Research- Conventions of a magazine poster

Magazine posters are made for similar reasons as a film poster- they advertise something, and attract an audience for interest in content.
Typography: This is repeated on all promotional packs, and tends to relate to the main content within the magazine. The typography of a magazine tends to reflect what genre it is: for example, if it is advertising a film like 'spider-man 3'(2007) below, it will be fairly bold font s the character is a bold, dominant character. If it is going to be a romantic comedy, lighthearted film, they are more likely to use some light-hearted typography such as italics. Additional titles are on the magazine cover, and this helps to reveal more information which the audience might want to obtain. This could be information about the actor's that is exclusive, being a unique selling point for the magazine. The colour of the typography that reveals what the title of the film is also matches the outfit that the actor is wearing. This is a convention of a magazine poster because it helps to accentuate the typography yet not take away attention from the focal image.

Colours: The colour scheme of a magazine cover tends to be relevant to the film being advertised. Below, Empire's use of the film 'Captain America' (2011)ows that the whole colour scheme of the magazine cover matches with the focal image (Captain America himself)'s outfit. This colour scheme is obviously important within the film and they are trying to illuminate this within the magazine cover. This makes it important what film it is. The fact the colours are very bright make it a very eye-catching, and each colour is iconic for each individual film.

Focal Image: This is something very important to a magazine cover, and is very similar to that of a film poster. The image is usually very relevant to the film, and helps to build audience anticipation for the film. Blow, is an advertisement for 'X-men: Origins'. Hugh Jackman (wolverine) in the film is featured centrally in the cover, focusing the attention on him. This convention also helps to make more money for the film in general, because the publicity tends to be what the film needs. This focal image shows the importance of what is being advertised, and this causes the film that is upcoming to get more attention. This convention shows the main characters of the film.

First Draft

Here is the first draft of our shopping documentary. There are still some tweaks that need to be made, which includes the audio. This involves making sure that you can hear the interview answers over the top of the background non-diegetic music, filming voiceovers for the questions for the interviews, because these are quite fuzzy right now. We can do this by using a high-quality microphone and filming the questions in a sound proof room, with no sound in the background.
More improvements to be made are inputting more statistics, changing the size of the ones already in there, and inputting some more interview clips and making the overall documentary up to five minutes. We also need to put some more credits in.
However, despite the improvements that need to be made, I am very happy with the overall product. With putting all of the clips together, I feel that it is a very effective, informative documentary. We have found a good soundtrack that works well in the background of the documentary, which is lighthearted, fitting the conventions and tone of the documentary well. This makes it overall a good start, because it is all grouped together well.

Editing

So far for the editing, we have got together all of the clips in the right order- this took around ten hours worth of editing. The clips go in an order of a question being asked, around three or four different people answering these questions consecutively, and then a shopping clip with a statistic written in the background, formed by livetype. The first draft will be on my youtube page in the morning.
So far, it is a good editing progress and I am happy with the overall product.

Ancillary Product (Research) Conventions of a poster

As a way of a company advertising their new media product, which could be a film, documentary, short etc. is making ancillary products, such as posters and magazines. This helps to build up the excitement for the upcoming product being released, and gathers more fans for the product. There are many codes or conventions that these follow in order to be successful.
Relation to genre: Firstly, there must be something related to the genre within the poster, to meet the audience pleasures. This means that the audience get more excited about the out coming product, and means that there is more likely to be more money made when the film eventually gets released in cinemas. This relation to the genre may be subtle: for example, if a film is sci-fi and based in space, there could be a small window in a part of the poster which shows some parts of space. Or, if it was a documentary poster, there could be a small safari truck in the background to signify that it is based on an African safari. There can also be relation to the genre within the typography, such as advertising the film as being the 'documentary of the year', or the 'horror film to watch'. This shows to the target audience what they are letting themselves in for if they decide on spending their money on this.
BBFC certificate: usually clearly labelled on a poster so the age restrictions are obvious to the audience.
Focal Image: placed in the center of an image, to draw attention and informs the reader on what sort of a film it is. Main indicator, and mainly based around main characters in the film.
Star person/s: Hollywood conglomerates tend to rely on these to be on of the main selling points of the film- attracts the attention of the audience. For example, if Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were to be featured on the front of a poster advertising a film, the audience would most likely hold the assumption that this would be a serious film because these two don't tend to get associated with comedic films.
Large Title/font: catches the eye of the audience, and causes them to want to read more into the film and see what it is about. One of the main graphic aspects of the poster.
Release date: these tend to be featured fairly obviously on the front of posters. This causes the audience to have more of an awareness for when the film will come out, and can create excitement for the product being created.
Below are some generic, archetypal film posters that are effective to catching the attention of the audience and gets a fan base started.

Second Editing Session

During the course of our second editing session, my teammate and I have managed to get a background non-diegetic soundtrack on in the background of the interview clips, which fades when the interview clips are happening and becomes louder when the shopping clips happen with the typography in them. We have done this by editing the sound on the bar, and fading it out when necessary. Below, you can see how the sound works and how we used the editing software (premiere pro) in order to make this effective. The non-diegetic soundtrack used is a very upbeat track from a royalty free website, and this really helps to set the mood of a happy atmosphere for our documentary.

Here, you can see where we edited in the background soundtrack, and alongside it edited it to fade in and out at certain points to make the interview questions more clear. This took around fifteen minutes, to reach a level where the music was able to be heard without blurring out other background sounds. We also muted the shopping clips so only the music can be heard, because we want this to help the audience to focus on reading the statistic.
In this editing session, we also created an ident. This is what is used for someone to recognize or identify our editing company. We made this by typing the words into livetype and experimenting with the typography until we found the one we wanted, and then made an animation alongside it so when someone watches the documentary, the first thing they will be able to see is who it is made by. We also found an image on google that we decided would be a perfect design for our ident (from a royalty free site) so we used this as well. We edited it into the background of premiere pro, so all at the same time an introduction sound is played, which is also downloaded from a royalty free site called purple planet. Having all of these factors together works for a good introduction.

Below is what shows you how we made the ident on livetype and imported it into Premiere pro. This was the start of making the ident.

We have used two different software programmes to make these idents- live-type and premiere pro. So far for the documentary, we have around a minute's worth of footage edited together, which includes around ten interview clip answers, some questions, and three different clips with statistics edited over the top of them.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack used in the background of my media documentary has been something called 'first steps, on a royalty free website known as 'purple planet'. As shown in the screenshot, all of the music used is royalty free and therefore legal to use within my documentary.

First Editing Session

These screenshots show our first editing session with all of the footage we have chosen. It has taken me and my teammate Sophie around two hours to get the first minutes worth of footage in line, and that time also includes organising all the clips together. 

 As you can see here, there is the start of the titles and sound being edited in. In one window, we can view what we have made so far and review that as much as we like, and in the other window is the typography we have made so far using the software programme LiveType.

And as you can see in the screenshot above in premiere pro, there is the clips that we have cut and put into the right order. We have done this by using the razor tool and reviewing the clips and choosing what looks right together, and clipping things shorter accordingly. The sequence of clips together at the begining is the clips I formed together first. and I think so far that works well.

Here, you can see where all of the files are kept together. I find this an easy way of organising my work because it means I can keep them all in the same place. You can see at the top that all of our raw unedited footage is kept in a file, and underneath are the ones we captured whilst at a shopping centre in Banbury.

This first editing session has been very successful in my opinion, because I have managed to get the first full minute of footage together, and have managed to get the music in the background. This first minute has a mixture of different angles and shots in the camera angles, lots of interview answers and more. In the next session, which will be tomorrow, I aim to edit together the next couple of minute's worth of work and adjust the sound in the background so it all flows together better.

Audience Reviews

I showed my footage so far to the class in which I learn media, with many like-minded people making similar things. Showing this ten minutes of footage really helped with feedback on the editing process. Our classmates all gave us sheets, giving us marks from minimal, proficient or excellent based on the footage. We have learnt from this that we have a good range of shots on our film, which is good because it means we most likely won't have to re-shoot anything because it is all smooth and non-blurry. However, because we haven't yet begun the editing process, it means that our marks for this were very low. We have until next friday to get our entire first draft finished on our blogs ready for viewing, so within these days we are going to dedicate around an hour per day to editing. I shall keep my blog updated on how far along we are with the editing process, and whether or not some sort of issues arise along the way.

Shopping Footage

Today, we captured the final pieces of our filming for the documentary being made. We got a wide range of shots- ranging from high angle shots to panning shots of a retail park in Banbury. This was a good place to film because there is a range of shops there- from average high street shops such as Primark to slightly pricier places such as fat face and river island. The shots captured are a good range, because we have different angles and a range of different shots. Below are photos of the area we filmed in. Due to the fact we now have all of our footage, I am going to start the editing process and hope to have the first draft on my blog within a week. This will be a good indicator towards whether or not I need to re film anything, and with the first draft I am going to film audience reactions of people based around our type of target audience. I will use this to see where I need to improve with the documentary with further editing.

Second Filming Session

My teammate and I's second filming session consisted of gathering the remaining interview footage that we had to take. We used the same equipment as beforehand, but this time we gathered the rest of the footage that we discovered was slightly out of focus beforehand or if the lighting was too sharp. We got a range of interview answers- two males and three females. These responses ranged from people who spend around a hundred pounds monthly on clothes on themselves, to one person who doesn't have a job and therefore doesn't have the money to spend on himself. We believe this is an accurate representation of the UK population, as there is a vast array of answers from people of different backgrounds, so our audience will have their audience pleasures fulfilled because they will be watching what they want to see- an accurate representation of true life. We have reviewed over the footage captured and have come to the conclusion that we do not need to re-shoot anything because all of the footage is adequate.