In what ways did your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

(magazine and poster)

Magazine : Structure The structure for our magazine was very important as is what really made it look the way it looked. We first of all had to actually decide what movie magazine it was that we wanted to go for and as a group decided on Fangoria. Fangoria has a theme of colors from reds to blacks to whites. This is very eye catching and intriguing for the audience, Fangoria magazine are also a very well known horror magazine and we chose it to keep within our theme of a horror trailer. As a group we decided to keep within all the traditions of past Fangoria covers and use that as a template for our own cover. Below are some examples of Fangoria covers we used as templates for our own:

Throughout making our magazine cover, constant changes were made based around what looked good and what didn't’t etc. For example, in the end we decided against the film strip on the left hand side as it made our magazine cover look to busy and messy.

Masthead:We took our masthead for our magazine cover fromGoogle and using Photoshop we cut around it and added it to our magazine. Placing it at the top of the page seemed most suitable as this was the same for every single issue of Fangoria magazine covers. Throughout our magazine cover we also kept the white, red and black colors to show a theme in which allows the audience to connect with our product. As you can see from the image adjacent, we used selling points unique to Fangoria magazine in order to persuade our audience into buying the product; “Giant Adeline poster inside”. We also made sure to make the readers aware of interviews and other things going on inside the magazine. All of this works out as promoting our product.

We included other things in which made the audience want to read the magazine and buy the product. We took these images from Google and photo shopped them into our magazine cover in order to look busy and professional. We didn't’t want to create an empty and boring poster.

The title and tagline that appeared in all three conventions of our product is very crucial. As a group we ensured that the title we used in the teaser trailer and again in the poster also had to be included in the magazine. The title we actually used we got from a site call dafont.com, this font was named ‘face your fears’ and has connotations of blood being splattered and smeared on a wall etc. We decided on the color red to connote blood and fear. Our tagline and title appeared at the bottom of the magazine slightly to the right, just under the main characters head. Placing the title and tagline here ensured that it was clear and could be easily read and understood by audience and readers. We used the same tagline as we did in the poster to create that continuity and connection between the two. We have used the main characters doll like face as our USP. In choosing this as our USP we have created a character that the audience can then easily recognize and relate to the film Adeline. Having a USP will help our poster, magazine and teaser trailer to become successful.

Poster: Setting and location

Before beginning to make our poster, we decided to stick to the typical horror movie poster conventions, and used the movies we had researched for our teaser trailer, as templates to create our poster. Here are some examples of what we used as templates: Both these movies have used a creepy and dark, mysterious background for their poster. This then gave us the idea of having the USP (main doll character) in the woods. Having a dark background was alsocrucial to the look of our poster which is how we came to the decision of placing a black and white filter over the top of our poster.

Title and placement: When deciding the name for our teaser trailer we were specifically looking at the film Annabelle. Annabelle is a very common name for a doll and is the reason we used ‘Adeline’ as the name of our teaser trailer. This also created a character from the very beginning and gave the audience a good idea of what the film is actually based around. We used the very famous and unique font ‘face your fears’ and made it red to give connotations of blood. We did not make this black and white like the rest of the poster because we wanted to make it stand out and catch the audiences eye. We placed our title at the very top of our poster (landscape) in-between star ratings and reviews. We also placed it on a black background to make it stand out even more. This worked really well and I think looked very professional and clean cut.

Structure and layoutStructure for certain aspects of our poster was key. Things we needed to arrange

and organize were first of all the billing blocks, we decided to place these at the very bottom of the poster, laying across from the left hand side, through the middle to the right. We then placed the age certificate next to that, this kept it out of the way to not mess up the poster however also in clear eye line for the audience. It is important to warn the audience of the age restrictions. We decided to have the main doll characters figure slightly off center, leaning towards the left hand side. This made it unusual and weird to the eye, it is something I learnt in photography and helps catch your attention of the viewer.

Having reviews on the poster also helps to inform the audience of what the movie is actually like and how others responded to it. It is a very useful way of promoting the movie and using advertising upon advertising. These positive reviews and star ratings make the audience want to watch the movie and have an opinion for themselves.