Opinions on my Magazine Cover

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Final Magazine Production

I began to put together my magazine after editing the photograph, and looked at the issue archive of Film Comment as a guide to how to lay out my own magazine. By cropping the image, I created the white border that is seen across all of the more recent issues of Film Comment (which I liked), and I saved an image of a bar code from the Internet to add to the corner of the magazine. I originally was going to place this in the left hand bottom corner of the image, however, this did not look right as it filled up the whole corner, which reached all the way up to Ellie's chin - aesthetically, the bar code looked much better in the right hand bottom corner. 

After I had added the bar code, I created the masthead. For all of the recent issues of Film Comment, although the masthead does not have a space in between the two words, they are split by two different colours of the same font. I thought this looked quite effective, so for my own, I split the to into black and a dark red, which matched the red lips of Ellie, but contrasted to  the pale blue of the background.

When I had used this colour, I realised that the colour of Ellie's lips were extremely pink, and not a deep red as I had intended (this must have been a result of the alterations I had made when editing the original photograph) so I selected her lips and altered the colour balance to reduce the level of cyan, and increase the red, making a more suitable colour. 

After this, I added cover lines above the masthead, which was another feature of film comment which I thought looked effective

This was the result. I still needed a main coverline to go with the image on the front, so I had to come up with one relating to it. I looked at previous issues of Film Comment and also at issues of Empire and Total Film for inspiration on how to word my main coverline and decided on 'Through the keyhole/ Eleanor Bray in the chilling/ 'Lullaby''. The play on words links to the image and the word 'chilling' links it to the horror genre. Here is my final magazine cover;

Magazine image edit

This is the image I decided on for the cover of my magazine. It already had the blue tint to it, so I didn't add any more colouring to it. Below, you can see the slight difference in lighting that I have made, increasing the brightness, and adjusting the contrast accordingly. I liked the simplicity of this image, and it matched the composition and style of the images on the front of 'Film Comment'. When making the magazine, I may make further changes.

Magazine photoshoot

As well as doing a photoshoot for my poster, I conducted a photo shoot for my magazine cover in between shots for our trailer. I did this after the recording of one of the shots in our trailer - a shot in which the main character looks through the keyhole of the door leading to the attic. I used this image as it linked well with our trailer. Here are the shots I got;

This first image has a slightly blue hue to it, which is suitable as it links in with our trailer, as during the editing process, we placed pale blue filters over the clips of film. This was to create a cold atmosphere, which is commonly linked with horror films. This photograph links in with this quite well, and the image of her looking through the keyhole also directly links to the clip of film which is in the trailer. The white glow of the light through the keyhole also creates an eerie effect which I like.

This is a very similar image to the first, however, I changed the white balance to a different setting - on the previous photograph, I had the white balance set to incandescent, which made the light bluer in order to counteract any incandescent light (which was not present, which meant that the image was bluer than the white balance setting would usually produce in the right circumstances). For this photograph, I set the white balance to auto. I like the composition if this photograph better, however it is a lot darker than the first image and so may not look as effective, even when edited in photoshop.

As you can see, this image is even darker, and so is not at all suitable for the cover of a magazine, however, this image may actually look effective on a poster if it was edited correctly. I like the way the face is slightly blurred, however, I will definitely not be using this image for my magazine.

I really like this image, as the door is exposed quite well, however, the face is too dark, and would require brightening and a lot of editing. Also, her expression does not fit with the horror theme on this image.

Overall, I like the first image best, and although the eye is over exposed, I can improve this in photoshop. 

Magazine mock up

As I did with the poster, I created a mock up to follow to help me to plan the layout of the magazine. I took inspiration from Film Comment magazine, so the main image takes up around 3/4 of the page (including the white borders around the edge of the image). The masthead of the magazine takes up the remaining 1/4, along with cover lines. I think this layout will help me to make an effective and professional looking magazine.

Film Comment Magazine Cover Analysis

As I mentioned previously, I liked the simplicity of Film Comment magazine, so I have decided to use this as my main inspiration for the creation of my own magazine cover. Here is my analysis of the Prometheus cover;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoeradford/12819295463/

I think that the focus on photography here is key to what makes the cover look good, and the fact that the colour theme runs across the cover. This aspect will be particularly inspirational, as I will not be able to recreate something like the cover of Empire which focuses on CGI. I will use a colour theme similar to this, and try to make a cover that is free of the clutter that cover lines and thumbnails create. 

Magazine inspiration

As well as looking at posters, I wanted to look at film magazine covers to inspire me when creating my own. When browsing the internet, I came across a magazine website for the magazine 'Film Comment'. On the website for the magazine, it describes a brief history of the magazine; 

"Film Comment is the official publication of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Founded in 1962 and originally released as a quarterly, Film Comment features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde film making from around the world." 

The website http://www.filmcomment.com/ includes an archive of previous issues, and many interesting articles on film. Here are some covers from Film Comment; 

As you can see, through time, the magazine has developed and changed its style, but its simplistic cover and professional fonts and colour schemes make the covers look effective. Even the photographs, which in many cases appear to be action stills from the film, (or composed to look this way) are effective and I hope to produce something similar to this when making my own cover.

Previously in this project, I looked at magazines such as Rue Morgue and Little White Lies which are both magazines that I find particularly inspiring, however, due to the lack of the right facilities, I don't think I would be able to create such a graphic based cover for my own magazine. Both of those publications rely heavily on the cover artwork that is used, and if I had more time, I would have loved to have had a go at designing my own illustrated cover. I have decided to look at Film Comment in more detail as the cover photography will be similar to my own skills, and creating a magazine cover that would have the similar conventions to this is much more realistic in the time scale that I have been given for this brief. 

I also analysed Total Film magazine as part of looking at the campaign for The Wolverine film. I found these magazine covers to be too focused on blockbuster films, which means that the trailer for our film (which would probably be an independent film) would not be featured on the cover. Even though Film Comment also features popular films, the cover photography is much more simplistic and suited to my ability, where as the a lot of the photography on the cover of Empire magazine seems to be computer generated. Being an A level student means that I don't have the facilities to create this effectively either, so Film Comment seems like a much more suitable choice for the source of my inspiration. 

Changes to our trailer

After receiving feedback on our trailer, the general opinion was that we needed an effect which would build tension. We have since then added a violin effect (which is common on many horror film trailers). 

Opinions on my poster

In order to get people's opinions on my poster, I created a board on 'Padlet' which will allow people to place their comments around it. The feedback that I will receive will help me in my evaluation later on.

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