REVIEW: Analysing Design & Language Conventions of Magazine Reviews

(From left to right - Empire, FHM, Sight & Sound) In order to write our film review, it was important to determine which magazine we would use as inspiration based on their target audience.

We know our film is classified as a drama as apposed to a horror or an action and the more manly magazines like FHM and Empire, are more likely to review films that are action for example.

The readers of FHM aren't necessarily interested in lenghty texts that are in-depth, they prefer straightforward, summarising reviews ("who? what's it about?" headings) with a sense of humour.

The readers of Empire are interested more the review itself. It is mainly the writing that dominates the page. But despite the readers having a slight difference of interesents it's reviews are mostly about male orientated genres

Sight & Sound offers completely different language conventions. The language in the Sight & Sound reviews takes on a more sophisticated approach in it's laguage and design. The pictures are placed at the top then later, mid review. They're the same size and are both stills of the review.

When regarding the magazines themselves, FHM is not a film magazine so it's to be expected that the review would be brief, whereas in Sight & Sound, an established film magazine, there is much more text.

POSTER: Drafting/ Editing

Before

This is the image we used for our film poster. As we were planning to put a frame around the image, it had to be cropped. All of the editing was through Macromedia Fireworks.

We decided that as our framing suggests the girl is the main focus, we wanted to make that clearer so we blurred the area surrounding using the blur tool and used the smudge tool on the areas closer the the girl for precision. In order to make the scissors appear more dangerous we used the sharpen tool. By making the scissors sharper, it makes the girl appear more innocent, again provoking sympathy from the audience.

After

POSTER: Choosing most appropriate images

[Include other possible pictures for poster]

We had various other pictures we could have used but we decided to use the one of just the girl.
Choosing an image of the "parents" would not have conveyed the message that we wanted to give. It would have suggested a happy family, and having the title as Torn would have suggested that this happy family would perhaps be in trouble and we felt that was too obvious. Given the ideology of our target audience, we valued that an obvious poster would have almost been insulting. We wanted a subtle way of hinting that the protagonist (the young girl) is in some sort of trouble or danger (hence the scissors) without being too obvious. Having her back towards the camera made it more of a mystery as much like most of the film, we aren't entirely aware of her feelings or intentions. This mystery made the poster more intriguing therefore capturing a further interest and enticing an audience to watch the film.

POSTER: Exploring fonts

Here are examples of different fonts that we considered. We considered going with a paper styled font to represent a "torn" affect but also found that a fairy tale, more scripted style may suit also as it could represent the innocence of the young girl.

We mainly took inspiration from calligraphy on dafont.com

http://www.dafont.com/

POSTER: Sketching possible images/fonts

In order to create our film poster we sketched a rough drawing of the type of image we wanted:

It was important for us to make the scissors stand out as they conveyed a sense of danger. Having them as important point in the film poster suggests danger. Given the innocence of the young girl heightens the danger being suggested. This sketch is a mix of influences from everyone in the group. As a group, we decided that we would make the girl the center of the poster as it shows her importance of a character. We also made a decision to sketch a "frame" around her as it follows the theme of pictures and photos.

POSTER: Analysing conventions of film posters

In order to understand the conventions used to create a film poster, we analysed the poster to the film 'The Silence of The Lambs'.
Film posters are a crucial part of advertising as they attract a large amount of varied people. Posters often show that regardless of your preferred genre, you can be subconsciously interested in a film before you even know what it is about.

This poster for The Silence Of The Lambs is a good example of a film poster. The detail within the picture has an enigmatic nature. It also allows us to gain a rough idea as to what the film is about.
The close-up of the film poster shows that the skull upon the moth is made out of distorted images of naked women. It suggests that this could be a theme throughout the film and attracts the audience as due to it's disturbing nature. The moth is also covering the woman's mouth, which suggests an inability to talk or scream for help perhaps. Also the woman's eyes are also tinted a dark red colour suggesting danger.

After carrying out research of the conventions of film posters, it posed potential ideas for our own poster. Despite this poster having hidden meanings I like the subtlety of it. It inspired me to create a way of getting perhaps quite a deep meaning but through subtle ways for our own film poster.

FILM: Researching other short films

Before we could just go ahead and create our own short films, we saw it necessary to do some research into other existing short films by searching them on YouTube.

Researching various short films will give me an outline of what short films should, or should not, consist of.

One short film I researched was called "One Bad Day"



This short film is, to me, a prime example of how limited dialogue, or no dialogue at all, can still prove effective.

I also looked at another short film entitled "Picnic". This film aided me in realising the different conventions of a short film. For example the limited dialogue and also that the story doesn't necessarily have to be too complex.