The film magazine cover is another of the media texts required to submit as coursework along with our trailer. When new films come out, magazines such as Sight & Sound, Empire and Total Film will include features in their publications to promote and review these films and this is a key way of reaching the target audience and advertising a film to the public. By producing a striking and bold image to feature on the front of our magazine, it will act as an extremely important advertising method to draw in an audience and build up a hype about the film.
We have decided, by analysing existing film magaine covers in a previous blog, that we should use a close-up image of Erin's face as the front cover of the magazine. Specifically we want to use the last scene of our trailer where she pulls down her hood when crouched in the subway against the graffitti and chipped paint on the wall. At this point in the trailer she looks directly at the camera to address the audience in a direct and almost confrontational way. Most film magazine covers feature the main character of a new film in either a close-up shot of the face or a full-body shot, so we will stick to this theme.
We will try to use a screen-shot of our trailer but it may come out quite pixelated as it is a paused still of our trailer so we may have to arrange a phot o shoot with our actress (Laura Gray who plays Erin) at the subway near her house where we filmed. The only issue is that she has recently dyed her hair from blonde to purple so this will affect the continuity issue, but if her hood is up in the image we may be able to tuck her hair away so it is not visible. A decision as to which magazine we will choose to create a cover for will need to be made, but I think that the Empire logo is the most bold. The added information to the magazine cover will also need to be planned, so I will produce some drawings and sketches to plan the layout. Here are the 3 magazine logos that we can possibly use with our image and edit using Adobe Photoshop:
Film Poster
We have had some ideas about the film poster and have decided to use another shot in the subway as it is a gritty, bleak and urban image which represents the theme of our film. The landscape-format shot features Erin crouched alone in the subway, hinting the seclusion of the character without giving too much away. We can, again, try to use a screen shot of the trailer but it will probably be too pixelated to a photoshoot will be required.
The film title 'Raze' will featured to the left of the image in bold, large letters with the small, dark figure of Erin crouched down to the right of the photograph. It will be a wide shot of the mouth of the subway, with the edges blacked out so that the light of the subway is brighter, but still with an artificial yellow colour. Sketches will again be drawn for the poster design to plan the layout of the page, as additional information such as actor names, production comapny, director/producer names, website address, release date and possibly film reviews need to be added to conform to the conventions of existing film posters. I will look at appropriate typography for our film as well, probably a bold font with sharp edges to represent the gritty theme of our film and the name of it which has connotations of sharpness and destruction. Here are 3 British landscape film posters which act as examples of the layout of our own poster:
This poster for 'Adulthood', which has the closest-themed genre and plotline to our film, features the characters in fairly dim lighting to represent to bleak theme of the film. The characters poses are very bold and almost intimdating, with a good use of lighting.
This poster for 'This is England' has a raw, gritty look to it with the use of a graffiti typeface and confrontational poses by the actors, with a strong use of colour to emphasise the theme of the film by using the colours of the Union Jack. The character dresscodes are also key when representing the era of the film, with their outfits typical of skinheads in the 1980s.
This poster for 'Control' features the image on the right with the film title to the left, with a bold use of colour to emphasise the layout, with a large use of blank space. This is the strongest example of how we will lay out our own poster.
Here are some sketches that have been produced and scanned of two ideas for each - the film poster and magazine cover: Design Sketches
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