more often than not, the title itself was either colored in red, or white. Evidence of this is shown in the images below. Therefore from this we concluded that our title should be against a black background, and we are more in favor of coloring it in red. 

Black is going to be used for the background of our title, this is because it is seen as a sinister color, with connotations of death, evil, and darkness. Darkness is a key connotation as our trailer is based around a woman having nightmares. 

Red is the main color we are considering using for our actual title. This is because it is commonly associated with horror films due to t's connotations of blood, passion and anger. However these connotations aren't particular relevant to the story line of our trailer, yet red still seemed to be a suitable colour.

20/03/15

Ultimately we decided to use white as the colour of the main title. This is because after discussing it, we concluded that if the title for our film was in red this would suggest to our audience a more blood-filled, gory horror film, when this is not the case. Our film includes a paranormal, ghostly theme, which in turn is connoted by the colour white. This is why we decided to change the colour of our title as it seems more suitable, and appropriate.

We browsed the website 'DaFont' in search of an appropriate font for our film title 'Somnuim'. We specified which type of font we were in search for by browsing the horror category, in which we found numerous fonts to consider. The font we chose matched the scratchy effect used persistently in our tasks, which became the style of our film. Below is an image of the style of font we decided to use.

Inter-titles

Whilst viewing countless trailers as part of our research, we noticed that many of them displayed inter-titles. Inter-titles and voice-overs are a convention of theatrical film trailers, and inter-titles often replace voice overs. They are a way of communicating to the audience, narrating and letting them know what is going on, and involving them in the happenings on screen. An example of a horror film which uses inter-titles is 'Jessabelle', these inter-titles are shown in the images below.

After considering our options we decided that inter-titles would be useful in our production as a form of narration, as opposed to a voice over, or nothing at all. The first inter-title, accompanied by a moderately sharp bang, said 'what would you do', after a clip of the child in bed a second inter-title entered the screen also accompanied by a bang saying 'if your childhood nightmare'. The third and final inter-title entered the screen with a slightly louder, sharper sound effect, in a noticeably larger font, saying 'came to life'. Below are images of the actual inter-titles used in our trailer.

Flat Plans - Poster and Magazine Cover

Conventions of a poster and a magazine cover

POSTER

MAGAZINE