POSTER:
we aspired for our film poster to be as professional as possible, from the minor details of the credits,glossy sheen finish and brand identity logos to the more major details of the main antagonist dominating the page, and the title being prevalent and clear.in order to create the most conventional poster with typical and atypical horror conventions that would attract audiences in an innovative way we analysed a range of film posters - identifying the key features that are most appealing and effective to audiences. particularly poster such as 'The Visit' 'Drag me to hell' and 'The Woman In Black' where the elderly antagonist is what the poster revolves around.
We made the decision in our poster to use just one main image, instead of a collage or montage type creation which was effective in just having one focus to evoke audience engagement and recognition. We also thought in our trailer where the old woman is depicted with a close up camera shot that lasts only a few seconds towards the trailers ending where a large thud sounds- this shot is more feared and horror conventional than the montage of clips we used in the trailer so hence we wanted our poster to adhere more to this close up camera pan in the trailer rather than the montage type clip. This hence creates a parallel between the poster and our film trailer creating binary text and trailer links which is effective in creating a brand identity for us.
The use of a close-up shot and cropped editing of the womans face is prominent and the direct-eye contact in the image creates direct mode of address and almost makes audiences feel victimized or targeted. The half face appearance of the old woman almost creates the idea that she has a dark side, creating allegory and anecdotal symbolic references to jeklly and hyde with jekllys dark side, or even ideas of good vs evil. The half face of the woman also gives an effective structure to the poster with text one side and imagery on the other enabling it to appear conventional of film posters without unclear text on a dense imagery packed background. The old woman's face with the black and white filter and low saturation creates a solemn monochrome tone to the poster, as well as giving it an almost historic and archaic feel with the black and white tones. By using one of our main characters in the poster audiences will remember the character and will have some recollection or recognition of who they actually are, creating a brand identity for the film, and allowing audiences to relate to this character.
The title promoting our trailer is in a calligraphy style font juxtaposing the idea of horror with something idyllic, innocent and attractive which makes it stand out against the gothic imagery, this font directly links to the Lacey material draped over the old lady, creating a link to the title that audiences will recognize and remember.
The to include a slogan that we included on our poster 'your fears are what you create' uses personal 2nd person directive pronoun 'you' using direct mode of address on audiences, involving them with the trailer. It also contributes to our brand identity as this same slogan appears in our trailer, creating parallels between the two and something audiences can associate with.
the release date and the credits were conventions we followed from inspiration and conventions from other posters, the small font we used however for these ensured our poster didn't appear to be text dominated, and the most important features the image and the title were emphasized most.
Our Overall evaluation of our poster concluded that we adhered to conventions and created an original and creative design that would appeal to audiences.The eye-catching image, direct mode of address through imagery and through pronoun usage and phrases as well as monochrome styled tone for the poster made it directly adhere to the horror genre and it too used unique selling points such as the directors creating the prior film 'Robyn' mentioned at the top of the poster drawing in even more audiences. our only potential weakness in the poster may have been the ambiguity in the release date being 'this Halloween' however we equally thought this was effective in drawing in audiences to research the film further to find out further details. fittingly to the horror genre using Halloween as a special event for which the film will be released made our poster and film trailer potentially more popular for Halloween cinema-goers, this almost makes our film a hybrid genre-a Halloween horror. It hence fits with maslows need to be entertained or the uses and gratifications theory suggested by bulmer and katz to socially interact and communicate with others as our film would pose a night out on Halloween of evening entertainment and hence be more attractive to audiences. as well as this the Halloween release date would be a USP, as horror movies released at seasonal dates during summer or spring would not be as appealing to audiences as a Halloween film.
Magazine:
Alike with our poster - prior to actually creating it, we analysed many other film magazines particularly popular culture film magazines such as Empire and FILM to get a basic idea of what the key features were and how we should incorporate them into our own. We found that the most prominent feature on the majority of magazine texts was the theme of a particular film, which would be the magazines unique selling point by flaunting the most recent film on its front cover. this closely interlinks with the color scheme magazines adapt to to have the coordinating color scheme and tone to the movie featured. This means no magazine ever has set color schemes and recognizable coloring's, however a structure and layout is typically consistent. This color inconsistency gave us a lot of freedom when creating our magazine cover to adapt it precisely to our movie themes, and in this way we chose red and black coloring's-relating to our poster and film credits and low lighting in out trailer. We also edited our magazine cover with a ghostly effect on the image of the old woman, fitting the theme of the magazine to a ghostly tone. Another prevalent feature of our magazine is our magazine title, The reason for this is that they are the ones that are publishing our trailer - and depending on the popularity of the magazine company, they are essentially the cause for engaging audiences. This would be because there are often audiences that make regular purchases of specific magazines - and therefore if our film is being promoted on there, the company will be wanting to take credit for that promotion. We followed this by presenting our company name 'Illumination' in a big, bold font - prominent to audiences in a squared edge bold font unlike the horror scribbled and calligraphy style smaller scale subheadings and bylines on our magazine front cover.
Our usage of a range of imagery on our front cover reinforced our advanced level of photographic and media composition as all of the imagery we used was our own, hence reinforcing originality, professionalism ruling out any potential copyright issues. This also made our magazine cover stand out as the images depicted and ideas in the headings and bylines that the magazine talks about are all new to prospective audiences who would be drawn in by something new and unique. The film strip of images were effective as they were not shots that actually appeared in our trailer, this meant that our ancillary texts and trailer all gave away different snippets of the movie not the same imagery and enigma triggering images so audiences wouldn't feel our marketing campaign is repetitive or get bored. The film strip also directly was associated with film and the cinematography market, so that it reinforced even further the genre of our magazine. We also included an image of a location of which we did not use in our trailer, however it was being presented as an exclusive that features inside the magazine. This is effective as it is essentially a unique selling point for the magazine as audiences may be more engaged in knowing that they are getting extra information or extra inserts which would draw in audiences who may be intrigued to have a behind the scenes or hidden features insight. The editing on this image of the location was completed on Photoshop whereby we used a gradient effect of black and white to blue tones to make the image of a natural, typical location seem eerie and fitting to the horror genre of our magazine.
The unique selling points advertised on magazine covers may vary from featuring main actors and directors on front covers, to having celebrity interviews and press reports, however due to the independent small budget film creation we were involved in, we aimed for our exclusives and unique selling points for our magazine to be free posters and special interviews due to our absence in our film trailer of a celebrity presence. This would be seen as unique selling points as audiences would feel more obliged to purchase it if they knew that they were getting more than what they may have hoped for - therefore getting 'more for your money'. We have also displayed the price of the magazine, however it is much smaller than other information, innovatively not to put audiences off the purchase of the magazine by a hefty price, this is conventional of many other magazines.
the magazine cover overall fitted codes and conventions of film genre magazines, with a range of imagery and a fitting color scheme and relevant imagery- however we struggled to adhere our product to the horror genre and found analysis of other magazine covers difficult when relating just to horror. The way in which we used the title 'illumination' unlike more ambiguous large budget market known film magazine brands such as empire or total film, the title illumination connotes something supernatural, or not quite real- it is even a quite chilling noun reinforced by the striking red font with the sharp dagger style 'M' used. The magazine slogan 'hair raisingly good' also links in with the horror genre rather than just the entire scale of film and cinematic productions. The direct mode of address with pronoun usage and questions in the subheadings 'how well do you know your horrors' or 'horror locations you can visit' actively addresses and involves audiences who will relate to the questions based on their horror film interest- creating a specialist audience for our magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment