Poster - Institutional Information

Film Poster - Institutional Information

Whilst looking up the codes and conventions of a film poster, I found that, located at the bottom of my poster, I must include institutional information. This is conventionally in a small font, and should tell the audience some of the people who are involved in the production, editing and exhibition stages.

Here is the institutional information I created for my film poster using the websites 'canva' and 'infogr.am'. We made sure to include the costume designer, the editor, the director, the producer and some of the actors involved as, we thought these were the most important to include. This institutional information doesn't and can't include every body as it isn't the credits of a film. Therefore, we chose to proritise.

Analysis of Magazine Cover

Analysis of my Film Poster

Film Poster and Magazine Cover Final Draft

Film Poster and Magazine Cover Final Draft

Below you will see our two media texts; our film poster and our magazine cover.

This is our final draft of our film poster. Tinika and I took a while editing with the main image to make it as appealing as possible to our primary audience. The positioning of the main image on the poster was really important as we wanted it to sit well with our chosen background colour. This was really important to us due to the fact that the colour blue linked across our other media texts and shows the synergy of the three. 

We also spent a while editing our credit block due to the website we were editing it on. Tinika and I chose a website called Canva and as I edited the poster and played around with the image and title, Tinika was given the job of creating the credit block. She did this off Canva as she found better fonts elsewhere. We didn't realise until afterward that the credit block wouldn't paste on without a white background which we were unable to cut out using Serif Draw Plus X6 either. This was very disheartening as it took Tinika ages to create it and would have looked really good on our film poster.

However, we eventually created a new credit block on Canva, trying to mimic the previous one as much as possible. 

Other feedback we received was to make the title stand out more which is what I spent doing, experimenting with different fonts, sizes and colours. The end result is what you see pictured above which we received a lot of positive feedback about.

This our final draft of our magazine cover. This went through a major change from our last piece of feedback. The colour of the sticker changed and the size of the font inside the sticker.

The words 'mega movie marathon' changed size, position and were taken out of a box because it took away from the central image. We also added in a review from The Guardian about our film. 

Furthermore, we added the buzzword 'exclusive' to our magazine cover to make it more eye catching to audience members when it is just sitting on the shelf. 

Both of these media texts have come a long way from their first draft and have really developed to appeal to our primary audience.

Magazine - Creating Film Magazine Front Cover

Creating Film Magazine Front Cover

The first step in the process of creating the film magazine cover was looking at codes and conventions of a magazine front cover. 

Tinika and I looked into research and found the main codes and conventions of a magazine front cover were: buzz words, a central image, a masterhead, anchorage text, banner, barcode, date, issue, price and further images.

The first thing we decided to do was create a few masterheads to see which one would look the best/we would prefer.

After creating mastheads, we decided that we would put a template together of what would be an ideal front cover for our film magazine. This would include some of the key features. We wanted to do this so we had a little bit of time to edit things we didn't like and add other things we had forgotten about.

We then received feedback from our media teacher about the layout and masterhead.

She told us the masterhead needs to change, the bar code and price need to move and buzzwords needed to be added.

Due to this, Tinika and I spent a lot more time editing the magazine and researching its codes and conventions. We used my previous knowledge of doing GCSE Media Studies and the fact I spent a year studying and annotating them to our advantage. 

Around the same time we received the feedback, I came across an editing website that allowed us to create pieces of work such as posters and magazine covers called Canva. 

As a result, mine and Tinika's magazine cover began to improve drastically. We made sure we responded to all the feedback given to us by our teacher and added some more colours to make buzz words stand out even more.

After we added all the features of a magazine cover and finally got an image for our film magazine, we decided to play around with the layout and a few of the subheadings we had scattered around the magazine. 

We decided we didn't like the look of the box around 'mega movie marathon.' We decided to chance this and the colour of our sticker as it wasn't eye catching enough for our audience to take it off the shelf. 

This is our magazine front cover that we are about to show to our class and teacher for feedback today and hope we don't have to make too may adjustments. 

Magazine - Conventions of a Magazine Front Cover

Conventions of a Magazine Front Cover

MASTERHEAD - A masterhead features on all magazine covers. It is usually placed at the top center of the page which tells the audience which magazine it is. As it tells the audience which magazine they're looking at, it only makes sense that it is the largest text that appears on the magazine. This makes it eye catching for the audience. Masterheads often have bold text or are placed in a box to make them stand out even more. 

IMAGES - Magazines always have a main, central image which takes up most of the space on the page. If it was a film or gossip magazine, the central image would usually contain a picture of the main character/celebrity. This magazine becomes more appealing as it is about a celebrity in the lime light. This magazine is using celebrity endorsement to sell their magazine. There may be smaller images around the central image to advertise other products etc. 

BUZZ WORDS - These are words which grab the audiences attention and make the magazine seem to stand out from any other. Using words such as "exclusive" when talking about an interview will make them seem like they are the only magazine with this exciting information. 

ANCHORAGE TEXT - This text often overlaps with images and is normally quite large on the magazine cover. It tells the audience what stories will appear within the magazine. These often contain quotes taken from interviews. This will be to sell the magazine and make it different from all the others available to an audience member. 

BANNER - This gives overall information about the magazine and what can be found inside of it. 

BARCODE, DATE, ISSUE NUMBER and PRICE - All magazines contain these. The barcode appears on the front of the magazine as usually the back page is a paid for advertisement, the date and price are normally quite small but still relevant so that the audience can see this information.

Magazine - Codes and Conventions

Researching the codes and conventions of a film magazine will help Tinika and I to understand what we need to include when creating our magazine front cover. The key features we include will allow us to appeal to our demographic and create a successful film magazine. 
Doing this in advance helps us expand our knowledge even more as to what is key in our research and planning and what we need to do throughout our process of filming.
As a result of this research, Tinika and I plan to use a Canon EOS 1300D DSLR camera to shoot high quality pictures for out central image on our magazine cover. This gives us plenty of time to take the right shot and picture of our protagonist.