In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media products

How Effective is The Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction and Research and Planning and Evaluation Stages

What Did You Learn From Your Audience Feedback

FINAL MAGAZINE COVER

FINAL MAGAZINE POSTER

OFFICIAL TRAILER

Font Finalised

The main title of 'The Taker' is now complete. Using the 'crime time six' font we then changed the colour of the font to a dark red. We chose red as red is a reoccurring theme throughout our trailer, magazine cover and poster and want to continue that synergy. Also as it is a horror film and red usually is a signal of blood and danger I feel as though it is very appropriate in getting the genre across. This was the last major piece needed too complete our magazine and poster.

Our own credits

Here are our own credits that we made and that we will use not only in our trailer but also on our poster.

End Credits

A key convention of horror trailers is the end credits where actors, studios, and production teams are listed. We designed our own end credits so that we could use them to make our media pieces look more professional. The credits were made on iMovie and I feel is a nice touch to our overall work that makes it that little bit better.
                              
Here is two examples of posters where credits have been used. They are often placed at the bottom of the page so we will try to do the same in our poster.

Magazine so far

This is our magazine so far and I believe it is coming along quite well. The date, price and barcode have all been put in along with the website adress. The photo was put in first and edited so that we could work all the other conventions into the magazine around the photo as it is the main feature of the cover.

The 'JDT' logo has been put into the magazine cover as a puff as it is a giveaway. We noticed many magazines do this and thought it was a good idea to include it in ours to encourage readers more to pick it up. The red combines well considering that the masthead is red and that we have also used a red tint ove rour main image.

This is just the beginning and more work is still to be done.

Font

After deliberating on the two other fonts shown before we came across one that tops all the rest and will be used. It is called times crime six and was also found on DaFont. I feel as though it has the scary edge we are looking for as a group and would go well with our magazine.

 

3D Effect

We felt as though something had to be done to the photo of the taker walking and carry his weapon to make it epic and catch peoples attention. After experimenting with different effects and tints we found a kind of blurred 3 dimensional type effect. Immediately I knew this was what we wanted and everyone else in the group also liked it. This not only gives a 3D effect but also gives the illusion of blurred vision as if a victim has been hit by the caretakers pole and is suffering from it.

Here is how the photo is looking so far and we are not sure whether we should leave the colour as it is or brighten it and add a red tint to it as seen below.

Changes to Masthead

With the 'empire' magazine masthead we decided to include a red blood splatter just behind the masthead to give the feel of this magazine being a unique edition. At first we experimented putting the blood splatter effect on both sides of the masthead as seen below:

However we felt as though this was too much and was not necessary so instead left it to the left hand side as everyone naturally reads from left to right so it would grab the audiences attention immediately. As you can see the usual empire masthead is plain whereas with ours there is the splatter which adds an exciting new element to our cover which others do not have.

Editing Cover Photo

After capturing our desired photo and uploading it to photoshop we added some effects to make the photo look even better than the original. A red tint was placed across the image and we also reduced the darkness on the photo slightly as we felt although the original photo was a good shot it was too bright to convey the image we wanted.

Here is what the photo looked like before and after it had been edited;

Here is what the photo looked like originally and although a good photo some changes had to be made to it.

We then adjusted the levels of the photo too make the blacks stand out as you can see this photos colours stand out a lot more than in the original photo giving it a distinctive edge.

After this we then added a red tint to the entire cover photo by altering the colour balance on photoshop. We used the red as it is the colour of blood and we wanted to make our magazine that little but scarier which I believe we achieved.

Font Ideas

Here is a few examples of fonts that we are thinking about using on our magazine cover. These fonts were taken from the website DaFont. Here are two fonts that attracted our eye at first;

This website gives us access to good fonts and allows us to get a indication of what it would look like in the text of our choice.

Diamond in the rough ?

While editing the trailer we came across a nice shot that we believe could be changed into a still image and used for our poster instead of the villains the face. To keep the audience guessing about what the villain looks like until they actually see the film or trailer we have decided to use the villain but not his face. In this new image you see the caretakers leg with his hand by his side carrying his signature weapon, the metal pole.

We feel this is very effective as it looks as though he is walking towards someone to hurt them and does not give too much about him away which will keep the audience on their toes. We will add certain effects to the image to make it even more spectacular as editing continues...

Editing trailer, magazine and poster

The editing of all our products is coming along very well. Me and Tiyanna have been taking care of the editing of the magazine cover and poster while Deborah has been editing the trailer.

Having used Photoshop during last years AS Media the process has not been too difficult so far. It is only the beginning and there is still a lot of work to be done to complete all three pieces to a high standard however so far I feel as though everything is coming along well together and the group is working well together which makes everything that bit easier.

Decision on cover image

Here is another image drawn up which we believe will now be our definite cover photo.

Although research showed one main character on the cover of magazine we wanted to be different from the usual and create something that stood out in comparison to the typical covers. This is why we chose a group cover photo with the inclusion of weapons as it is rarely seen done. As previously said in the first cover drawing of just Brogan we still want to encorporate weapons into the image. The two boys would stand at the back (myself and Zain) with there respective girlfriends standing just in front. Brogan, the final girl would be standing in a more central role to show her importance as the final girl and the significant role she will play throughout the film.

The Poster

In terms of the poster we decided to use the image that was going to be used for the magazine cover (the villains face) and instead use it on the poster. We felt as though this would work better as the photo was already very effective but did not work well on magazine. However on the poster we feel as though we could manipulate the image through the use of Photoshop effects and create a compelling poster image still without giving too much away about the villains look/identity.

Trademark?

We wanted a official trademark that could be apparent in our media pieces so that when the logo it is seen you know it is our groups work. After looking around on the 'Official PSDS' website we found a blood splattered icon which we liked the look of. After adding text to the icon the finished product looked like this:

The 'JDT' stands for Jamel, Deborah and Tiyana all of our first initials from the group. I feel as though this is a great logo design which gives our work a bit of an edge and makes it identifiable to everyone one they see it. The logo was used in our trailer as well as our magazine front cover.

Rough cover image drawing 1

Here is an rough image drawn by Tiyana of what our new group cover photo for our magazine cover may look like:

After looking at most magazine covers it was noticed that it is often the main character/actor/actress who is the lone feature on the cover. This led us to think about using our final girl as the main image for our magazine. We wanted to somehow still include weapons in the photo as the weapons play a huge role in our trailer especially in her case as the final girl as she has confrontations with the villain and often escapes with the use of a weapon.

Changes to Magazine Cover

Constructive criticism from our media teachers led us to think about changing our magazine cover image. After looking at other horror covers we noticed that the villain was never pictured on the cover as it is usually the actors and actresses that are featured inside the magazine that make people want to pick up and buy the magazine. After looking at this we decided as a group to take new group photos of the cast and use one of them as our main cover photo.

Initial front cover design

Initially our front cover was going to use a close up of the villains face as its image. We used this as at first we thought it would be very effective and was a good way of letting the audience know that it was a horror film as a masked man is quite often linked to horror and violence.