Feedback for Magazine and poster

Audience feedback is a vital part of this coursework. I wanted to carry out as much as possible in order to understand how successful my work is. I purposely asked to be criticised when I asked people to view my work. Being criticised is not a negative thing, but a great chance for me to know how I would improve on what I have done. This feedback would also give me a general idea of how my promotional package would be received to my audience. My audience feedback for my poster and magazine have been done together, through a video which I filmed and edited, a blackberry messenger chat as well as facebook. Over the course of this blog, I have used facebook and blackberry as useful resources to receive my feedback, so I wanted to do both again as well as produce a video in order to received as much as I possibly could.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5nTCmxaCUY

Thoughts and Comparision

When I completed my magazine I wanted to compare my own work to another horror poster that has been in the market. I chose to compare my work with a movie called Prom night. I chose this because it has the same target audience as my film and would fit into the same categories of film. Looking at the posters side by side is quite effective as it will allow me to consider the similarities and differences of a real film poster and the one I have created. It is evident to say that my film poster has the correct codes and conventions such as the credits, title, tagline, certificate, main image and institutional logos. I have noticed that some film posters do not include all these elements, but I wanted my work to look as realistic as possible, therefore added all the elements of a film poster that I knew of from the research I had previously carried out.

That is one of the visual differences from my work and the prom night poster. My work has all elements recognised on a film poster; however the prom night poster does not show the certificate.   A similarity of the two is that there is a central image which is the main attraction of the whole poster. The image is the first element that grabs the audience’s attention; it also sets the genre and idea that the film wants to give off. Having an image such as a girl holding a flower in bright garden would not create an idea, atmosphere or any suspense for the film at all. The close up shots adds emphasis and creates questions and realisation in the audiences mind. For example the prom night poster has a close up of a girls face at a slanted angle, her eyes are covers with a crown (automatically we can distinguish she’s the prom queen, in relation to the title) we cannot see her eyes, which makes it hard for the audience to see her full expression, however her mouth is open is shows us a great deal of emotion, along with the colours used, blue is a very cold colour, almost as if the character is dead there is no life left in her. Close up shots are very useful and effective especially when used for a horror film poster as they can give away allot in only one image, aspect such as lighting, shot type, angle, colours, costume, props all allow the audience to gather immediate information in one go.

Overall I am very happy with my poster, seeing it next to one that has been in the market and has been a successful film, I am able to distinguish similarities and differences, I believe my poster fits all codes and conventions and fulfils purposes such as attracting the audience’s attention, creating suspense and questions.



Final Poster

Photoshop- Making of the poster

Session one

This was the image i decided to use for my final poster.




Here you can see that i am trying out the different typfaces for the name of my title. This one was not the right typeface to se. i did not like it and the quality did not turn out great. I needed to do this with a number of typefaces in order to fully see if they would work on my poster.



i decided to use this typeface. its clear and not too much but still gives off a strong vibe. The original colour of the typeface was black, so here i am changing the colour to white.



This shows me changing the opacity of the title. I wanted to this so make it look less bright. if its too bright it will look out of place.



This is what i had at the end of my session one.

 Session two

changing the layout

Originally i had typed my credits onto the poster whilst making it. this was a mistake and i realised i couldnt group all the credit text togther to move it. Therefore in session two i moved all the credit text onto a new page and saved it as a separate JPEG.



I then used this JPEG and copied it to the poster image. This way i could move it around freely and resize everything to be the same size.




I decided to put names of the people that are in the film. This was not my plan but i felt i needed something at the top of the poster to fill up the spaces as i had changed the layout of where my title was. Here i am again changing the opacity to ensure it doesnt look out of place and random. Giving it a faded effect like this also goes with the horror genre. giving it a slightly ghostly look.



This is my final poster at the end of session two.

Session three

Comaprison ideas for poster

When i had taken my images, i found a horror film poster called click. This automaticcally grabbed my attention as the main image reminded me of my own photography. I therefore wanted to use this as a base/ idea for my own poster. following the layout and style. alternations may be made depending on how i i want my poister to be. But overall this was a good 'plan' of a real poster to follow. This enabled me to not forget any key conventions such as institutional logos.

photoshop experiments for poster

Most photoshop experiments were carried out after i took my images for my magazine and poster. This is an extra photoshop idea that i had carried out for my poster. However although the idea of merging two images together was appealing, the photoshop experiment did not turn out as great as the thought. Therefore i didnt merge the images as a final idea, just as a experiment.

mockups of poster

These Mockups were again, as the same process of the magazine cover, helping to act of furthering my ideas of my layout. choosing differnt images and playing text in different areas helped me to understand what looked best and what didnt.

taglines

Taglines are a very important part of a film poster. They allow a single sentence to be put across to the audience which from one read can automatically create tension, suspense and questions among the audience. I created a brainstorm of taglines, as shown above. I wanted to present my ideas as a brainstorm as I have realised that brainstorms help me and force me to fill up the page, allowing me to think of more and more ideas. This is essential to have a large amount of ideas rather than only five or six. I find that if I list ideas, I will not come up with a successful amount, because I am not forced to fill anything. Overall I thought of around 21 taglines, which was a great variety to choose from.

Ideas such as, 'she chose her own fate' and 'the call that changed her life forever' were starter taglines to get my thoughts in gear. I then used general sayings and added a twist. for example 'death was at her call' had been from a saying 'death was at her door' also, 'behind closed calls' I thought of from the saying 'behind closed doors' this was interesting as the call was closed and no one new know was at the other end. I quite liked these taglines as I gave typical sayings a twist that had a direct link to my film. Instead of doors, I used the word calls, as my storyline involves an unknown call, overall taking ideas, keeping them simple but effective. Another twist on a tagline I thought of was 'the calm before the call' which came from a well known saying 'the calm before the storm'.

Having a simple tagline can be just as effective as having a longer tagline. Some of the longer sentences I thought of were, 'A normal night out, ended in pain through one call' and 'what began as a great night, ended with a call of destiny and death'. Taglines such as these were not as effective but I tried to create ideas that involved gave away some of the storyline. If the audience read something like that, they would know a call is the reason of horror.

I thought of the tagline 'How would you trace the call' this was simple and would raise questions in the audiences mind. Other ideas such as 'How would you find out who’s on the other end' came about. I thought these were good ideas for the tagline which had direct links to the storyline and gave a little away to the audience without revealing too much, however the actual sentence, I believe was not worded right and I was not happy with it. After a while after finishing the brainstorm, I had randomly thought of the tagline ' How would you trace the call if death was on the other end'. In my opinion you can’t always force ideas, and the best ones come naturally. I then went to write this down as you can see on the right hand side of the page in the middle, the sentence is squeezed in. I was very happy with this tagline and thought it included mystery and a great deal of suspense, when being read, questions would arise such as what call, how would I trace a call, why would death be at the other end'. The audience can slightly gather that an unknown person is calling but the full storyline is kept at a minimum which is why I liked this tagline the best.

Typefaces for Poster

These are the typefaces I found which I wanted to try using for my poster. Originally i new i wanted to use the same typeface of the title as I used in my trailer. However, after more research into certain typefaces, I found another 8 which are above, I liked some more then the original and therefore wanted to try them out. Typeface number one, two and five are some of my favourites as they gave a feeling as to what the title was. The style of these typefaces are vanishing which is what the word disconnected is but for a phone call. Other typefaces such as three, were not as good to use, I felt like number three looked too scratched up and needed to be simpler. Also typeface number 6 had a blurred effect, like you would see on TV, however I wouldn’t want to use this because my storyline doesn’t involve TV’s, only phones, so I wanted something that would link more to that.

I will try the majority of these typefaces out when making my poster on Photoshop in order to see how it fits in overall. Until I see it visually, I cannot make a decision.

These are the typefaces I found for the tagline. They are very similar to each other in the sense that they are strong, straight and simple. The only difference is I tried to find one a little bit bolder then the other, in this case its typeface one. I wanted a straight and strong looking typeface, but one of which that wouldn’t outweigh the look of the main title typeface of 'disconnected' which is why I searched for thin typefaces rather than thicker ones. Overall these typefaces do the job of attracting the audience’s attention in a very simple, subtle but effective way.

These are the typefaces I found for the credits. Below you can see I have researched and looked at examples of typefaces on posters, even the Credits, which are just as important as the main typeface of the title on a poster, credits tend to typically take up the bottom section of the poster, so the typeface can’t be too bold or thick, as the text may be hard to read. Below you can the typeface of the credit is mainly tall and thin, or has been squashed together to look it. Typefaces two, three and four are all thin, and I wanted to try a thick typeface to see how it would look, which is why I also included typefaces one and five.