Final trailer

Final poster

Final magazine cover

Question 4:How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

Question 3:What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Media Studies-Mahek Salman by mahek salman on GoAnimate

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Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Progress...

POSTER

This was a mini test that I created on Photoshop to see whether my idea will look effective for our poster.

Creating a Slender Man silhouette 

Step 1:

Firstly, I chose an image of Slender Man from Google, which i will cut out on Photoshop.

Step 2:

Using the lasso tool on Photoshop, I carefully cut around the image.

Step 3:

I them pasted the cut out image onto a new layer on top of the eye-pupil.

I thought that the contrast of the black silhouette against the white light from the eye-pupil would look great, because the simple details are always useful. However, I didn't quite like the outcome, as it didn't work well with the rest of the poster, and was too small to notice.  

MAGAZINE COVER
Adding a bloodshot on eye. This was another experiment that I tried out to see if it looked effective.

Step 1: I searched 'eye bloodshot' on Google so that I could insert it on the final girl's eye.

Step 2: Using the lasso tool on Photoshop, I cut around the bloodshot and pasted it onto the final girl's eye.

Step 3: I then used the smudge tool to smudge the edges of the bloodshot, so that the sharp cuts are not visible, and to also make it look more realistic.

Step 4: Adding a black and white filter on the whole image helped the red bloodshot to stand out. It also looked quite frightening and horror-like, while matching our colour scheme of black, white and red.




 ...CHANGING MAGAZINE COVER IMAGE

At first, we decided that the image on our magazine cover would be shown in role of her character, as she is the main victim and looks frightened. However, after researching conventions of Total Film magazine covers, we noticed that the main character on the covers are never displayed like this, which is why we changed our final image.
Therefore, instead of subverting this convention, we decided that we would conform to it.

After alterations and playing around with the conventions, this is how our magazine cover looks. We added the cover lines, button and the film name.
As a group, we think that this image looks more prefessional as it conforms to the conventions of Total Film magazine covers.

Update on poster and magazine cover

Poster

From our initial ideas, we used and  developed the conventions that were visible from 'The Skeleton Key' poster which is an extreme close-up shot of the eye.

The image of the eye captures fear and mystery, which can relate to the concept of Slender Man as he is based on a mysterious urban legend. 

Similar to 'The Skeleton Key' poster, Karwin captured this extreme close up image of the final girl's eye.

Here is how our poster and magazine cover looks so far. Using Photoshop, I increased the contrast levels and decreased the brightness, this made the eye pupil and mascara, look striking and stand out. We also added a green filter over the whole layer. The green filter follows through from a clip in our trailer which is a cctv affect; it also adds a sci-fi affect too.
We decided to place the Slender Man logo on top of the eye-pupil as this symbol represents Slender Man, and so the audience may assume that the film is based on Slender Man.

This is how our poster and magazine looks so far.There are many features that still need to be added to them both. From looking at them side to side, it is clear to see that the colour scheme is black, white and red, which are all bold and strong colours that relate to the horror genre (gore/darkness/purity).

Slender Man logo

Here is how the magazine cover looks, we thought that the Slender Man Logo looks rather plain (because it is white) and doesn't stand out as it should do, because the girl's cardigan is white too.

We used the paintbrush tool to coloour

Sharpening the eyes

This shows how I sharpened the eyes on Photoshop. It was a simple process where I selected around the eye pupil using the shape-tool and clicked on filter and sharpen.

I found that this sharpened around the edges of the pupil, which instantly made it stand out and look more frightnening. 

This is a before and after of the eyes. As you can see, the eye puipl in the second image looks more refined.



Progress on magazine cover

The image for our magazine cover is of the final girl which was captured by Karwin. We decided that the actor would be shown in role of her character as she is a victim and looks frightened.


Here is how our film magazine cover looks now (uncompleted), as we have made drastric changes to it.
We agreed to change around the colours, whilst keeping our colour scheme black, white and red.
We also changed the style of the masthead 'TOTAL FILM', because the inverted trees didn't work well and looked too busy.

Conventions that we have used;

• Large masthead
• Button
• 'FREE' Slender Man poster
• Unique barcode
• Main image
• Plus sign
• Cover lines
• Pull quote

Adding features: Film reel

This was a still-shot of Slender Man that I took from the trailer. I wanted to insert it inside the film reel, along with other shots of the films that are featured on the magazine.

I simply copied the image and pasted it onto a new layer of the front cover.

Here is another image from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' that I took from Google and pasted into the film reel.

Film magazine

Working on 'Slender Man' poster

Working on the poster;

Step 1- original image

This was one of the images I had captured earlier on, and I thought it was strong enough to work for our poster. 

Step 2- edit image and add lettering 

I right clicked the image layer, clicked on the 'black and white' option and then altered the contrast levels so that the image is dark and spooky. After doing this, I added the lettering 'Slender Man' onto a different layer.

Step 3- Adding effects to text

I then filled the text in with black using the paint brush tool. Next I right-clicked the text layer and added the 'stroke' effect, which gave the lettering a white outer glow.

Here are 2 other ideas that I tried out;

I used the gradient tool to add a green and white faded colour on the 'Slender Man'. The use of green, relates to the green trees and grass, which may look quite effective considering that our colour scheme may be black, white and green.

For this one, I used the 'smudge' tool and roughly smudged the trees in horizontal lines. I think this look interesting and relates to the 'TV effect' used  in the trailer by Cleo. I might work on this idea and see what my group members think of it.

Lettering for poster

Working on the Lettering for our poster

This was something that I created on Photoshop CS3. I simply used the text tool to type in 'Slender Man' in a 'Times New Roman' font, and then used the 'liquify' tool (by clicking on image, adjustments and liquify). 

The liquify tool is a tool where you can drag the text to create a warp effect, which I think will look effective and portray Slender Man's features as he has a long and very slim body shape.

Here is another design, similar to the first one that I created whilst experimenting, and trying out different styles. As our poster will be a picture of the woods, I thought that the green lettering will look effective and will emphasise the dark and scary location.

Audience Feedback.

Once the two rough cuts were completed, we showed it to two sixth form members and our media class, considering that they all fitted in with our target audience.

The feedback we received was both positive and negative. However, we took the negative feedback as constructive criticism which we can work on in order to improve our trailer.
The two sixth formers said that they really liked the music and the heartbeat sound effect.

Overall, our audience feedback was very useful as it gave us an insight of how to improve our trailer and provided us with different opinions.

Rough Cut 2.

This is the rough cut that Cleo had created on iMovie. It is effective and portrays our ideas as a group of the trailer. For example the location of the woods and fast camera movement. This rough cut may be merged with Karwin's rough cut to achieve a great trailer.

Rough Cut 1. A2 Media Studies

This is a rough cut that Karwin made which includes more of the scenes that were recorded of the teenagers breaking into the houses and wondering around. We all agreed that our trailer will look effective it this  was merged with Cleos' rough cut. The beginning of the trailer looks quite professional with the 'Lionsgate' opening  which then fades into the woods.

However this is only a rough cut, so some scenes need to be altered, for instance, running scenes are a little repetitive.

Working on our magazine cover

Here are some of the ideas that we all came up with as a group for our magazine cover.

• We have decided that we will use the Total Film, rather than Empire
• Glow-up masthead (relates to the image, where the final girl will be holding a torch)
• Website & issue number on top of the 'M' of 'FILM'
• Main image. of final girl in foreground, and Slender Man hiding in the back
• barcode on bottom right corner
• We might add a spine
• Button ('FREE......')

Here is our flat-plan which I drew, so that we had an understanding of what our magazine will look like.

We then added the conventions of 'Total Film' magazine such as the the barcode, button, puffs, plus signs, bleed outs, freebie section, pull quotes and title of film. As you can see, we have included two freebie (top of magazine and middle left of magazine) sections, as we still need to consider which one we want to use.

Analysing magazine covers

Features and conventions of front cover magazines;

Here is a short prezi that I created which shows the conventions of 'Total Film' and 'Empire' magazines. As a group we will then choose which magazine name we will follow.




After discussing as a group, we have come to the conclusion that we will be following the conventions of 'Total Film' magazine.
The reason behind this decision was because 'Total Film' is more comical which is something that we can use and even subvert with our Film magazine. Also, Slender Man is a fictional character which emphasises the comical look.

Rough idea of flat plan

Editing images for our poster

We wanted to test out our different ideas for our poster.  So this is something that myself and Karwin created on Photoshop, with the help of this YouTube video tutorial. To create Slender Man, it was a simple process where we used an image of a man wearing a suit (from Google) and stretched his arms using Photoshop. Then we simply coloured in his face and hands with the paintbrush tool.

We then placed Slender Man on an image that I had captured earlier and edited (made darker using Photoshop).




















Finally, to put Slender Man behind the tree, Karwin  cut and paste the section of the tree so he can be hidden behind the tree.
Although the image looks quite effective, it also looks rather plain and not quite scary. However, this was only an experiment to see whether our idea was strong enough for our poster. 

Images for magazine

Here are a few images that I had taken for our magazine cover, so that I could then edit and play around with them on Photoshop.

I captured the images at a vertical angle, so that when editing later, I will not have to crop and stretch the photo to make it vertical.

Edited images

Whilst filming for our trailer, we captured a few images( of the location) that we can use for our magazine cover. They were then edited using filters and adjusting the contrast and brightness levels on Photoshop.