First draft

Here is the first draft of my magazine cover:

Seeing this, I think I do need a different effect on the image. My teaser trailer was in the horror genre, and having a bright and raw picture like this doesn't immediately say that this is a horror film.
I also need to take out the inner shadow that I put on the whole page.

I may also need to make the text easier to read, either by picking a different font or making it bigger.

A bit of editing

I edited this chosen picture and came up with three different styles. Below are the ideas I had.

 



I liked the sort of oval shaped lighting effect that is common with these edits. I found it while working on the first one and carried it through to the others.

The picture on the left is just the lighting effect. The middle has a 'dark strokes' effect added, which makes it seem more dark and sinister.. The last has a 'diffuse glow' effect that really brightens the picture and makes the people stand out inside the oval lighting.

I decided to do my first magazine draft with the left picture to see what everything looks like together with the mast head and other texts.
I will most likely decide to use a different picture or use a completely different picture effect if I find a better one though.

A photo session

As I knew the kind of picture I wanted I only took a few pictures, here are all of them:

    

There were also five more, however they were very blurry so I got rid of them straight away.
There are a couple of problems with some of these pictures. Firstly, the first picture was taken landscape. I asked the cameraman to take one landscape just in case, but as it is a magazine front cover, which are generally in a portrait orientation, I decided not to use it.

In the fourth picture, I stupidly blinked as the camera took the picture, so I look half asleep. This then leaves me three more to choose from. As they were all pretty similar I chose the last one.

My design

Instead of just copying an existing magazine I decided to sort of design my own. I had a logo I used in an enterprise week a couple of years ago for a film club I also thought of, called 'Reel Time', that would work well with a bit more professional editing of it as a mast head.
I already had a mast head ready, in that case, but I decided to keep to a similar page layout as an empire magazine so I had references to make when placing things.
Also to solve this problem I will use my knowledge from experiences in the past and from my coursework last year that I will make a flat plan, as it helps a lot.
Below is a scan of my drawn flat plan:

Sadly, the scanner kept cutting the edges off. The only major things missing are the boxes in the top left stating the price, issue number and date etc.

The bit on the right that has been cut off says:
"+plus exclusive interview with Quentin Thomas, the president of the BBFC, about classification!"

The mast head of the front cover says 'Reel Time'.

I went and took some pictures for this front cover, the next post will show the pictures I took.












The reason why I have decided to design my own magazine cover as opposed to following a generic design from Empire or Little White Lies is because of the publicity for the film. Empire and Little White Lies mainly publish mainstream films that will be/have been successful in the box office and generally feature films that will bring them a lot of money too. But my film is not played by anyone famous and would be an independent, low budget film. Therefore if I create my magazine I can justify this concern and say that the magazine is also an independently published magazine that features less mainstream films.

The other ancillary product

The other task was to make a magazine front cover promoting the film.
I looked at about 20 or 30 Empire magazine covers in school. I decided to analyze a couple to see what the main features were.
Below is this information:

So, what would it look like?

I needed to know what the poster looked like in its natural surroundings and where it would normally be placed.
Due to the amount it would cost and the fact that I didn't have any huge sizes of paper off-hand, I decided to use the power of technology to get this image across.

I found a picture of a train station with a board where a poster would normally be held, and quickly dragged in a JPEG of my poster onto the board. It hasn't been stretched or moved around to fit with the scale of the board, so it does overhang some edges of the board, but it still gives a good idea of what it would look like:

A (Hopefully) Final Poster

I needed a new slogan, as mentioned in the last post. I decided that it needed to be something to do with the camera on the picture, as the title of the film doesn't tie in with it.

I did some research and found the now-famous quote by Cesar Romero: "They say the camera never lies. It lies everyday".

I took this and modified it slightly, coming up with "the camera never dies", hinting at the horror genre.
I also wanted the slogan to be addressing the audience, but to also tie in with the idea about cameras.

Below is a picture of my final poster. I also did a final bit of editing to give the whole poster an inner glow, I added the certificate and also added the production house from the teaser trailer too:

I believe that this is a massive improvement to what I had before.