Construction of Film Magazine

My original masthead and background.

I began searching for an appropriate font for my Masthead and came across a font called ‘Magnum’. This I liked and decided for it to be the name of my magazine.

I then set about creating the masthead itself, I used emboss to get a slightly 3D feel to the title, making the magazine have cutting edge undertones.

From here I really studied what other features on a front cover other magazines had and put these into mine. Things like price, awards won by the magazine, date etc.

This is after studying other magazines

I decided at this point that what I had did not suit a horror issue of a film magazine and so I altered a number of the colours. I also began to think about the picture that would be placed in the centre. It was suggested to me that I find a picture online that looks like the picture I would finally want and to photoshop that in to mind, just to see if it works at all.

This is with altered colours and a template of what I want as the picture.

I also had to design the title of the movie, ‘Magdalene’. This was done by selecting a font from ‘dafont’ and using it in photoshop. Having seen this mock up I was not entirely sure that this is what I wanted so I changed my ideas slightly. I liked the red background, especially how the church looked n the background. I kept that effect but instead of it covering a building it covered my face as a close up. As you can see in this picture I altered the brightness and hue.

Here I altered the hue and saturation, as well as the brightness.

Here is my finished magazine cover and the comments made thereon by facebook.

The reviews of the magazine front cover were generally positive and this pleased me greatly. I liked a lot about this particular piece as I do think it looks quite professional. From the picture, with a sinister lack of eyes to the font and the masthead. In general, the people in class to whom I showed this said that it worked well, especially the colouration.

Construction or Film Poster

The glass of blood.

Gave me initial inspiration

For a long while I had had no ideas for a film poster, with my film magazine taking precedence. I looked over the internet for anything that may have inspired an idea and came across the Pandorum poster. This lead me to the idea of having an arm as the main point of my poster and to show blood being drained away from it.

I created a synthetic blood by combining honey and red dye, this gave it a thick enough look to pass as blood. I then pured some into a glass and took pictures.

Next, I dribbled a small amount onto my arm, to suggest a cut or wound, and then then took pictures.

I uploaded both pictures into photoshop and cut around them with the magic wand tool. I then placed them one above the other and slightly darkened the arm, as it was too bright.

I then added a cracked rock effect to the arm, this added a slightly aged effect to the poster, making it seem a little ancient, closely tied to the religious aspect of my trailer. I also added a ‘plastic wrap’ effect to the glass, this came through experimentation of various styles and seemed to work to cover up the obvious streak of light reflected on the glass.

This is where I darkened the image of my arm and 'plastic wrapped' the cup

Made to look like a wound.

I also then added in the background, this was simply a very light grey with white streak down the centre. I tried with various other colours, including black but found the contrast of ‘horror’ and the purity of white, or at least largely white, interesting.

I then added in the quote at the top of the poster, from my magazine, and then a strapline for the movie.

At this point I felt the poster was still a bit bare and so I looked online for photoshop brushes, I found a set that had blood stains and blood drops so I used these to create the blood effects.

I moved these around for a while before deciding finally where to place them. I didn’t want to have too much writing at the top of the poster but needed to leave enough room for the titl

e to stand across the bottom of the page.

These decisions took me a while to get into place but I finally found a suitable place to put them. The other consideration was the font. Should I have the strapline and the magazine quote as the same font, I decided not to as this did not look pleasing.

Finally arranged and in place I added the names of the actors involved, placed the title of the movie across the bottom and was finished.

Here is my final poster – 

Here are comments made about it on facebook. 

I was generally quite pleased with the poster and how it turned out and the comments were generally positive. I do agree however that the names of the actors could perhaps have been improved upon if they were bolder. Even, perhaps if they were smaller but in a bolder font. My intention, opposed to the first comment, was not to sell the movie by using the actors names as the names are unknown, instead the poster itself was supposed to be the selling point.

Construction of Film Trailer

Once everything had been uploaded from the camera I began editing. I had had few ideas of how to arrange my trailer up to this point. I knew only that it should be quick and snappy, at least in places, to create a sense of panic and I had to have a few longer clips too, to add a slight amount of suspense before a quick set of snappy shots. With only really this in mind I set to work. As with my Jan Svankmajer project I began by taking all of my footage and chopping it up into seperate scenes, once this was done I began arranging it roughly into an order that told some kind of story. By this point I’d had an idea for music, it was a track by The Beatles called Happiness is a warm gun, there were no guns in any of my scenes but it was not the lyrics that were hugely important for my choice, it was the sound, mainly the guitar solo, that drew me to it.

So I uploaded the song into iMovieHD and set about reducing its length, this wasn’t too difficult as the song is clearly arranged into seperate sections so I cut out the sections I didn’t want. Once this was done I began cutting up my roughly arranged clips into carefully timed clips that coincided with the music. Doing this took up a good portion of time but once it was done I needed to put in title screens. I knew there should be the screen with the actual films title on it but I wanted more, somethig othe than just a title, a quote? a lyric? etc. I thought for a while then decided due to the religious themes involved in my film I would go for a bible quote, something about the eucharist. I went online to search for bible quotes, finding a huge array of websites willing to help.

Adding transitions my clips.

I chose the line ‘This is my blood, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins’ Matthew 26:28. This I felt could coincide nicely with the film poster which does involve blood. After placing this quote in and arranging everything properly I played my trailer to a few people to get feedback. The biggest concern expressed by most people was that they didn’t really understand the storyline. I realised then that to an outside eye, somebody not previously aware of the storyline, the story was not clear at all and in fact rather than not telling a story at all, told a different story entirely. The other concern was music, whether it worked well or not. I personally thought the music did work well, it had enough of an eerie and raw sound that it helped create an horror atmosphere, the line ‘Mother Superior jumped the gun’ is repeated over and over as the music builds up towards a climax which I felt worked well in leading the trailer to its resolution. It was not to be and with the voice of the people saying get rid of it, most people anyway, I changed it. My main concern now was arranging these clips into another order so as to give a better understanding of my storyline, first I needed new scenes. I took the camera that night and filmed with a friend in my village. This new footage included a clip of somebody speaking, something I did not use the first time round. So I now set about arranging these clips into a workable order but was again struggling with the lack of music to guide me, so I roughly placed everything in an order that made chronological sense and went in search of music, it had been suggested to me when people had watched my last attempt as to what kind of music they thought would work and gregorian/ choral chanting was something tha came up, perhaps even something slightly remixed  to have more of a beat. This search took a very long time, I could not find anything that I felt would work, I asked other people what they thought of certain pieces and they too agreed that there was little that would work. I abandoned, temporarily, my search for music and tried cutting the scenes down into an interesting progression. After another attempt at finding music I came across something that worked and immediately put it into iMovie HD to cut it up. Once this was done I could set about tidying up the clips and making them coincide with the music after doing this it was suggested that there was not enough reference to the book in my trailer so I quickly

Inserting the movie title as a still frame in my trailer.

filmed a clip of a large old looking book being slowly turned by an anonymous hand wearing a large, stonemason-esque ring. I then placed this as a quick flash at various points throughout the trailer. Having done this I then realised that I had not placed back in my title screens and that by doing so I’d move the timing of my piece out by enough that i’d have to go round and sort out the timings for the music throughout. Luckily I managed to rearrange the scenes in such a way that this was avoided. So here is my finished Trailer  –