Evaluation by Hollie Tuckwell

Burgess field evaluation

View more presentations from amymadgwick.

'Burgess Field' evaluation... AM

Burgess field’ evaluation

View more presentations from amymadgwick.

A2 Media Project Advanced Portfolio - Burgess Field

Final Magazine Cover - SE

Development of Magazine cover - SE

After thoroughly researching film magazine front covers such as 'Empire' I developed a magazine front cover for our film 'Burgess Field' using photo shop. We decided to use the colour black as the background for our magazine cover as we felt this would compliment the main image and create a suitable representation of our horror film. The main image is similar to the one used in the poster, creating a visual link in the mind of the reader that will make them more interested in the article within the magazine as they will remember the image from seeing the poster. I used the 'blurring' and 'smudging' tool around the photograph to blend the image into the background which eliminated the sharp edge and makes the cover as a whole more attractive. Further more it makes the face appear to be emerging from the background out of the darkness - this eerie effect compliments the horror genre of our film. Experimenting with the title and colours:

Inserting the title:

I chose the font of the title of off a website called 'dafont'. When I downloaded it, the text was black on a white background so I used the 'invert' tool to literally invert the colours, changing the font to white and the background to black. Using the 'fill' tool I changed the colour of the text several times (evidence above) and in the end, I chose the colour red as the title colour.

During my research I discovered that the titles of film magazines were usually beneath a tag line or header title to advertise the main feature in the magazine. Using complimentary colour to the main image, I inserted this above the main title in the font choice used throughout the remaining poster text.

Inserting the text:

Underneath the title I inserted the web address and issue date as I found during my research that this was the most common place to be found on the cover.

On the left hand side is information about the main feature of the magazine: Burgess Field. On the right hand side are other features that might attract to the viewer to purchase the magazine such as interviews.

I inserted a solid coloured circle behind the freebie advertisement as this would attract the viewer's eyes, enticing them to buy the magazine.

I found it was common to use a '+' sign to insert information about the contense of the magazine that did not necessarily connect with the feature of the magazine but would still attract the reader, so I did this.

Finally I inserted a barcode and price to make the magazine cover appear authentic.

Magazine front cover conventions blogs

http://hone93.blogspot.com/2009/11/conventions-of-magazine-front-cover.html

http://soniaasresit.blogspot.com/2009/10/codes-and-conventions-of-magazine-front.html

First draft

Here we have uploaded our first draft of our teaser trailer, it is no where near a finished product it is still in need of sharp editing and sound correctly placed however we wanted to upload it to reflect our progress. We hope to upload another draft soon to show how much we have progressed.

A survey addressed to the general public about our media product?

Click here to take survey Here we have created a survey aimed at the general public, from these results we aim to gain a real, true picture of how our film is presented to the actual audience.

A survey addressed to media students and professionals about our media product

Click here to take survey

Above is a survey we created in order to collect responses that will assist us in producing an evaluation. This survey is addressed to other media students and discusses technical details about our product. We chose to address it to these individuals as they will understand the language we used and will offer us equally technical responses.

Development of Poster - SE

Although our final poster has been posted and published on this blog, we needed to show the development of the poster and the process that Amy went through to get to the final image. However, when the poster was actually created, no developmental ideas were saved so I went back through the process and re-created the steps we went through to get to the final piece.


Before the creation of the poster began, some ideas had already been finalised and some were still in debate. The title 'Burgess Field' had already been decided as well as the main image that would be used in the piece (the image displayed on the left). With the blood on the face of the model, the use of red text was discussed as well as the potential use of blood coming through the text. Also, white was agreed as a focus text colour as it strongly contrasts to the black background and would connect to the face of the girl.

When creating a poster there is always the initial debate of format: portrait or landscape.
As many commercial film posters are produced in the portrait format, it was decided to start the process using this idea. Initially it was decided to see what it was like to produce the poster with out the chosen image to see if the title and text could represent the ideas, plot and ideologies of our film individually. Therefore, the focus of this piece is solely the text and in particular the title. In a Warner Brother's style, introduced at the top of the poster are the production references and attributes. I think that this worked very well as the style of the text is highly similar to the text font used in all DVD covers and film posters. Also, even through it is at the top of the page, the font style used does not make it the main focus of the poster, which was the intention. A relevant review from the newspaper 'The Times' was created and was printed in white text and accompanied by five red stars. I think the combination o these two colours is effective and creates a sense of continuity through the poster as the title has the previously discussed idea of blood running through the text. Amy managed to do this through the use of layering in Photoshop.









It was then decided to add the chosen image to the poster to see if the text worked effectively on top of it or if the text would work better on top of a black background. The opacity of the image was reduced from 100% to 50% which makes the image more transparent and appear darker as it is on top of a black background, making the contrast between the white text greater and therefore it stands out more effectively. The blood behind the title font was also removed so that the viewer was now distracted from the image in the background.

In order to add the blood into the title again, the background image was copied and then moved slightly across to the left and down to create a shadow about the original image. This also made the image appear less clear and transformed it to be a background rather than a focus. Then it was possible to add the blood back into the title as the clarity of the blood contrasted with the blur and bad yet intended focus of the image behind.

It was felt that the first two attempts didn't work in their own right as effectively as we had planned. So, we decided to add the blood to only the bottom half of the title to prevent the amount of the colour red being too over whelming and the title being lost. Secondly, the original form of the image was revived which was more defined. This was the most successful design so far.

As the last design was more successful and met our expectations to some extent with the addition of blood in half of the title on top of the clearer, original image, we decided to fill the entire title with blood again and put it on top of the same image. Although it was first feared to be too over whelming to combine both the full text design and the clear background, it turned out to be the most effective and striking design. It was felt that this was the best portrait format design completed.











We then went on to explore the idea of using the landscape format. It was intended that not much else would change: the same text, title and image would be used and only their design may be altered. Initially the image was mirrored to be on the left hand side and the text on the right so that the photo almost leads your eye to the text and introduces expectation in to the viewers mind. The image was edited with the gradient tool to make the top left appear lighter than the bottom right, as if the face is fading into the background.


The level of gradient was then decreased so that the image appeared lighter and brighter on the poster whilst subtly having the same effect. This looked more striking than the image in the previous design and complimented the text more. This was definitely an improvement as both the text and the image stood out from the background and grabbed the attention of the viewer faster.







As the brighter image was preferred over the darker one in the first two landscape poster designs, the gradient effect was removed all together so that the image held it's original state. This was definitely the right thing to do as the image has more shocking and scary connotations which is what we wanted to achieve in the poster design as our film fits into the horror genre. The blood on the face is emphasised in this brighter state which works well with the blood in the title of the text.

Simply out of curiosity, we tired reversing the previous mirroring effect on the image so that it was on the originally intended right hand side of the poster. I think this worked a lot better as in this format, the image supports the primarily important text on the left hand side as the image follows the text. In the other format the image introduced the text which didn't allow the information to be received first by the viewer. We also tried shadowing the text: red behind 'burgess' and grey behind 'field'. this was quite effective but not as sharp as the original text with no shadowing. Further development was needed at this stage to decide which version was best.

As tried in the portrait designed, the image was then double layered and the top image moved slightly to make the image appear more blurry so that it would blend more into the background and draw more attention to the text. It was felt that again, the clearer image was more effective in producing the intended contrast between image, background and text. The shadow behind the text remained at this point but was was thought of as looking unprofessional, therefore further text editing was needed.

The image was returned to it's previously successful, clearer state. At this pint we decided that this representation of the image was final. The text was still an issue to be debated. To see if adding more colour would be effective, the 'top line of the title 'burgess' was edited to have a red fill and the blood was running only through the bottom line 'field'. Although the red worked aesthetically and complimented the blood on the face of the girl, it was felt to be too stronger image and that too much focus was on that line within the title.


Continuing with editing the text whilst feeling that the previous design was too striking and wanting to keep the red element, I chose to remove all colour from the main title and fill the tag line in red which was added in the previous design to aid the poster in enticing the audience into watching the film. Whilst it was agreed that the tag line was a permanent feature and that the title looked significantly better in white than in the previous design, we thought that the use of the colour red in the text wasn't quite right.

As we couldn't get the poster to reach the expectation we had developed through editing the text, the lay out was changed to see if it was in fact that which needed changing. However, with the face on the left side of the text but not mirrored, the image does not blend into the text and create an aesthetically pleasing design. The line down the centre of the face is very apparent and more of a distraction of the purpose of the poster than an effective feature of the design.

As the trial of layout did not work in terms of fitting in to our vision, we returned to the previous layout. The image remain the same and was finalised. The positioning of the newspaper review, the tag-line, the title and the production attributes were also finalised. In this design we took the red element out of the text all together. The tag-line was filled in a dull yellow colour so that it didn't contrast to the title text too much but stood behind it enough for the focus of the viewer to be mainly on the title.


This design re-introduces the blood in the title text. Finally we felt that all of the elements with in the poster: the positioning of the text, the layout of the image and the poster its self, the effects used on the image and the colours used in the text; were all right. The amount of red is correct and the blood in the title was definitely the best option. We felt that the portrait version looked too unprofessional and that this landscape design is more commercial. This design is our final design.

Webpage HT

Today the group went to film some shots for our film; however i wasn't able to make it so have taken it upon myself to start on creating the webpage for our preliminary task. Ive decided to create the website on 'Webs' a website which allows you to create a webpage for free. Our site would be called burgessfield.webs.com. Currently im trying to put our poster as the banner of the webpage im going to play around with that and the original picture we used and see which has the most dramatic effect. I've chosen to do this as the audience will recognise this as a recogniseable feature of our film, and will associate that picture with our film.

The webpage is a big challenge as many pages and links will need to be created however if we work together i think we will be able to make a good and effective webpage.

Here is an example of the webpage currently. It is not finished atall but its the start. this shot also shows the layout of the web generator and the tools it offers.

Adobe photoshop... AM

To create our poster design and add effects and text, we use adobe photoshop on an apple mac computer. We decided to use adobe as it is the most efficient photo editing software that Hollie and I had access too.

With adobe photoshop, we found that creating 'layers' was particularly useful as we could add and remove different effects and text, then refer back to originals if needed. We felt that making the poster was a long, difficult process but with perseverance we were able to create a poster that was too the standards we believe are needed.

Adobe photoshop had a wide range of fonts that we were able to use which was useful as we were then not limited in our choice of font.

We used adobe InDesign to create 'stars' which replicated movie ratings.

Picasa 3... AM

• The editing software that we originally used to edit the photographs for our poster is Picasa 3.
• Picasa is a free software which is powered by Google, and is easily avaliable for download to any internet user.
• The editing software on Picasa is particularly useful to get a rough idea of the colours and black/white intensity etc that we needed to use for our poster
• We found the 'shadow' and 'highlight' tunings the most useful, as we created a horror movie poster.
• Picasa is really useful as it is easy to undo mistakes and play around with different effects and lighting
• The basic photo editing features that it includes are colour enhancement, red eye removal and cropping

Potential poster images.. AM + HT

Before and after editing... AM + HT

Before
After

After

Before

Our film poster... AM + HT

Useful youtube video on how to create fake cuts etc... AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-jdr1yQ8aI

I thought that this link would be useful for both our photoshoot and our trailer. This video is very good as there are step by step instructions and there is a visual explanation. As none of us our make up experts, instructions on the internet that we can find our very good!


http://www.ehow.com/video_2369484_tips-blending-halloween-makeup.html

Commentary on how successful the photoshot we conducted was... AM

Hollie and I conducted a photoshoot in a drama room in our school. We decided not to use an outside location, as we are going to draft with photo's that we have taken inside of school and if they are not as successful as hoped we will try and take on a different approach. We decided to keep the image very simple, with just a close up of an actors face with heavy make up and fake blood. We will then edit the image on photoshop, in order to create the best effects and use the best editing software.

Unfortunately we could not get hold of a very high resolution camera, so we used my own 14.1 megapixel camera and then we would be able to edit the image on photoshop.

We roughly took around 40 photos, which we are going to round down to about 5 and edit them. Once we have edited, we will then choose the one which we decide looks the best.

The drama room was a very good area to conduct our photoshoot, as they have long black curtains which we could use as a background, and to cover up the actors body.

Friday 13th website - research into horror film websites SE

Films are advertised to the public through teaser and conventional trailers on television and on the Internet. Once people have seen these exciting insights into the story and action of the film they are led to want more and know more. Therefore every feature movie has a website or web page set up to give the public somewhere to access this information and learn more about the making of the film and it's plot, cast, setting and production. The website will also offer previews, the trailers and photographs from the film and information on the DVD release. Some may even have games available to play that are based around the movie.

Influenced by the film 'Friday 13th' (2009) in the planning and production of our teaser trailer, I chose to look at the website of this film in order to see how they advertised their product further and how they portrayed the Horror genre. The opening web page to their website has a similar appearance to a poster advertising the film:

The primary purpose of this page is advertising the DVD of 'Friday 13th'. The title is main focus centred at the top of the page entered in the familiar text used throughout the advertising and production of the film. Images of the DVD cover and case are on the left side of the screen, allowing the viewer to create a mental reference to the product. In the center of the page there is a video insert showing the trailer which gives the audience a preview and an introduction before they enter the main site and explore the film in greater detail. Below this, there are three interactive buttons, one of which allows you to enter the main site. The buttons are designed to look like smudges of blood, which builds anticipation and suggests that the further you go into the website and the more you know about the film, the more gory and gruesome it will become. Therefore the style of the buttons continues the horror theme through out the website, suggesting that when designing our website we will have to pay great attention to detail as the smallest of things can have the greatest impact on the viewer and maintain continuity. Finally, details about the production team of 'Friday 13th', company credits, technical specifications and other details such as the language of the film's dialogue, the location and setting of the film and the release date are all listed at the bottom of the page. This is to ensure that they are available for the audience to view but they are positioned discretely enough and written in grey text on the page to not draw attention away from the film it's self and the horrific atmosphere that the producers are trying to create.

I then pressed the interactive button "enter the site" and I was instantly directed to the main site for 'Friday 13th'. This type of page is far more interactive than the initial web page. An eerie, orchestral style music plays continuously as you explore the site and other sound effects are used as you hover the mouse over interactive buttons. There is a button at the top right hand side of the page which enables the viewer to turn off the music and sounds if preferred. In our web page I think it will be achievable to have music playing as people view our site and it may be possible for sound effects to be used when the viewer moves the mouse over buttons depending on the program we use to create it and how much time it takes taking into consideration our internal deadlines. On the left hand side of every page is a drop down menu represented wooden planks with an option on each plank. As you hover over the initial menu button, the planks fall with the appropriate sound effect to reveal the different options as the planks take the form of a ladder. The navigational options are as follows: 'about the DVD', 'cast', 'downloads', 'photos', 'video', 'ecard', 'soundtrack', 'official shop'. Each option takes you to a different page offering you an insight into the different aspects of the film, showing previews in different media platforms and some are available to download. Each page has a different background consisting of screenshots and photos of characters edited to create a visually aesthetic image that compliments the text content of the page. Continuing to be interactive, the background moves as you move your mouse which might be too advanced to implicate in our website but is very interesting concept and one to take on board in the designing process of our site. Furthermore, as you move between pages, a transition of the colour black gradually seeping through the background and eventually covering the screen before the new page is revealed in the reverse of the same process is used. I think this unusual transition is effective as it is slow to show the new image, continuing the horror theme as the lack of speed increases and emphasises the anticipation of the viewer. I think we should investigate transitions and use a similarly effective one opposed to a simple and fast one. The last navigational option: 'official shop' does not take the view to another page of the website but opens a pop-out window linking you to the official Warner Brothers shop website.The appearance of the internal pages of the 'Friday 13th' website are as follows:

'about the DVD':

This page focuses on the production of the DVD and advertises it through the following sections: 'synopsis' which covers the special features of the DVD as well of the synopsis of the film; 'the film makers' informing the viewer of the history and credits of the production team including the director Marcus Nispel; and finally 'production notes' of members of the production team which are quoted and organised into the chapters of the DVD. We could create a similar page on our website, the information provided on it would be far more basic and we would have to design a DVD cover (this could be similar to the poster we are developing) but I feel it would be an effective option to include in our own website.

'cast'

As you hover the mouse over the characters you can see in this screenshot, the actor or actress's name followed by the name of their character's name appears around the selected person. If you then continue to click on the name, the image of the individual remains in full colour and the rest of the screen fades into darkness so that the focus is on the selected character alone; along side this image a biography/filmography is shown describing the actor/actress's training and past work.

'downloads'

This page allows the audience to access free items related to 'Friday 13th'. These items include many wall papers for your computer, posters, cut out masks, iron-on prints and ring tones. By having these items available, the viewer is encouraged to form a closer relationship and interest to the film and therefore is more likely to buy the DVD or pay to watch the film in the cinema.

'photos'

This page provides a slide show of twenty-nine screen shots from the 'Friday 13th' that can be either scrolled through at one's own leisure or played on the 'auto play' setting that plays the pictures on a loop with no input needed from the viewer. I think this section of the website could be easily recreated on our own site as we will be able to take screen shots from our teaser trailer and even use some from our unused footage if it looks effective and enticing.

'video'

The audience is able to view either the conventional trailer or the teaser trailer on this page. By having these available on the website, the audience is enabled to access footage from the film and experience a preview that was edited in such a way that creates suspicion and curiosity in the mind of the view to see the outcome, therefore advertising the sale of the film. As our main task is to produce a teaser trailer for our film, I feel that it is highly important to include the trailer on a page within our website and maybe even on the initial web page to encourage people to look further into the site.

'ecard'

The 'ecard' section of the website offers online greetings cards that you can email to your friends, family and contacts. There are three available that all relate to 'Friday 13th', one of which enables the viewer to upload a photograph of his or her own face and insert it into a hole created in the body of a character being kidnapped by the murderer. This is a good way of encouraging the public to advertise the film with no effort of the production company needed. I think that it is not necessary to include this section in our website but it would be interesting to explore if we have the time.

'soundtrack'
A media player is embedded within this page offering the viewer a chance to listen to every song or piece of music that the film used in it's soundtrack. A number is also provided at the bottom of the page enabling the public to download the songs as ring tones. Like the 'ecards', I feel that this is an unnecessary option for our group to develop as our soundtrack will be very limited due to the fact we are only producing a teaser trailer that may only use one track opposed to a film that has several.

Camera HT

We tried to get a high mega pixel camera at short notice but for our research we have decided to use a Sony cybershot 14.1 megapixel camera.


Key Features:

• 14.1 effective megapixels resolution
  Captures very high quality images, allowing detail-packed enlargements
  


• 4x optical zoom
  4x zoom range and 26mm wide angle to cover wide range of shooting situations
  


• 2.7" LCD
  Clear Photo LCD screen (230k dot) offers excellent detail, high contrast and wide viewing angle
  


• Intelligent Auto
  Automatically adjusts exposure and other settings for optimum results in a wide range of shooting situations
  


• Face Detection
  Automatically adjusts focus, exposure and white balance for clearer portraits: priority selectable between children and adults
  


• Smile Shutter
  Automatically fires shutter when subject smiles: with adjustable smile threshold and priority selectable for children/adults
  


• Easy Shooting mode
  Fuss-free operation for beginners with simplified controls and easy-to-read on-screen instructions

Camera advice HT

Before we go to take the photos i've decided to do some research into how to create the most effective photos at night. During my research i found that on the camera we should avoid using the flash, to try and combat this we should try and adjust the ISO on the camera and increase it.

This will mean the higher the ISO the lower the exposure. Another bit of advice i found was to take multiple pictures all using different exposures this will enable us to retrieve the best possible outcome.


Definition of ISO: is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light.

Example of ISO

This link shows tips on how to use ISO and how to correctly use lighting settings:

http://www.videojug.com/film/digital-photography-tips-iso-and-light-settings

Ancillary task begins!!! HT

We have taken the advice of our teacher and have decided to split our ancillary tasks between the 4 of us, Me and Amy are going to tackle the advertising poster and Sophie and Claire are going to do the web page.

Me and Amy have decided that today we will try out different shots and mise-en-scene's for our poster. We've both agreed that we will try and mimic the picture of 'eyes' which Claire posted. We particularly like this and will take inspiration from this as it depicts the horror theme really well also with the eyes being off centre in the picture it allows us enough room to add titles and other texts. We hope to get all the pictures taken today so we can start on putting our poster together on photoshop; using the photoshop tutorial i added below.

Cold Night for Alligators Font.. AM

This type of font is very suitable for our media trailer as each letter looks like it has been drawn with blood. As the genre of our media trailer is a horror, it is important that we get a font that represents the intensity of the killings that occur throughout the trailer.

Eyes Idea CA

The idea of the dark background against the pale skin and the blood from the eyes makes the image very intense.

Useful link? CA

I found a link to another blog with research links into how to make a thriller poster.



http://a2mediacourseworkdanielparslow.blogspot.com/2010/11/film-poster-reaserch.html

Influences for poster HT

I think that this forest picture could be an ideal influence for what we should try and re-create for our poster; with the focus on the sun just breaking through the trees and depth of the picture we could create with help of photoshop to make it seem the ideal place to resemble and give connotations of a horror. It also ties in well with the theme of our film which is set in a forrest. We can grab the interest of the audience by layering the poster with different images; for example in the photoshop tutorial they use clouds to set the scene. We could also adjust the saturation and colour of the photo to enable us to pull of the correct affect and feeling for our poster to give off the correct message.

As the seperation of the trees leaves us with a lot of room to work with we could follow as the photoshop tutorial explains we could use an image to send off a message, in the tutorials case they use eyes i think we could also follow this as it would highten the fact the film is a horror and also add to the suspense of the film as the audience will want to find out who this person is.

We can set the eyes in a black background like the picture above in order to not give too much away and add to the suspense of the piece. Photoshop tutorial also explains that we should work on the eyes and make them more dramatic and other worldly so they fit in with the theme of the film.