Influences for Magazine Cover

The colours are very over-powering and dominant on the front of the magazine cover and all the images and text seemed to be placed centrally to highlight that the film is the main focus in the magazine. The shot used is a basic front on shot with the main character looking directly at the camera, to show how the magazine is trying to draw in the readers as if the character is looking at them, which makes it more appealing. The lighting used in the background is quite dull and dim, however the main image itself, the title of the magazine and the title of the film are all made to like bright, bold and 'electrified' almost. This helps to see what the main focus of the cover is and what features the film company is trying to highlight the most. The colours used are predominantly red,blue and white, which shows that maybe the magazine is aimed at attracting young males who have a love for action films. There isn't any props used and the only image is of the iron man to suggest that the whole film is focused around him.

I think the main representation from this image is from the title 'Iron Man 2' suggesting that all men are 'indestructable', as well as with the image, which makes all males look dominating, masculine and almighty. The slightly closed, glowing eyes makes him seem fierce and powerful as if he is looking at his next victim i.e. the audience, which makes it more entrancing. The 'first look' section on the left of the image says' All hail the king of 2010', which adds to the effect of him being over-powering and ruling e.g. like a king. And as a king, many people will look up to him and it shows how he has very high status. Overall it represents a very dominating and powerful side to society, even though it doesn't directly relate to reality, it could be perceived in this way where men almost see him as a role model. 

I think the target audience here would be for boys as the title very clearly hints that it is a male film and the colours used are seen as more male colours, whereas if it were targeted at women it would probably use brighter, softer colours. The image of the iron man himself is very masculine and gives a real sense of power, which may be something that males aspire to. I think the age range would be between young teenage boys of about 12 or 13 to young men in their mid 20's, because I think it would affect this stage of growing up, where all boys want to look their best and be the 'strongest' etc...Also it is predominantly young boys and men who love to watch action films and as we can see from the magazine cover that this is definitely an action film because of the lightning bolt effects used and the glowing images and therefore it is clear that a lot of activity is going to take place during the film. I think the way it aims to attract the audience is done very well with the different elements of misenscene used such as the lighting, colours, image and title. 

The main device used for promoting the film here is the image, as the iron man himself is a well known character from the first installment and so the audience would be well aware of who his character is. If they have enjoyed the first one, then it will make it much more likely that they will want to carry on and see the next installment. The tag line underneath the title is 'New Suit. New Enemies. Same Attitude.', which is very simple but yet catchy and will stick with the audience if they come to think of the film again. And again, with the 'Same Attitude' part of it, this will suggest that the film will have the same overall take as the first film, just with new characters and a new plot, which will make it appealing if the audience have enjoyed the first one. 

The promotion for this film takes up the majority of the magazine cover, which shows that they are very strongly trying to advertise the film and it will probably be a big success that many people will want to see. The other films promoted on the cover are very small in comparison to iron man, suggesting that they won't be as successful when released. Or maybe this is because they aren't well known films yet and it gives the readers a chance to get to know the basic plot of the films, so when they become close to their release date and are being promoted more, the audience will be drawn to buying that magazine because they already know a bit about it. 

The image on the cover definitely fits with the genre of the film as it seems very fierce and powerful, representing the perfect image for an action film. The other films promoted on the cover, also seem to be action films suggesting that the content of the magazine is primarily focusing on action packed films, which will captivate audience members who are particularly interested in this genre. 

Overall I think that all the devices and features used on this magazine cover are excellent in helping to promote this film and also targeting at people who are interested in the genre of action films.

Weekly Updates for our Poster

Week 1
We started off by drawing out several different design ideas about what we could use as our film poster. Some of the ideas we came up with were the picture of the eye with images around it, the picture in the centre of the pupil and one where Holly was in the background and Chloe was in the foreground. However we thought that using Holly and Chloe in the poster would give too much away about the film and in our trailer it doesn't reveal who the actual murderer is and so using them in the poster would defeat the whole purpose of suspense that we wanted to create. We began looking at influences as well such as The Eye and The Last House on the Left to help us come up with ideas we could use.
After the sketches and research into our poster, we decided to eliminate the idea of using the eye as it didn't have much relevance to the film. We then began to think of key images in our film that would be effective for the poster and the most striking one was the image of the house. This was used as our final design and we then had to work out how were going to lay everything out.
Firstly we had to decide where we wanted to place the house, in the foreground or in the background. We thought that having it in the foreground would make the house seem overpowering and dominant, which is how we wanted to portray it. We really liked the idea of splitting the page into two different colours, which would hint that surrealism and things from the past may occur but still doesn't give too much away that the audience are left wondering what is going to happen. So we had one half of the poster in red and one half in black and white to show a time lapse and how things havn't really changed.

Week 2
This was the week when we started putting all our ideas onto Photoshop and seeing how they would look for real. As we wern't that confident with Photoshop it took a lot of trys to get to grips with the different features and functions of it but we finally got the hand of it. We took some location shots of the house and the ones we got were really excellent and portrayed exactly what we wanted which was a spooky, eery atmosphere. The first thing we designed was for our logo, Mack, where we had a lightening bolt going through the middle, which even though wasn't very dominant on the poster, still gave off a shock factor especially in our trailer.
We then began importing the image onto our photoshop, which took up the whole of the poster and then split the screen into half, where we turned one half into a deep, blood red colour and the other half into black and white. Next was to decide how we wanted our title to look but we didn't want to over complicate the poster, so we kept the font consistent for everything, which ended up being Optima. We had the Talbur bit on the red side in a white font and the manor bit on the black and white side in a red font. The rest of the text used was in the same font but kept all in white, so it would be easier to read. We kept the amount of writing to a minimum otherwise it would draw away from the attention of the house, which was the main image that we wanted the audience to concentrate on.
Around the house were a few trees, bushes etc..., which were useful in portraying the right atmosphere but seemed to show the same dominance as the house, which wasn't what we wanted. So we thought it would be a good idea to experiment with the blur tool for the other objects around the house, so you could still see them but they seemed to be in the background compared to the house in order to make the house look more terrifying and to stand out more.
We had Holly Bradshaw and Chloe Redman at the top of the poster, to show the main characters in the film, which if used in a real film poster, would attract the audience if the actors were well known. We kept their names in the same font as everything else in the colour white but with a light glow around it to give off a scary kind of aura.
We were initally going to have Chloe and Holly on either side of the poster holding hands to show the connection between them but we thought that this would have been too big a hint and too obvious about what the film was about, which wasn't what we wanted to do. We wanted to create as much suspense as we could and leave it up to the audience to use their imagination.

Influences for Poster

For our Media project we had to create a poster that would help us to advertise our film and to look at other film posters that fitted in within the same genre as ours, in order for us to use them as influences when creating our own poster. Ours was a horror film, so we looked at films in the same category and recognised the way they structured the content of their poster, how much writing they used, colours, pictures etc...




Initally we were interested in having just Chloe's eye for our poster as we thought it would be very striking and effective and would grab the attention of the audience. The perfect example here was the poster from the film The Eye, where they also just had an eye with a hand reaching out of it. We wanted a similar sort of idea but with either different clips from the film around the eye or just one key moment from the film in the pupil of the eye. We also liked the idea of reddening the eye in order to create a more sinister look. After trying out a few different designs for this we came to the conclusion that the eye didn't have much relevance to the film and therefore wasn't going to promote the film in the correct way. However we did like the simplicity of it, which was something we wanted to do with our own poster to prevent giving much away about the film.

The second film poster that we became interested in was The Last House on the Left, which we used as the main influence for our final design of our poster. Because our film is set in the eery surroundings of Talbur Manor, we thought it would be more relevant to have a picture of the house as our main image, which is what they used with The Last House on the Left poster. It gives an idea about where the happenings take place, but doesn't give a lot away about the plot and leaves it up to the audience to use their own imagination. Also with this poster, there wasn't a lot of writing, which was something we wanted to corperate into our one too as too much writing can drag the attention from the main focus of the poster, which in this case is the image. The colours used in this film poster are very simple, yet work very well in creating a creepy atmosphere and we were interested in using this same sort of idea for our poster.

Initial Ideas for Poster