'Lullaby' - Final Trailer

This is the final edit of our trailer (best viewed in 720p HD).

Final Magazine Cover

Final Film Poster

My Evaluation

This is my final evaluation of all three products.

Opinions on my Magazine Cover

Created with Padlet

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.

Created with Padlet

Final 'Lullaby' poster

After making all of the preparation for the poster, I started to put it all together. I started with the image which I took into photoshop and created its own layer. I then drew a text box and added the title 'Lullaby'. I chose a white colouring for the font, as this contrasted best with the background. Red is another popular choice for this text (as you can see in my previous post) but due to the fact that the blood is red on the hand, I didn't want to overload the use of the colour, which would take the focus away from the blood.

I thought this looked okay as it was, but was lacking in something, so I added a motion blur to the font, (by 500 pixels on the horizontal axis, and 20 pixels on the vertical axis). I felt like this gave a ghostly feel to it, which suits the storyline to our film. 

I then created the billing block for the bottom of the poster on another photoshop document, which is a common feature to most film posters. I did this by downloading another font, and a template which allowed me to simply fill in the gaps of where text could be personalised to our own film. I then made the background transparent, and changed the colour of the text from black to white, in order to contrast well with the background, and not to contrast too much with the font of the main film title. Also, white is the typical colour choice for the billing block (again, this is evident in my previous post). 

Due to the fact that there has only been me and Ashleigh creating this trailer, I used only our two names (apart from Ellie and Holly's name, who we added to the actresses section). This looks unusual for a normal billing block, as there are usually a lot more names which make their appearance on here. 

As our trailer would probably be an independant film, I decided to add the logos of film festivals such as the logo from the Cannes film festival and the Tribeca film festival logo. I google searched the logos, then saved them and opened them up into photoshop. I then made the backgrounds transparent and inverted the colours, so they turned from black into white. This would fit with the colour theme of my poster. I placed them onto my poster, and fitted them into appropriate spaces in my billing block (which is a common place for film festival logos). 

There still seemed to be something missing, so I looked at the images I had gathered from Google images, and saw that on many of them, a piece of text stating the directors of the film ('A film by...') was placed above the title. I added a text box with this text onto the poster, and changed the sized of the fonts accordingly. I felt that this seemed to fit well onto the poster. 

At this point, I quite liked the poster how it was, however, I added the final touches by adding a vignette to the edges. I copied the original layer of the image and then drew a circle around the edge. Then, I feathered the edges by 200 pixels. I inverted the circle, and then lowered the brightness. This produced a very faint vignette, which was minimal, but was quite effective. 

I also added a small piece of text underneath the billing block 'Coming Soon', which is another feature that I have found common on film posters in general. I made the text red, using the pipette tool I managed to get a similar colour to the colour of the blood. This maintained the colour theme. Here is the final poster that I created;

Film Poster font options

Another important component of a film poster is the choice of font. I didn't want to use a font that was unprofessional looking like Times New Roman or Comic Sans, so I decided to look on font website 'Dafont' for suitable options. There were so many options on this website, and I wasn't sure whether to use a serif or sans serif font, so I did a simple google search for 'Horror film posters'. Here are some of the posters that I saw;

As you can see, serif fonts seem to be the most popular for horror film posters, so I looked on the serif section of Dafont. I narrowed it down to 3 fonts, which looked like this;

Although they all look relatively similar, I decided to go with the middle one because of the enlarged first letter. I really like this font as it is quite bold and looks the most professional. 

Poster Mock up

Before starting to create my poster, I made a mock up of how I wanted it to look. This plan will help me to focus my ideas to a point where I know exactly what I want to do. I made this mock up in publisher, which is very simplistic. After looking at my posters inspiration and deciding on what photograph to use, I planned out where I wanted the image, title and billing block to be.

Poster photograph edit

After I decided which photograph I wanted to use on the poster, I edited it in photoshop to make it look more appropriate for a horror genre poster. First of all, I removed any blemishes from the hand using the spot healing tool, which took away imperfections such as the drop of fake blood near the top of the hand. Next, I selected the skin of the hand and deselected the blood. 

Then, I used the desaturation tool to make her skin look less alive and more like a dead and lifeless hand which was the concept behind this photograph - this is the hand of the dead girl from the trailer, which actually links with the shot of the same hand dripping blood. After desaturating the skin, I then altered the brightness and contrast accordingly, making the blood a deeper red and more realistic (previously, the fake blood looked to bright which made it look actually fake). Below is the original image and the final image which I will use for my poster. 

Poster photoshoot

During one of our filming sessions, I took several photographs on one of the shoots. This shoot was from this scene that will be featured in our trailer of a hand dripping with blood. As I took the photographs, it became clear that I used the inspiration from the 'Let the Right One In' illustrated poster that I had seen before. On my the hand (of my sister, who is one of the main characters in our trailer) we used fake blood that we had bought in a shop to create a realistic consistency and colour, rather than trying to make our own synthetic blood. As the blood trickled down her hand, I managed to capture the moments as it dripped, producing these images; 

It took a while to set up the composition of the photograph the way I wanted it, because the hand kept making strange shapes that did not resemble a hand at all (more like a claw). I directed my sister, and poured over the blood myself, before taking this photograph. I also took it in the late afternoon after I got in from school, so the lighting was not ideal as it was a bit dark, however, this created a more eerie feel as the deep red of the blood strongly contrasts against the blue/ purple of her hand and the background. My favourite of these shots is the second to last one as the drop of the blood is in the position that I wanted - the drop is suspended in motion which is what I hoped to capture. This photograph suggests death, without showing the explicit image of a dead body, which may be too horrific for a poster which could be displayed in public places. I will later edit this photo in photoshop to enhance the red of the blood, desaturate the colour of the skin (to make it look more dead) and to remove any blemishes from the hand, and add the necessary components to make the photo into a film poster. 

Let the Right One In Poster Analysis

After doing research into horror film posters, I found the illustrative poster for the 2008 film, 'Let the Right One In' to be particularly inspirational. Here is my analysis of the poster on Flickr. I hope to use this as inspiration for my own poster, as I really like the use of contrasting colours and the use of blood to implicate death without the explicit image of a dead body. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoeradford/12818949874/

Poster inspiration

As well as our film trailer, I wanted to begin to look at inspiration for my ancillary products; my magazine cover and film poster. I started off by looking at film posters for 'Let the Right One In', from which we gained inspiration for our trailer, and I found many interesting film posters for the film (as shown below).

I like these posters as they give a feeling of mystery - the face of the main characters are hidden/ distorted and in the last poster, they are not shown at all. Instead, the focus is on the hands of the characters, and the colours in all posters are desaturated, apart from the vibrant red blood in the third one. I also really like the composition of the last one, with the drop of blood suspended in the air. I will use these as inspiration for my poster.