Magazine Front Cover: Final Draft

Blogged by Group

The next step towards completing our magazine cover was to add further taglines. Because we are creating a 'Horror Season Special' we decided it was appropriate to include a 'Top 50 Horror Movies of all time' tagline, implying that the issue will cover horror from both past and present. We also copied the date, UK price and US price and the positioning that is uniform in each Empire magazine that we researched:


Another tagline we added was 'What will get your blood curdling this year?' followed by a series of thumbnail shots of upcoming films. We added a couple of still shots from actual upcoming films for authenticity but added a few images we had taken when filming earlier in the year, for example the tractor in the woods we were filming in and an abandoned wood saw:


Looking again at the 'Kick-Ass' edition we wanted a similar 'layout' for our main tagline, with the title of our film being a part of a sentence:

We came up with our own version of this, using 'you' to directly address the audience. The sentence in itself can also act as a device to interest the reader and make them want to see the film - because the magazine itself is giving the film a strongly positive review, then the audience will be much more interested than if it received a neutral review.


We maintained a red, white and black theme throughout as not only do these colours work together to symbolise horror but they are also easy to read against the dark background of the image.
We also kept to a minimal number of fonts for simplicity, using basic, easy to read fonts such as Arial Black and Century Gothic.
After adding everything we needed to to our magazine cover we then experimented with layout again, changing the size, colour and positioning of text to improve our cover and make it appear authentic.

Magazine Front Cover: 2nd Draft

Blogged by Group

Our plan today is to complete our magazine front cover. Now that we've looked at our first draft (from last week's lesson) with fresh eyes, we've decided that we need to make some changes.

We began by using a combination of Photoshop and inDesign to cut around the character to place on top of the masthead via a new layer. We also approached it from another angle, using the magnetic lasso tool on Photoshop to cut away part of the text. We went on to print a couple of variations at different stages of the process to see if the effect was authentic.

The next step was to alter the main tagline. We changed the angle and darkened the colour slightly, in a similar fashion to the Kick-Ass edition we looked at previously. We kept the outline to black so it stood out against the dark background and began to add in extra information such as the date and price.

We then experimented with various fonts to convey horror, as we decided to create a 'Horror Season Special' issue. We downloaded a variety of typical horror fonts from dafont.com. After using each font for the 'Horror Season Special' tagline we went with 'Double Feature', a clique horror font that takes the harshness away from the rest of the cover. It also immediately conveys the theme of horror as it is a stereotypical horror font.

Taking inspiration again from the Kick-Ass issue we then created a 'splatter' shape out of a standard circle and a number of full stops and commas written in the horror fonts we had downloaded. This acted as a visual text box which also linked strongly to our horror theme.

At the end of the lesson, this was our development:

Magazine Front Cover: 1st Draft

Blogged by Anya



This is how far we got with our magazine cover at the end of today's lesson.
We placed the image in InDesign and fitted it proportionally to the page. We did the same with the Empire masthead and positioned it on the image.
We added the first tag line which is our film title. We used the same font as we have in our other tasks (Broken 74) and positioned it on the page, this included rotating it slightly.
We experimented with transparency for both pieces of text but have not made a decision on the final transparency yet.

Empire Magazine Font

Blogged by Naomi

In order to make our magazine front cover as realistic as possible we decided to use the Empire magazine logo itself. We started off by taking a previous Empire front cover and using the magic wand tool to select the masthead and layer via cut to separate the text from the background:



We then went on to delete the background of the magazine and opened the image we wish to use as our front cover in another Photoshop document. With both documents placed adjacent to each other we easily moved the masthead across to create the foundations of our magazine cover.

Magazine Front Cover: Main Image

Blogged by Anya

Today we started our magazine front cover. This is our final ancillary task and the last thing we have to do before our evaluation.
We started by choosing a photo for our cover. We had already taken many photographs during filming and so all we had to do was look through our images and find the most suitable picture.
We have chosen this photo:


We decided to go with this running shot because the girl looks scared; the background is dark and sets a horror tone; it draws your eye in; and there is room for a masthead and tag lines.

I then used the colour adjustment tools in Photoshop to give the photo a blue tone. This makes the photo colder and is also what we did to the photo we used for the poster and so this gives a consistency to our products.

Magazine Front Cover

Blogged by Naomi

The final ancillary task we need to complete is the front cover of a magazine. We struggled a little trying to get a variety of different photos that would be appropriate for a magazine front cover, and so we looked at the poster for Catherine Hardwicke's 'Red Riding Hood':



We took some shots that showed our protagonist in a similar fashion but we felt that it didn't reflect our trailer too well. We then experimented with taking stills whilst the protagonist was running, but we found it difficult to capture a photo that wasn't blurred. We also took photos similar to that of our posters, but this time we took the photos from further away to get more of the background.

3D Poster

Blogged by Group

We used Photoshop to create a 3D poster.
The poster requires the older red and blue 3D glasses and looks really effective as it makes the image jump off the page.
Although the poster uses the old glasses, we were taking inspiration from the growing 3D industry and it shows our film could be converted to 3D to suit a contemporary audience.
The process involved duplicating layers and merging blue and red pages but only took a few minutes and we are really pleased with the results:

Trailer Feedback: Class

Blogged by Group

Today, we showed our trailer on the large screen in our class. We made a short questionnaire to collect our feedback.

The questionnaire was answered by 11 people in total.

100% said that they would watch the film.

All 11 knew that the genre was horror. We asked them why, here were our results:


11/11 thought that the plot was clear from the film and 4 also said that it did not give too much away which can ruin a trailer.

The people we questioned remembered a lot from the trailer. The things that came up the most were the location; the running shots; the music; and the title.

We also asked how we could improve our trailer.
Some of the feedback we recieved included:
1. Use of shadows to show the 'bad guy'.
2. Making the lighting darker.
3. Having people with the protagonist at the beginning.

The reason we have chosen not to change these things is because:
1. We cannot add shadows in post-production and we do not have time to re-shoot our trailer.
2. We could not film any later because you would not have been able to see much and it is difficult to change the lighting drastically after filming.
3. We were unable to find a group of people to film (as we have explained in another post).

Some other comments we received were:

"[The trailer] grabs the audience's attention."
"It doesn't give anything away, making the watching more intense."
"I like that you don't know who is 'caging' her."
"It looks professional."
"I want to find out what happens in the film."

From the feedback, we can see that we have made a successful horror movie trailer and we are happy with our final work.