Magazine Cover Ideas

Title: Cursed
Tagline: Be Aware!
Size: A4
Format: Portrait
Issue: May 2010
Price: £3.99
Colours: Black, Blue, Grey, White, Purple
Feature Film: Friction
Content: Interviews, Posters, Images
Other: Barcode, Names

This was the initial template design for our Magazine cover.  We have decided where we wanted to place the text such as Magazine cover titles and graphics on the screen. This made decision making much easier as only a few changes where made to the final magazine cover.

Final Magazine Cover

This is our final magazine cover perfected from all of our drafts and initial ideas of a magazine. We were pleased with how all of the colours blend and work together to make it a horror orientated cover, for example, the red blood contrasting with the black background. Also, we felt that we had enough text on the cover but not enough to distract audiences from the image or the title. 

We feel that the Friction title was particularly effective as it was the same style of text that we used in the real trailer, also the blood splattering conformed to horror stereotypes making it easier for audiences to identify our magazine as horror related. 

Our favourite part was the 'CURSED' header and the tagline; 'Britain's Number One Horror Magazine'. We felt that we could slightly improve the style of the white text but from our feedback we decided to leave it and it completed the style of our magazine cover.

Film Poster Influences

Although the movie ‘Cloverfield’ isn’t linked in anyway to our film ‘Friction.’ We thought the poster was successful, the layout works really clearly with the strong photograph of The Statue of Liberty, and the other writing and information appearing underneath.

Also, it is a very powerful film poster because of the subliminal element, in the top right corner there are a group of clouds that very subtlety show the 'Cloverfield' monster.

We want our film poster to feature one large photograph of a location, that takes up the whole of the poster and to have some writing over the top. Too much writing can ruin the effect, so the majority of text will appear towards the bottom.

We need to experiment on photoshop to see which photograph looks better, and make several posters to see which one is the most effective.

Text Feedback

Does your trailer work as a trailer? Does it make the audience want to see them?

- "I think 'Friction' does work well as a trailer, although there are some elements of a thriller film, its almost like a mix of some other genres."

Is the genre of the film clearly established by the trailer?

- "Yeah mostly, it was clear that it was some form of a horror, the trailer was dark and suspenseful."

What aspects/features/shots/messages are most effective?

- "The extreme close ups and zooms were very effective."

What narrative sense did audiences make of the trailer? What did they ‘understand’ about the film’s narrative from the trailer?

- "You can tell the trailer is a horror, and it has themes of paranoia, anxiety and suspense which makes the narrative seem psychological and perhaps partly thriller".

Was the trailer too long/too short?

- "I think the trailer was just the right amount of time as the music worked well in the background and I think that if the music had just stopped it wouldn’t of had the same effect."

Did the trailer sustain the interest of audiences?

- "Yes, the music and fast editing helped sustain interest and keep the mood of the trailer exciting."
Did the music work? Did it sit well alongside the text and images? Did it help establish genre etc?

- "Yeah the music worked well, I think that the music went really well alongside the images and shots, it helped to create a sense of the film and how the character was feeling."

Character Images

This is a snapshot of the killer in our film trailer, it was taken from Scene Four and represents the characters image well. This is because little is known about him and the audience never learn his name, whereabouts or even what he looks like. This is hidden well through the dark clothing that he wears as well as his mysterious presence on screen. The only time the killer is fully shown in the trailer is making his way to Isabel's house. 

This image is a snapshot of Michael, one of the main characters and victims of our storyline. It was taken from a deleted scene of Michael speaking on the phone to another one of the victims, he is being told that the the body that they found and left is alive and still out there. This represents Michael how we wanted, as he is the most anxious and paranoid of the characters that were involved. This is mostly because he has no alterior motive and is not a killer or murderer and more of a normal guy. This is addressed through the normal clothing that he is seen in and his day to day lifestyle and personality.

Above is a picture of Reece, the other male victim that stars in the film. It was extracted from Scene Four and shows Reece opening the car to his door ready to leave his house. This is before anybody is able to tell him that the body they left is in fact out there. Therefore, he is unaware of the risk he lies in and less caring of the predicament than Michael. This is symbolized later in the trailer, for it is Reece who is attacked by the killer and not Michael.

Final Poster

This is our final poster for our horror film 'Friction'. We used the conventions we researched from our poster analysis. For example, the correlation many horror posters share is the black-edged format and dark imagery. In our poster, we wanted to make clear use of this black out technique and keep the majority of the design dark and mysterious.

We achieved this by using bright white text on a black background to build a contrast and make either layer stand out. The tagline and other less important information we didn't want to confuse with the title so we made that font grey and that way it could blend in more.

The most important feature of the poster is the film title 'Friction' and next is the release date so audiences know when to anticipate the film. Also, we used a film rating certificate and added that to the poster, as our film would be shown to restricted audiences and felt that it was an appropriate feature to include on the film poster.

If we could improve our poster any further it would be by adding a second image into the poster to give it variety and perhaps show our audiences another location in the film. The image itself is good in a photographic sense but alongside another one of a character or even the killer it would work better.

A second change would be to centre the Restricted logo at the bottom to give the poster an overall theme of symmetry as well as making the train lines in the image emphasised. Also, the release date could be more aesthetically pleasing by adding a border around it and lightening the colour of the film credits on the poster.

Editing

The basis of our editing was done through Final Cut Pro 5. By importing the footage we had already captured, it allowed us to drag files to the timeline and then cut the best take or shot out of the sequence.

All together we actually had 56 minutes of footage and managed to edit our trailer down to a duration of only 50 seconds. This means we only used a 67th of all the footage we captured in our final trailer.

Shooting The Trailer

Scene One - 90 Minutes

Scene Two - 45 Minutes

Scene Three - 30 Minutes

Scene Four - 120 Minutes

Scene Five - 45 Minutes

Total Filming Time - 330 Minutes

The easiest scene to shoot was scene four because there was little to adjust on the set and it was simpler in terms of most of it being The Killer walking towards the house. The hardest to film however, was the scene in the car because of the lack of space and angles to shoot from.