Film Poster

This is our finished film poster. We are really happy with our final product as we feel it is a good reflection of the story line. We have chosen an image where Megan is posing with a gun ready to pull the trigger. There is a shadow in the background which we created with some low lighting, this made a really interesting effect on the white wall which we both really liked as it was a really clear and crisp silhouette of our main character. We made the decision to include the gun in our film poster, as we feel this is a really necessary thing to include in a film poster which is for a crime/action film. The gun makes it really clear what genre our film is immediately and is really good iconography for what is going to be show in the upcoming film. We blended our photo of Megan, with a landscape photo of London, which shows the houses of parliament, including big ben. These are all iconic tourist features of London, which will immediately catch people's eyes as they would see our film poster on a billboard etc. We felt it was necessary to include this landscape image in our film poster, as our film was filmed in London and it would also make the film appeal to a global audience.
We also included on our film poster, an advertisement to go and watch it in the IMAX cinema, the movie's website and a hashtag that also advertises the film. Just above our films name we included the slogan 'London's Biggest Secret' as we feel something like this would really draw our audience in. As Megan is our main actor in the film we had to include her name in the film poster, as she is a world known actress, so her name alone would attract a wider audience.

We wearnt sure about the type of image we wanted to be shown for our film poster as through our research we had seen quite a variation of different images shown on film posters. These ranging from close ups of the main character, an action shot or quite a posed shot. The only way to decide what type of image we wanted to present for our film poster was to take a variation of different shots and see which one represented the image we wanted to portray about our film the most.

The first photo we took of Megan was a forward facing mid shot, which included her face and some of her body. We made Megan pull a serious face with her eyes looking directly into the camera so that the audience would feel slightly intimidated by the character Sienna. We thought this image would look nice in black and white, however we felt like the pose looked a bit awkward as she had both hands behind her back, also the image wasn't particularly focused on anything or any feature of her.However one thing we did like about this shot was the amount of space which surrounded Megan around the edges, as there were places where we could write important information which is needed on a film poster such as the name of the film, the slogan, the actors name and the date it is is released. However, we decided not to use this shot as it looked a bit pointless and unfocused on any aspect of our film.

The next image we experimented with was this close up of Megan. We had seen quite a few film posters which had just a close up of the big star acting in the film, with simply some text written at the bottom of the image telling the viewer the film title, the actors name, and when the film would be in cinemas. One thing we liked about this image was the way the shot had really focused on Megan's face and not her body. In particular the shot had really focused on her eyes which stood out massively, this makes the image quite eye catching. However once again we had the same problem as we did with the previous photo. We didn't really feel that this image captured what our film was about, therefore we felt that this image wouldn't really advertise our film well enough for it to be used as the film poster image.

After not really liking the way we were taking any of the previous photos for our film poster, we decided to take a different out look to the whole film poster idea. This time we took a shot which was landscape instead of portrait as we thought that often, film posters are advertised on billboards and buses, so a landscape photo would be much more useful to create rather than a portrait. We also decided to make our photo a little more posed and bring back in the gun to our photos, as we felt it really would state to an audience what our film was going to be about. We then directed Megan to point the gun at a wall, in an intimidating way. We feel that this pose is really intimating and is one of which that shows the audience a person in a situation that they are in control off. We feel this is something we really wanted to get out in our film trailer, that it is an action film based around a woman, not a man!! At this stage in the photographing process we had already started to get ideas about how we could edit our film poster and decided we needed to capture an image that would look suitable with an image of London blended into the background. We then started to take more and more landscape photos, but this was the one we were most happy with. We also felt that with this photo Megan's face was very centered and there was loads of space around the outside to write necessary information about the film around.
To create our poster we used Photoshop. We firstly edited the image of Megan, so that it was slightly purple, to do this we went onto 'Image', 'Adjustments' and then 'Colour Balance. We played around with different shades of colours on the image so it was slightly purple/blue. Once we were happy with the colour we then added in our landscape image of London. We chose this landscape image of London as we felt that the pink, orange and shadow colours which were featured on the photo really matched with the way we had just edited our picture of Megan to have a more purple/blue look to it. The way the landmarks of London were in the shadows as well was something we knew would benefit the image of Megan that would be blended with it, as the dark colours of the landmarks would really stand out in a professional way.
Once we had both images in the canvas we used the blending tools to blend both images together nicely. We also made the image of Megan slightly opaque so that the image of London could be clearly seen underneath it.
Once we were happy with the images, we had to add text as we found on the bottom of many film posters they have a huge paragraph of writing with all of the film crews credits. We then had to find an appropriate font, and changed the size of it when we writ important names e.g Poppy and Serina. We then added in our film title, slogan, actors name and advertisements for the IMAX, website and a hashtag for twitter.

We asked our target audience what they thought of our film poster and they said...
"Love the colour scheme, its really eye-catching"
"The image of London has been edited really well"
"I like the way the gun is not in your face obvious, it really reveals a lot about the character of the girl, she seems very secretive".

Magazine Cover:

This is our magazine poster, we edited this using Photoshop. We really wanted a close up side shot of Megan looking down regretfully holding a gun. Once we were happy with our desired shot, we began editing it. We decided to make our entire film poster black and white, we feel like dark colours represent crime and violence, which are all things you find in an action film. We also took inspiration from the James Bond Empire film cover, as his photo is taken in black and white. We like the way that in black and white you have to look closely to see the gun, this shows that Sienna is quite a secretive character, she isn't your normal crime film character. On other Empire magazine covers we noticed that there was often competitions that were advertised to win things, as this would attract more people to buy and look at the magazine. We included our slogan 'London's Greatest Secret' at the very top of our magazine, we did this because we thought it would be a good idea to closely link all 3 of our products; the trailer, the film poster and now the magazine cover. All 3 of our products include this slogan, therefore the audience know that the advertisement going on is for the same film. We also included a feature telling the reader theres a film review inside and a exclusive interview, both of these will attract people to read the magazine.

To create our magazine poster, the first step was to obviously take an appropriate picture of Megan, the film poster we took inspiration from for this photo was the film poster for Colombiana. We loved this pose, so decided to recreate it ourselves, but closer up as we feel a magazine poster needs to be more personal to the star of the film. We also felt that a black and white themed color scheme fitted better with our magazine poster as this represented the crime genre more. Therefore we needed to find a EMPIRE magazine logo, which was in black or white. We were unsuccessful in finding a EMPIRE logo which fitted within our color scheme. However this wasn't too much of an issue, as as we had already decided that we wanted the entire color scheme of our cover to be black and white on Photoshop we set it up so that all layers would be in black and white.
Next we selected our image, as our actor was a busy person and we knew she wouldn't be available very often to be able to take photos for our magazine and film posters we made sure we took as many photo's as possible of her so that we had lots of variations of shots that could potentially be used! This really worked to our advantage as it gave us a chance to ask our peers which photos they liked best and gave us a chance to have a closer look as to what the photos bought across about our film.
These were our first shots of Megan....
This was our first image. We really liked this image of Megan as the pose was good and we really liked the white background. However we noticed that a shadow appeared over Megan's face, this was something that was a really big problem to us as we knew that in our magazine cover we wanted to heavily focus on the actor in our film as that is what magazine covers are often there for. Another problem which occurred was that the photo was taken length ways, the photo could be cropped but to fit the  appropriate portrait film poster size the image would have to be cropped, then stretched onto the canvas onto Photoshop creating a lower quality image.

 This was the 2nd image we took. This image was a potential image as it was taken portrait meaning that it fitted the canvas. However we still had the problem with the shadow on Megan's face because of the low angle lighting we had created with a lamp. We knew that when editing this it would be a problem as Megan's face would be darker than everything else. Another problem we established was to do with Megan's pose. We started to dislike the way we had positioned her as she only had one hand on the gun. We feel like this made it look like she had less power and that the gun was something which was there only to look at and not be used. Therefore we decided not to use this photo. We also felt that the gun was far to close to her face and it just looked like we were trying to stick the gun in to the shot.

The last image we put into consideration was this one. We both really liked this close up of Megan holding the gun as we feel that the pose in this presents our movie really well. She is holding the gun in both hands looking down on it in a meaningful way which shows power and control of the character in the film. We decided to change the background of our image once we started to take more and more shots, we feel this background would go better as a magazine cover as it is glittery and has a nice sophisticated effect. Also the gun sort of blends in to the background, meaning that you have to look closely to see it. This is an effect we really liked as we wanted to get away from the idea that the gun was just being stuck into our film poster to show there is going to be violence involved in our film, we wanted it to look like something which was there for a reason and we feel Megan's facial expression, pose and the way the gun blends in with the image all present this. Another thing we really liked about this image is the lighting. To get this lighting effect with a shadow in the background we had to move the lamp around quite a lot until it showed Megan's shadow in a way which we were happy with, this did take quite a while but we feel like the end result is worth it. We really like the shadow effect as it is something which adds a dramatic feel to the photograph.

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Editing Process; Adding a trail

Adding a Trail:

There was one shot we really liked which was a low angle shot, which we had to lie on the floor to film. This one shot we really liked as not only did it feature our character but also the busy London background all around it. We got Megan to run away from the camera, as this shot followed on from the one which Megan looks behind her shoulder in fear at something coming up behind her. As she is running quite fast, we wanted the shot to last longer so that the audience can take it the surroundings of London but also see that Megan is running away from something. The shot was really quick so we firstly has to slow it down by 25% so it was a bit longer. We then went onto the the edits section of on Final Cut Pro and played around with a few features which could make this running shot look a bit more interesting.  One effect we both really liked and thought looked interesting was the effect called 'Trails'. This effect makes the movement of the shot slow down and almost shadow the movements which are made in the shot, in this case it was Megan running. So each time Megan moved slightly there was almost a shadow of her previous movement behind her. We felt like this effect emphasised this running shot more and make it more interesting.