Film Examples

Before making our film, we decided to go onto 'watch the titles' and look at some example films to get some ideas of how we would make ours. We were going to make an animated film but went against the idea as it would be too difficult to make and would take a really long time to complete it. We've decided to use real people in our film we're making.

Examples:

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00169-Se7en - In this intro they use a lot of close up shots and a few shots are used where they use birds eye view. Shot reverse shot is also used frequently in this intro. This film intro uses real people instead of animated characters.

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/0086-Run_Papa_Run - This film intro is good as it uses both real people but also animation in part of it as well.

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/0028-30_Days_of_Night - The main shots in this intro is close up, eye-level shots.

All of these film intro examples I've looked at have been horror as that's what our film genre is based on as well. However I did look at a few other genres as well just to compare them and pick out any differences they had.

Film Intro

For our coursework we all had to decide whether to do a magazine cover or film intro. I decided to do a film and pair up with Ella Goodliffe. We had a double lesson where we sat down and talked about ideas for our film intro, we finally decided after lots of planning to do a scary,action film. After deciding the genre for the film we went onto 'www.watchthetitles.com' and looked through lots of example films to try and get some more ideas to make our films. We were going to do an animated film but found out it would be too hard to do so stuck with using real people instead.

The shot types we are planning to do are medium long shots,close up shots,birds eye view and zoomed out shots. We decided to do these different shots to make our film more interesting. Using a range of different shots will add more suspense to our film.






While researching different films I watched lots of examples of film openings. Most of them were animated and some were good whereas others were not as detailed.


Examples: http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00187-The_Final_Destination



http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00169-Se7en


Both these film intro's are good even though one is animated whereas the other one uses real people. Both these film openings relate to ours as they are to do with horror.





We will use music in our film throughout it and when there are tense moments then we'll change the music a bit. Along with the music, we will use sound effects for certain moments in our film intro. For tense moments, we will build up the moment to it using the music.


In our film we're having one main character which is going to be me and use someone else to be the person chasing them. The setting we are going to make our film in will be in someones bedroom to start off the film and then in an abandoned place where no one will be, for the second half of it.


For audience research we are going to show our film and then hand out a questionnaire to people to answer and give their opinions on what they thought of our film.






The music we're going to use in each scene will be different. In the bedroom we will use up to date chart music that the character is playing whilst she gets ready for bed then as soon as she gets into bed the music will stay on and the opening credits will come across the screen. The music will change when the credits have been on and it will go into the dream where we'll use sound affects then use another song when she starts to get chased.



We are going to try and use all the different types of shots to make our video look better, the close up shots will be used for when she's in bed and for emotion on people's faces. The long distance shots will be used when there is a action scene and the character is running away for example. When she falls over at the end of our film then we have decided to use a birds eye view shot of her on the ground.

Grazia Questions

•How do they market Grazia?
–Who is it aimed at? It is aimed at people who like magazines and it's mainly upmarket woman in their 30's who tend to buy it. They are high spenders on fashion and beauty every week.

–How often is it published? Grazia is a magazine that published weekly.

–What content does it include? The content it includes is mainly fashion,celebrities,real life, lifestyles,offers and health and beauty.

How does Grazia Differ? It differs because it focuses on mainly fashion and certain stories.

Why is it successful internationally? I think it's successful internationally because everyone either likes celebrities,fashion or both. Also everywhere in the world there are upmarket woman.

Grazia continues to be a successful magazine because it sticks to it's same content and layout, howeber just adds in up to date stories every week.

•What priority does it give to certain stories? Why do you think this is? The priortiy it gives to certain stories are the main celebrity story on the front as that is what gets people interested e.g from the large photo and catchy titles.


•What type of story does it consider to be the most important each week? The story it considers to be the most important is the main celeebrity story and the weeks 'hottest' fashion offers. This is because the magazine is mainly about fashion and celebrities so that is why they put it on the front cover.

A typical Grazia cover layout would be a very large photo of the celebrity the main story is about on the front and possibly half of the title 'Grazia' being covered with the photo. Also the colour of the title changes every week from either, yellow,pink,white or red. Also it has offers and catchy slogans to get you interested on the cover in bold writing as well.

Grazia could widen it's target audience by changing some of the things in it to make it more interesting for younger generations as well as 30+. They could add more celebrities and also have a cleebrity blog in there that gets updated every week for the magazine like OK! have.

The conventions it uses to make sure it's audience buys it's magazine is that it uses offers on the front to get people interested in possibly buying it as they can get something for free or cheaper than usual.

The gender suggests it is for females and you can tell this from the colours it uses on the cover e.g pink title and it has females fashion inside and more females prefer reading about celebrities more than males probably do.

The articles inside confirm my ideas because all it has is females clothes/shoes/accessorie/make up etc and nothing to do with men in there. Also the offers are to do with things females would associate with. Also everything inside is aimed at woman e.g stories,advice,beauty.

Evaluation Of Magazine

How closely did you stick to your planning? What were the challenges in doing this?

I stuck to my plan quite well as I drew out how I wanted my magazine to look and what I wanted

in it then when I came to start making my magazine I went back and looked at it. The challenges in trying to stick to my plan were trying to actually do the same sort of design on photoshop as it was much harder to try and do it on Photoshop.

Did you find the planning helpful? Why?

I didn't really find the planning helpful because I planned it out quite detailed on paper, then when it came to making it on the Macs I found it really difficult trying to design it like the way I drew it out.

How did you find the process of finding and cropping your original image?

Finding and cropping the image I found okay as I know how to get an image and put it on Photoshop and also know how to crop and make the image bigger.

How easy was it to manipulate your image using Photoshop?

I found it quite hard to change my image on Photoshop because I didn't know how to do it and it was confusing to do.

What have you learnt from the process about creating covers and contents

pages?

I have learnt that it's quite difficult to use Photoshop but also you can do many things to make your magazine look good.

What would you do differently next time?

If I could do it again I would make quite a few changes such as taking some more photos then doing a better collage of them in the middle. Also I would spend less time on the front cover so I could have a decent amount of time making my contents page as well.

I like how the photos are arranged on the left and how every other piece of writing is a different size font to the one before. Also I like how they've got the name of the college and logo on the contents as well.

I dont like how the word 'contents' is right above the name of the college because it looks to confusing to read, so I think they should put the word 'contents' underneath and in a different font.

I don't like this contents page because of the black background and white writing as it is quite hard to read it and the red writing underneath it is too small to read.

However I like how it just has one main photo and some cartoon pictures at the bottom and the layout is easy to read.

I don't like this contents page because the writing is too small to read and for a school magazine i thin there's too much in it as the contents page goes up to about 50. However I like how the picture has been drawn and the way 'contents' sits on top of the picture makes it more detailed.

I like this contents page, because it is laid out neatly and is spaced out so it's easy to read. I also like how it has a 'top story of the month' which is highlighted in a different colour which makes it stand out and makes it more likely for people to turn to that page first. The audience for this magazine is students and teachers at the school as its about everything happening at the school. The colour scheme they use is purple,black and white which go well together and doesn't make it clash.

School Magazine:

I like this magazine because it has pictures on the front that are colourful that makes it stand out and also there is hardly any writing on it so you don't need to read a lot to find out what its about as the pictures explain it mostly.

WhatI don't really like about it, is that it has a plain, black backgroundand the title is quite boring as they have just putit in italics to try and make it look better.

I like this magazine as the title is a mixed colour and bold so it stands out really well, also it has a photo to cover the whole background of the cover and the 'R' in the word sport is being covered by a bit of the photo.

The things I don't like about this front cover is the writing is yellow and white so it is really hard to read it, especially from a distance.

I dont like this front cover because it looks like it was made in about 10 minutes and the background and writing is very plain and boring to look at.

Also the photo doesn't really look right on the front because it's just a photo of a girl.

I like how it says 'strictly for students' as you know what sort of audience it is aimed at and who should buy it.

This magazine is a school magazine but it's just about sports. I like it because it has one large picture and it stands out off the page and it only uses one colour writing (red) which makes it more professional.

School Magazines Research

Who Is The Audience? The audience is mainly adults who probably have children at school or who want to find out what's going on where they live. I can tell it's a adults magazine from the titles on the front cover which wouldn't appeal to children.

How Do They Appeal To Their Audience?It appeals to the audience as the photo is really big and stands out as it is directly in the middle of the front cover. Also it would appeal to different audiences as it has a variety of different stories in it.

What Types Of Stories Do They Cover? The stories they cover are schools,lifestyle and different charities. They also add in FREE offers to try and get you interested in reading/buying it. As the gift in this magazine is for John Lewis, it shows that the audience would be quite posh if they shop in John Lewis compared to if they shopped in ASDA. It looks like a private school from looking at the logo and the name of the school.

What Are Typical Names? The typical names are usually the names of the school that it's about. However on this magazine it's not the name of the school so it might not be a school magazine, and just a local magazine talking about the school as the main story. The name of the school is on the left underneath the title which also has the school logo above it as well.

Layout & Colour? The layout is neatly set out and the colours are green, white and grey so there's not too many colours that makes it over-crowded. Also the school logo and uniform is green as well which fits in with the colour scheme.

Who Is The Audience? The audience is for students in school and who probably like going to the library. I can tell this from the photo on the front cover and the sub-title as well.

How Do They Appeal To Their Audience? It would appeal as there is hardly any writing and a big colourful photo that stands out on the front.

What Types Of Stories Do They Cover? The main story it covers is the new library.

What Are Typical Names? The magazine is called Student Times and a lot of national newspapers are called 'times' as well. e.g The Sunday Times.

Layout & Colour? The layout is just a large photo,title and a very short sentence about what's in the magazine.

The colours are very basic as the photo is very colourful so they have just stuck to using 2 plain colours for the writing (blue & white)