Magazine Front

This is my final magazine front created using Adobe Photoshop.

Software used

Adobe After Effects: I used After Effects in order to make the title cards for my trailer as this is a more complex editing package which  allowed me to animate the text in turn making the overall trailer look more professional. To do this I first drafted out what I wanted to have on each title card. I then came up with having "2 cities" "2 teams " "2 rivers" which is the title of my film and the last shot in the trailer. After that I watched a tutorial video on YouTube showing how to animate text using the keyframe tool which paths the movement of the text. I then downloaded a lens flare update for After Effects which is a light effect which brings the text in with a flash. I used the lens flare to wipe in with the letters which is a convention used in trailers, this again makes my trailer look more professional and makes it more visually appealing to audiences.

I also used After Effects to create my institution logos as I looked at several trailers and most institution logos in trailers tend to be animated, so in order to make my trailer look more professional I felt I should also use an animated institution logo. I did this first by mind mapping several ideas for institution names. I then came up with "force one media" which I decided to animate having it come in from behind and large to then shrink to the centre of the page. I then copied this layer several times in order to give the logo more of an action feel which suited my style of film.

Adobe Premiere pro : I used Premiere Pro to both edit and generally put together my trailer as it is relatively easy to use and has all the tools and effects I need in order to create a successful trailer. I used the cropping tool in order to edit the various video clips I had filmed, I then put the clips together in the timeline along with the title cards I had made in After Effects and the two songs I had chosen for the trailer. I used various effects in Premiere Pro such as the fade effect at the end of my trailer which helped further convey a sense of enigma to the audience which would also encourage them to watch the film. I used also the rubber and sound tool which allowed me to drop the music volume which allowed the dialogue in my trailer to be heard more clearly. I also experimented with the cropping tool trying to have two videos together side by side, I tried this with the part of my trailer where the teams come together before the fight scene in the trailer. However I felt that this didn't look very good and decided that using straight cuts between the two sets of fans walking in looked better. I also used the snapshot tool on Premiere Pro which allowed me to take stills for the credit of my film so I could have a short movement then a still which is characteristic of film trailers similar to mine. It is done for all main characters and I only put the character's real names as this was a convention of films  similar to mine.


Adobe Photoshop: I used Photoshop to create both my film poster and my magazine front cover as it allowed me to make both texts look professional and allowed me to use several effects and fonts which I downloaded from Dafont.com which is a free font website.This enables you to type in the words you want in that particular font in order to test it, the font can then be downloaded to Adobe products. The fonts I used were called ABite and Abingdon both of which were relatively urban bold fonts which fitted in with the genre of my film. Photoshop also allowed me to use the layers to position the photo of the main character in my trailer over the magazine title which is characteristic of major magazines such as "Empire" the  style of which I am trying to emulate in my magazine front cover. I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the picture of the main character of my trailer out from the background. I also used the sharpen, brightness and contrast tools to enhance the image quality on both the pictures on my  front cover and my poster. I experimented with the levels tool on the pictures on my poster, making the Sunderland fans red and white and the Newcastle fans black and white which would allow audiences to instantly decipher which set of fans belonged to which team. However I felt this looked slightly un-professional so I removed the effect and just sharpened the images and placed the Sunderland characters (good) at the top of the page and the Newcastle supporters (bad) at the bottom of the page, I did this as it shows the roles the supporters have within the narrative and would allow the audience to accept the preferred reading of the poster as I had encoded it.. I also chose to put my main character in the middle as the eyes of the audience would be drawn to him first. With the two "sidekick characters" either side of him. However in the bottom picture both characters are central in the image which suggests that they are of equal importance.

Slideshare: I used slide share in order to put the PowerPoint I had created in Microsoft's PowerPoint on to my blog and this software allowed me to do so.

Rough Cut

This is a Rough Cut of My Trailer without title cards and proper Editing.

Music Permission Emails

Institution Logos

These are several ideas of Institution Logos I have made using Adobe After Effects Cs6  :

Planning The Music For My Trailer

I listened to several different styles and genres of music in order to find the right one for my trailer as I feel it can be a vital part of a trailer. I wanted the song to start off relatively slow paced and build up to be quite fast paced towards the end, with quite long instrumental parts which would reflect the overall mood of the trailer. I narrowed this down to a few ideas.

I chose this song Diary Of Jane by Breaking Benjamin as it has a quite slow paced but long instrumental start which can be used for the narrative part of the trailer, it then quickens pace which can show the more violent parts of the trailer.

I chose this dubstep instrumental as I feel it suits the mood and feeling of the trailer and as it's all instrumental which allows the words spoken by the characters to be clearly heard meaning the narrative of the trailer can be clearly conveyed to the audience.

This song Not Afraid By Eminem also has quite long instrumental aspects to it bu the Rap in it also gives it some what of an urban gritty feel which fits in with the genre and style of my film.

This song is an instrumental version of Sing For The Moment By Eminem. It is quite slow paced emotional music which I plan to use at the start of my trailer. It is also useful to build up to the action parts towards the end of the trailer.

This Song is Underdog by Kasabian which I plan to use in the fight sections of my trailer as it is quite high tempo which would relate to what audiences would see on the screen.

Rationale for Magazine Front

This is a very basic outline as to what I want my magazine front cover to look like.However, I plan to use a much more muted colour scheme in order to conform to the conventions of this style of film and create a kind of urban gritty feel. For my main image on the magazine front cover I plan to have a picture of my main character Dan with his hood up giving connotations of his character's role through audience recognition of visual codes of clothing, I plan to take the picture from a low angle which gives a sense of dominance. I plan for my title "TOTAL FILM" to be in the top section of the magazine front cover slightly below the masthead. I want the main image on my magazine front to cover the two middle letters in the title as this is characteristic of better known film magazines such as "Empire". I plan to write the sell lines in a black handwriting using an style/urban font which gives the magazine style and helps it appeal to a younger target audience as well as a potential older target audience allowing maximum target audience appeal. The tag line of the magazine will be positioned just under the magazine's mast head which again is characteristic of similar magazines. Along the bottom of the magazine I plan to put articles covered in the magazine. As for the colour scheme, I plan to use a 3 colour scheme involving red, white and black which are all colours featured in both the trailer and my main image which helps create synergy across all media platforms.