A2 - Evaluation

Above is the specification's categories for the evaluation of my product, which I have chosen to record as a video.

A2 - The Finished Trailer

A2 - The Finished Magazine Front Cover

A2 - The Finished Poster

This is my finished movie poster.

A2 - Making a Magazine Front Cover

The first thing I did after designing the flat plans was to take photos of my actor in full costume, in a variety of poses. Based on my work on the common conventions of magazine front covers, I knew that magazines tend to have fairly plain and simplistic backgrounds. Unlike in my poster, I chose to use Photoshop to make the magazine front cover.

The above screenshot shows my magazine mid-way through my work on it. At this point, I had designed the magazine name, headline and strapline. I made sure to match the colour of some of the text with the colour of the character's glasses, to increase continuity within the product.

This is the font I chose to use for the magazine's name. I also decided to place the issue number, date and price inside the bottom of the two borders around the text, as a stylistic choice.

A2 - Making a Poster

In terms of actually designing the poster, I started by going out and taking multiple photos. Some of these photos were of locations, and others were of the characters in costume in various poses. I chose to use several different photos on the poster, drawing on ideas from action film posters. The killer, wearing one of the costumes from the film, features in one of the photos I will use, and I will crop out the background of this picture to get a different background. Another picture is of a cross-shaped gravestone, to convey further the idea of remembering the dead on Remembrance Day.

As can be seen in the above progress picture, I chose to use Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI to make my poster. Paint Shop Pro is similar in many ways to Photoshop, but it allows a greater level of detail, allowing me to make my poster look even more professional.

The font I chose to use on the poster was Morpheus, downloaded from freeurbanfonts.com. This font looks sophisticated and mysterious, the atmosphere I wanted to create. In addition, I chose to use this font for the headline of my magazine front cover, and therefore adds continuity, making it look as though the poster and front cover are part of the same promotion campaign.

A2 - Original Images

This is the original image I used for my magazine front cover. It features the killer, wearing a ghillie suit, camouflage, a face scarf and mirrored sunglasses in order to conceal his identity. He has his arms crossed in an intimidating pose, suitable for the villain of the film.

This is the original image for my poster, which again features the killer in his ghillie suit disguise. This shot is a close-up of his face from an angle, which draws interest. While not suitable for the magazine front cover, which has the convention of the character staring forwards, it is perfectly suitable for the poster.

A2 - Magazine Front Cover - Planning

The second ancillary task I chose to carry out was the construction of a magazine front cover promoting my film. Shown below are my flat plans of the magazine front cover.

(Insert flat plans here)

I also carried out another survey on SurveyMonkey to determine the style that my target audience wanted to see, mainly with regards to the overall layout of the front cover. I offered them a variety of different style models that I could base my magazine on, including Empire and Total Film.

A2 - Poster - Planning

One of my two chosen ancillary tasks is to design a poster, and in order to do this I carried out several types of preparation. One of these was to design a series of flat plans, in order for me to get an initial idea as to what the layout of the poster will be.

(insert screenshots of flat plans here)

Another was to create a survey on SurveyMonkey, which would allow me to generate audience feedback and use this to make a poster that the target audience will like.

This SurveyMonkey was a shorter one than the survey I created for my main task, but I shared it again on Facebook and Twitter. The majority of my responses were from 15-19 year olds, and evenly spread between males and females. Most of my participants felt that their favourite poster styles were more detailed, as opposed to the simplistic style that the majority of horror posters seem to have.