Magazine Cover

When it came to creating our magazine front cover the first step we had to take was coming up with a suitable name, we had lots of ideas but the name that stood out the most we 'Enigma' as it means an inexplicable occurrence or situation it could also represent a puzzling or contradictory character therefore I think it falls in well with the genre of our film and also reflects the main character really well. We chose to make up our own magazine name as it would give us the freedom to create our own font and layout. We decided to create the front cover on Photoshop as we were familiar with the tools as some members of the group do photography so they have picked up skills whilst taking that course. We decided to keep the colours simple as this was a typical convention of a magazine.  We wanted to our magazine to have a sinister look about it so we chose to similar shades of colour being grey and black. We chose our master head to be in bold black writing our reasoning behind this was so that it would stand out and catch a lot of people’s attention.

When it came to deciding on our final picture we had a lot of options to chose from but this picture for us stood out the most because it was a full body shop and in some aspects represtened our title 'Grow Your Own' as Jimmy is holding a spade, which is typically used when gardening. As you can see the original picture is with Jimmy and the rest of the boys in the background but my group and i decided the picture for our magazine would work a lot better if we where to only have jimmy as after doing some reasearch we found that most film magazines only include a maximum of two people on the front cover. To remove the other boys from the picture we used the lasso tool to cut Jimmy out. We then needed to feather the cutout of Jimmy, by again changing the pixel radius to 1.

Poster Progress

The genre and category that our film falls into was a main factor when deciding which effects would be approriate to use on our poster. Since our film falls into the genre of British Gangster we decided to experiment, applying a number of different effects and seeing which would had the greatest impact on viewers. We noted that we found inspiration from the film Reservoir Dogs (as it falls into the same category), and decided to adapt some of the ideas from this to help ensure the poster was distinctive and eye catching. We chose to use techniques such as limiting the colour palette and narrowing the colour scheme to black white and red. Photoshop was used once we had decided on the picture for our poster (below) as we wanted to take advantage of making sure the poster stood out.

Being a British Gangster film, we felt that we needed to add a feature to symbolise British Ganster culture- we decided on a shot of London in the background as this is an established feature of Britain. This decision was also based on the thought that it would compliment the theme and allow the mise-en-scene to be more noticable to the target audience or consumer. We then used some shots of famous London land marks such as London Bridge and the Millenium Bridge to experiment with and decide which to use for the final image.

We started by testing and experimenting with the photos that were shot of the Millennium Bridge in London. This is a well established and recognised London landmark and therefore was ideal for what we were attempting to achieve. However the picture was quite dark and had to be adjusted with its lighting levels which we were able to carry out using photoshop. This adjustment highlighted the finer details and made the more important aspects of the image stand out and increase the quality of the picture as a whole.

The picture of the five boys was then copied and pasted onto the background shot, and the colour scale was changed to black and white. This made the picture look a little more realistic and more of a film standard. We were happy with this outcome as a first attempt, however we knew we still had more to do in order to make it of even higher quality and to make it convincing to an audience. We then looked through all the other shots taken in London, and felt that the was one particular shot that could work better.

The final picture we decided to use for the main background was the one pictured above. This is because once produced, the picture was extremely clear, thus would be perfect when it came to editing. The photograph was fully in focus and all the smaller not so important details of the picture maintained good visibility. This was achieved by using a sharp depth of field and by reducing the lens aperture to a small diameter. From all the shots we felt that this one of the world famous London Bridge would be the most recognised by the audience (mainly the British audience). The lighting in this picture stood out to us as we thought that the effect of the clouds on the image as a whole was impacting. The picture was opened into the program Photoshop to begin editing. We started by adjusting and improving the lighting levels which was achieved by adjusting the input levels. The image of the five boys was then opened onto a separate layer and the input levels so that the lighting and the contrast appeared to be sharper. The lightning of this picture highlighted the facial expressions of the boys, and the picture quality was a lot more professional. We then needed to merge the two pictures together which meant the image of the boys had to lie on top of the background image of London Bridge. The Lasso Tool was used to achieve this to cut around the boys and the wall. We had to make sure that we zoomed in to ensure that the work being done was accurate, although this did take up a lot of time. The feather tool was then used to soften the edges of the picture and make them look like they are one. This was done by changing the pixel radius to 1. Once this was done, we used the clone tool to fill in some of the remaining colour that would blend the edges. Although all of these steps were very time consuming, a good outcome was achieved.

The next step was to experiment with the colour themes and colour scale on the picture. We chose to change the image to a black and white one as it made the picture stand out more as a professional film. It was a good draft poster, however the image being in black and white caused some concern within the group as we thought it may not stand out enough to be a successful film poster or appeal to the audience. The lack of colour was a worry for us and so we had to think carefully about things such as the billing block, the title and the tag line. One final experiment was needed to make sure that the right decision was being made regarding these factors of the poster. To make sure that we had finished all of our editing on the picture we added a traditionally fashioned frame effect on the image of the boys and London Bridge. The typical conventions of a gangster film are not old fashioned and feminine or does the traditional theme fit with the time era, and for this reason we decided that this effect was not suited for our film. It was necessary to spend time developing the picture with this effect because it allowed us to experiment and to see what effect was the best. With this as our final attempt, we were in consensus and realised that the black and white effect was best for our genre and film poster.

 

The next steps were to approach the task of the billing block, title and tag line. The billing block was already previously produced on a PowerPoint presentation and so it was not hard to initially make. However finding the correct font for the text seemed to cause difficulty within the group and it took some time deciding. Once we had copied and  pasted the billing block but we realised the billing block was too large to fit onto the poster we had to use the move tool to rescale the size of the billing block, ensuring whilst doing it we held down the shift key so that the writing didn't go blurry. We then needed to add the title to the poster; we made the title white and made the tag line red so there was a splash of colour.

This is our final draft for our film poster. I think that it was a good decision to change the title background cover to red.

Target Audience- Magazine

As a group we decided that after making our first magazine cover that we should make another so that we could broaden our audience as the magazine we made first only really targeted 24+ as it had a more mature and simple look to it. To ensure we were using the correct techniques, colours and fonts we kept asking for feedback from a wide age range of people from people in our class, our, friends, parents or teachers to ensure we were creating advertisements appropriate for the people we were targeting.

Here is our  first magazine this magazine cover is relatively simple. The background colour of the magazine links in perfectly with the colour scheme of the poster. In comparison to the second magazine this one is a lot more toned down and doesnt strike the audience to be too gory or violent. This would be more appealing to the older audience as it looks a little more sophisticated.

We decided that our second poster would be targeted at a audience a lot younger than the previous one. We felt it was best if we targeted 18-25 year olds. The reason we decided to target a younger audience for this magazine cover is because the front is a lot more interesting, although in both magazines Jimmy is in character and is holding a prop this magazine is a lot more exciting and gives more away as Jimmy is on the front cover holding a baseball bat with blood all over he’s face and clothes this already gives the younger audience an indication that there will be a lot of violence included in the film. We decided that we wouldn’t make the background as plain and sophisticated as the previous one so we decided to go for something a lot different than usual, we used the union jack flag for our background as we felt this would stand out a lot more than if we used a simple basic colour. Although both magazines are quite contrasting we chose to keep the layout relatively similar as we felt this worked well on our previous poster. The picture that we have chosen for this magazine front cover has been taken from a screenshot in our trailer which again gives the audience an insight as to what is going on in the film. We also chose this picture as our main character (Jimmy) looks as if he is ready for action as he is holding hit bat up high which shows connotations of the violence. For our magazine we chose to stick with the three main colours being red, white and black and this was a consistent colour not only in our poster but also our trailer. In contrast to the first magazine we also chose to add a splash of blue into this magazine as this reflected the colours seen on the Union Jack emphasising the fact that our film is a British film.

Production & Studio Label

We made up the name 'Woodstock Productions' and 'Willow Tree Studios'. We created a logo for our studio and used photoshop to add text to it. We used the programme Livetype to create and add effects to our font. We wanted our font to remain simple and stick with the colours black and white. We made our own production and studio names up to be shown before our trailer and they will also be shown in our billing block.

Pictures - Outtakes

When it came to choosing the picture for our film poster and magazine we wanted a variety of choice so we weren't limited to just choosing from a few pictures, whilst taking the pictures  it was proving be a challenge to get all of the boys looking at the camera at the same time or pulling a serious face. We tried a lot of different positions but we didn't experiment too much with different angles as we felt the eye-level worked well when we where taking the pictures face on. After taking the pictures we had a wide variety and as a group we had to go through the pictures several times before we made an overall decision. There where a lot of pictures that we where very fond of and thought would work well. But in the end we came to a decision and chose our favourite three pictures.

Choice Of Title

The title for our film is ‘Grow Your Own’ our reasoning behind this is that we felt that the audience could interpret this in whichever way they wished, because the title ‘grow your own’ could mean a whole range of different things. Originally one of the main reasons we wanted to call our film “Grow Your Own” is because our film was going to be set in an allotment where our gangsters would hide their money and drugs etc as this would be a undercover place for them but as time went on we changed our minds and decided to change the plot of our film to our main character losing all sanity and one by one killing off all his men. I’m pleased that we kept this title as I feel it allows the audience to make their own interpretations of the film.

Pictures - Poster

This is the picture we have chosen for are film poster. The main reason we chose this picture over the others was mainly because all of the actors are looking directly at the camera with quite serious looks on there faces. We decided to take the picture in what looks like quite a deprived area as the men are in smart suits with typical estate in the background which follows the conventions of the usual meeting places for gangsters. We tried not to capture a lot of the background in the picture as we wanted to mainly focus on the actors and not the location/setting, we chose to take the picture outside so that we would have natural lighting, if we had decided to take this picture inside we wouldn't have achieved the outcome we where aiming for. Getting the actors positioned correctly was key for us as we wanted show authority within the group, we purposely chose 5boys to film with as when it came to group shots the symmetry of the shot would look correct because of the way that the actors would be positioned. In the main focus of the picture we chose to have the boss 'Tony Don Milano' at the front in the centre and the rest of his men slightly behind but staggered. This is similar to the GoodFellas film poster. After looking over the picture several times and trying different effects, we chose to take away the colour and use black and white. We did this on photoshop by removing the colour and adjusted the input levels so the picture appeared more sharp and all minor details were visible. We feel that having our poster in black and white will be more effective. Although this seems a little bland we plan to add a tag line to our poster which will make it a lot more eye-catching.

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