Changes in Magazine Front Cover Using Photoshop

I decided here to make the image bigger and see
how it looked by dublicating the layer and pasting
it. Which then I used edit to tranform the image
and enlarge to the size of my choice.
























I also experimented with the various pictures i took to see which would look good and suit best for a magazine fornt cover. From these images its visible i have different shot from close-ups to mid-shots, also I took planned and thought out the body posture and facial expression.

Problems and Solutions So far

With filming I have had a few problems such as getting my actors to show up at certain times. However it was okay since it was not a consistent absence. Also remembering to get the props right in the scenes.

For editing I had realised that me teaser trailer's pace is too slow and that is not the conventions of a teaser. In an attempt to correct that I had to shorten many clips and cut some in half to had other clips in between them. This made the pace certainly faster which was a solution for the pace. But this forced me to get rid of some of the music I had in the background as it didn't fit too well with the quick second clips. I went from originally having four songs to three I might get rid of another one again, since I haven't finished editing, the songs might have to be changed around depending on how much changes I will make.

The magazine front cover photo has given me a few problems as the camera I used and the lighting has caused the image to become pixalated meaning that the pixels were shaped like a square instead of circles . Which wasn't good news as it made using Photoshop harder I had to spend a large amount of time cutting around the image to get it onto the background I wanted to use. I have done cutting and created a background now I am spending time adding texts and shapes to the magazine front cover.

Fonts

I experimented with different fonts and styles for my title of the movie, some of them have references to science such as the font that I used for warning signs in a dangerous area or products.

I have so far done parts of my trailer and taken my magazine picture, also have almost finished my poster.

Today i plan to

• fix a clip in my trailer that hasn't come out the way i hoped it would. I have to film extra clips so i can shorten the clip that isn't good.
• I also have to finish my magazine by adding the text and the conventions such as the barcode etc.
• For my poster i have other texts to add and the PG12 certificate.
• I will film at period 6 and 7 depending on how much I can get done.

Poster Mock Up

The mock-up is my intitial ideas on how i want my poster to look like. Where i wanted the title, actors name and other conventions of a poster. I was thinking of blurring the background to emphasize the two figures and make the actors stand out more. The mise-en-scene is in a science lab to portray what the movie is about. Also the sartorial code portrays what the movie is about as the girl is wearing a lab coat. The props i used are goggles, test tubes and beakers. In the image a contrast is there as the boy is uninterested in the subjetcs by face expression and body language as he looks at the object with confusion.




















 I also did another poster which is similar to the previous but was thinking of not having a mise-en-scene and have a more conventional romantic comedy poster. Which has initially a white background and the two characters in the centre such as "The Proposal" and "The Ugly Truth"  or very little content in the background this is is to make the focus point the characters. An exmaple of that is "Did You Hear About The Morgans" which has corn field surrounding the characters.

Photoshop

I took an example picture to familiarise myself with photoshop and explore the different effects before doing the final for my poster. I used the filter tool in this picture because i wanted to blur the background, to focus more on the two figure. I outlined the two figures

Name of the Movie: Chemical Reaction

Script

Scene 1-2
Voice Over: Nicholas Newman the jock; succeeds at everything, popular.

Katharine Matheson straight A Student; lacks style unsocial

Scene 3
Mr Hodge- your grades are slipping if you want to see the inside of Oxford University,

I suggest you get help from our class star Katharine.
Nicholas: Alright thanks

Scene 4
Voice Over: To get into oxford he had to change the schools outcast into a popular girl.

Scene 5-9
No dialogue just music in the background

Scene 10
Friend No.1 of Nicholas: Why are you hanging with that loser man.
Friend No.2 of Nicholas: Yeah man you are losing your touch
Nicholas: I am not losing my touch I just need to pass chemistry really bad.

Scene 12-13
Voice Over: Can they overcome their social status to be together.

Scene 13-14
Nicholas: Hey Katharine, which quizzes have u got for me now.

Research on Film Magazine Front Covers

Weekly Plans For Filming

Locations of Filming and Camera Angles

Storyboard

The duration of my teaser trailer is 43.5 seconds which is ther average duration of other teaser trailer as i have noted.

Treatment

Clumsy, geeky, A grade student, Katharine Matheson. Socially ignored by all lives in the chemistry lab Nicholas Newman, the jock, wants to get a scholarship. Girls drool over him! What makes these opposites cross paths? Simple, chemistry. Nicholas is failing chemistry and needs to pass everything with A’s to get the scholarship he wants from Oxford. His chemistry teacher, Mr Hodge suggests he seeks help from the class star Katharine to tutor him. Instead of Katharine feeling honoured to be able to tutor him and have a reason to talk to the prestigious jock he is, she is uninterested and not very nice, confused by her behaviour he approaches her again thinking that she should feel lucky since she is at the bottom with all the losers and geeks. Nicholas speaks to her again and says “I think you must of not heard me” which Katharine replies to “I heard you loud and clear, exactly how will it benefit me helping you”.

Having the genes of an arrogant male running through his veins, he had assumed every girl drools over him and caters to his every whim, he was in fact correct, every girl apart from Katharine. Knowing she isn’t giving in that easy he finds himself trying to concoct an idea of what she would want so he can receive her help. What he had seemingly looked over is the fact that she is just like every other girl, although her image portrays carelessness in style she is indeed crying out for help in that department. He presents his deal and she is resistant but ends up agreeing to it thinking it cant hurt trying out new things, she didn’t realise she was playing with dangerous substance, changing her style is going to have major effect in her social life as she has to talk to people she wouldn’t speak to.

As Nicholas is changing her sense of style and eating habits, she is completely transformed, while that’s happening Nicholas is learning and taking quizzes that Katharine gives him he is improving and achieving better grades. In the midst of all this there is a magnetic force pulling, attracting them together as they without knowledge begin to enjoy one another’s company. Some thing that’s just way out of their league is happening to them, could they be creating one chemical reaction that’s just inevitable?

Final Brief

As I have mentioned in my initial brief I am still sticking to doing the Film Promotion, the main product I will be doing is a teaser trailer and the two ancillary products are a film poster and magazine front cover, the genre of my main product will be Romantic/Comedy.

Target Audience
-Demographics- Females
- Between the ages of 12 to 18
- Students

-Psychographics- Interests in clothes and different style like a; “goth”, “emo”, “prep”, . casual, sport wear etc
- They would aspire to the rich lifestyles
- Into technology and gadgets

The similar media products I have researched are many other teaser trailers of the romantic comedy genre to get a feel of what the expectations and conventions of a teaser trailer would be. I have analyzed things such as representations of character, technical aspects such as the constructions of the one minute extract and even counting the cuts, looking at camera angles and diagetic and non diagetic sounds. Some of the romantic comedies I have researched are “The Proposal”, “The Ugly Truth” and "Never Been Kissed" looking at these has given me an idea of what to do. Other similar products I have looked at is different posters and magazine front covers to understand and know the conventions of a magazine cover such as masthead and teasers and analyzed the posters to look at the mise-en-scene and sartorial code in relevance to the movie itself.

My justification for picking this brief is that the romantic comedies are of the popular genres and have many very successful movies like “Love Actually” ,“Bridget Jones Diary” and “The Holiday” which made over 200,000,000 million at the box office globally, the success that is portrayed through these number encouraged me to do romantic comedy. Depending on how your romantic comedy does you know that there is a possibility of having a multimillion box office hit. But that isn’t my only reason for it as another is that women populate the cinema since the majority of romantic comedy audience are women this shows that there is potential profit in this choice theoretically speaking.

The representational issues aren’t major as I am going to use stereotypes such as the geeky clever school girl and the cool good looking jock, what led me to this decision was founding’s from my questionnaire during my audience research when I asked if stereotypes is an issue and the majority of participants said indifference. The stereotype I am going to use is going to engage my audience as they will empathize with my character not the dress code and the geeky elements but the isolations of the bigger crowed and the sense of being rejected, as this is something people will find easier to familiarize with as it has happened to people in different situations.

My narrative structure is linear structured.

My creativity comes form subverting generic convections of the romantic comedy posters, as I have seen that most are simplistic and have very little content, I am going to subvert that by having the mise-en-scene be in a school as that is the location of the teaser trailer. The place will be in a chemistry lab with tables and test tubes and other things, I have subverted it by still applying the contents of what the movie is about “chemistry” but have the environment busy not empty in the image.

The challenges anticipated is first and utmost finding an actor and actress willing to be in my teaser trailer, another is actually having access to the chemistry products and getting the help of a chemistry teacher willing to lend me the test tubes and other science equipments. A challenge I must also face is scheduling for filming and making sure my actors are available to attend since I cannot film without them.

The digital technologies I am going to be using is Imovie on the IMac computers for editing my teaser trailer and also the Photoshop software for my poster and magazine front cover. I will use the video cameras for filming and cameras for taking still images.

Film Magazine Research

Sight & Sound is different to other film magazines as it has a director on the front cover, this depicts that the readers are generally interested in not only actors but also the people behind the cameras. The directors are well established famous directors; this tells us that they will take interest in a director that is known as opposed to unknown directors. This magazine aims at a niche audience and not mainstream. This is because not many people take interest in the creating process of the movie, the mainstream audience are more interested in the actors/actresses and what they have to say.

Institutional Research

The distributor for the movie the proposal is Walt Disney studios motion pictures, their website is targeted at families this is visible through the bold primary colors used as a theme on the web page. The films they distribute have a very universal appeal; movies such as "Enchanted", "Bolt" and "G-Force". Romantic comedies, such as The Proposal, fit comfortably within their institutional identity as they have a mainstream appeal and are generally inoffensive.



The distributor of the movie “The Ugly Truth” is Colombia Pictures owned by Sony Pictures which is a subsidiary of Japanese Conglomerate Sony. It is one of the six leading film companies in the world. Columbia Pictures have also distributed other films such as “The Holiday”, “Maid of Honor” and “13 Going On 30” these are very successful romantic comedies , its debatable that what made the movie popular would be the narrative or the casting. The stars in the movie play a big role in promoting movies only if their are "A listers" an example of this is the movie “Made of Honor” which stared Patrick Dempsey the leading man in the TV hit series “Greys Anatomy” so the presumption would be that “Greys Anatomy” viewers would watch this film given their interest in the actor Patrick Dempsey.

Magazine analysis

Editing in Teaser Trailer

I have been watching some teaser trailers to gain an understanding of the average shot per second ratio. I looked at three romantic comedy trailers which were “The Proposal”, “Love Actually” and “The Ugly Truth”. I also looked at an action trailer because I wanted to see if there was a difference between the genres teaser trailers, what I have found was that there isn’t any difference the number of shots in the trailers were all roughly the same.
The structures of the narrative in the teaser trailer is non-linear as they chose clips that are of interest and best in the movie as the teaser, considering its only shown for a few seconds this entices the audiences in wanting to view more, which is the sole purpose of teasers attracting viewers.

Editing in Teaser Trailer

Product Research (Posters Analysis)

The conventions of a poster are easy to recognize because there aren’t many elements in the poster image itself, the elements are; main image of actor/actress (both) the title of the movie, usually a catchy pun would be used. Also of course the release date.

Product Research

For my product research i have decided to not only analyse the new films that are of the romantic comedy genre coming out this year, but also older movies like in the ninety’s that also are romantic comedy. My reasons for this is because I wanted to see if the similarities these trailers share and conventions an example of this is they reveal the basic plot to the audiences and don’t really hide the story apart from the end which makes the audience want to go see the movie. They reveal so much because they want to show how funny the movie really, of course the movie being a romantic comedy they have to have a general love interest.

The two movies i have chosen are The Proposal(2009) and Never been kissed (1999)

Major Findings

Representations of women - older film shows central female protagonist as struggling to establish career, whereas The Proposal women represented as established in career and career focused. Both films represent the females missing something amongst work and success, which is love, the films represent that ideology which is implemented into the narrative, the ideology has not changed in between the two movies however the representation of characters in the movies has.

Analysis of Romantic Comedy Teaser Trailers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rQjB0D7R10 (Click this link to view video)

The Ugly Truth:
The opening of the sequence is with a voice over stating the season the movie will be released. The voice over tries to engage the audience by telling them they can discover the ugly truth, this is a reference to the title of the movie. The characters are speaking through out the teaser trailer. The woman seems quiet uptight as oppose to the man who is relaxed and speaks with ease this helps the audience see that these characters wont get along very well. That’s the conventions of a romantic comedy as a conflict is needed between the two characters which make the audiences drawn to the narrative. The leading woman’s sartorial code is business style with the blazer and knee high skirts, this portrays to the audience that she is an intellectual woman who has a respectable job this appeals to modern women as they can relate to her lifestyle or aspire towards it. The leading mans clothing fits his persona very laid back and relaxed this conveyed by the casual wear he has which is a T-shirt and jeans, its also reflected in his formal wear as he wears a shirt but ditches the tie and suit, with a couple of buttons opened at the front. The humor is based around how to get men and sex this depicts to the audience what the comedy is about.

Results of my Questionnaire

The questionnaire I have conducted helped me with my project, like the expectations of my audience, who my audiences are and their aspiration, likes and dislikes. I have made my questions closed questions this allowed me to create graphs and understand their answers as opposed to open questions where it is difficult to show my results in a form of statistics.

My target audience are from 12-17, the reasons I have made that age group the target for this movie is because my movie is about school and the hardship in wanting to fit in and finding yourself, also admiring the people who are prestigious and popular. This is what school and college is about therefore my target audience are going to have many similarities with this movie.

Asking my audience about what they would consider a good opening of a movie gave me ideas on how I would construct my narrative in the beginning piece of the teaser trailer I will be creating, and the most popular answer was “an opening that doesn’t reveal much, but draws you into the movie” knowing this I am going to have to portray in my teaser the plot of the story, and the genre so the people who view it know that it’s a romantic comedy and easily understand the plot.

A question I knew was very important was the audiences take on stereotypes specifically in movies “What do you think about stereotypes?”, the result was interesting as it showed differently to what I had anticipated. More people circled indifference than dislike which conveys the lack of interest in stereotypes, this gave me a chance to explore stereotypes challenge them and comply to them.

A2 Advanced portfolio coursework

I had four choices of what my coursework was going to be on which were; “Film Teaser Trailer, Music Video, Documentary, Local TV news. I had immediately chosen teaser trailer for the reasons of me being familiar with movies from the coursework done last year, plus I thought that I couldn’t afford to take the risk in doing something like music video. The reason for that being that there were many restrictions that held me back, like I am not allowed to use a song with an existing video, also the genre of music I was going to use was hip hop/rnb which the video expectations by the audience are very high. Since I don’t have that kind of facility and money to meet their demands, I thought it will be a hard and complicated to make it appealing. The genre of my movie is romantic comedy and I have chosen that because it’s a popular genre amongst every one as both genders can enjoy this rom/com, given that I watch a lot of rom/com I think it will make my coursework easier.