Magazine Cover Reseach

These are some examples of magazine names and logos that are commonly used to promote films to readers. There titles are well known and are always the same. One thing that changes about the logos/title is the colours used. Depending on the colour scheme of the magazine cover the title may change colour. The most common colours used are red and black but on the occasion there are covers that have the title shown in a different colour all together but this is rarely done.

The position of the person on the cover ranges on each magazine cover. The shot that has been used of the person seams to have an impact on this. For example the magazine cover with Chris Pines star trek character on it is a close up shot of his face. Because of this the title is over the top of his face and fully visible. The second magazine cover of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from inception is full length body shot minus a view of his feet. With this image the title is placed behind him. I think that this is done because  with the body shot the title is still visible behind the photo and the audience can identify the name of the magazine. If they would have done this with the close up shot then the title would not be visible to the audience. When creating our magazine cover, the type of photo that we use will have an impact on the way we layout the composition of the cover. Especially the placement of the title.  

Here is an example of two covers from the same magazine. Two different issues that have different covers. On both of these there is a difference in the information heading. The first magazine cover shows promotion fro the first captain America film. This is clear because the name of the film is in bold bright capital font so that it is noticed by the readers. The second cover is promotion the 6th instalment in the Harry Potter film series. The difference in this cover is that the name of the film is not shown as boldly as the previous. I think that this is because the harry potter film series is well known to everyone and because it is the sixth film, people will recognise Daniel Radcliffe’s character and not need to see the title of the film where as the Captain America cover is the first film and people would not be familiar with it.

 

Genre Research

After looking at many different film genres we decided to choose the Thriller genre for out film trailer project. This was because we felt that we could get the best results with this type of film. 

After choosing the thriller genre we researched into the sub genres of thriller films. From this research we soon came to realise that there are many different types of thriller film created. This ranges from Thriller-Action, Thriller-Horror and Psychological Thrillers. This made us realise that we had to identify the differences and similarities between the different sub genres.  To do this we choose to create a table and compare different items to four different thriller film trailers. The four films we choose to use for our research were:

The Butterfly Effect, Gone, Panic Button and Taken

When choosing these film we chose films that had similar story line but were also different thriller sub genres. The theme for the storyline of these trailer is People being taken on trapped in different circumstances.  We choose this theme because we plan to contract a storyline for our trailer using a similar situations.The chart that we created with the similarities and differences of the four trailers is shown below:  

Target Audience

Target audience for our film: After researching the target audiences of four thriller films we realised that the rating depended on the amount of action and horror elements within the film. For example We looked at the films ‘The Butterfly Effect’ and ‘Gone’ these were psychological thrillers and both of there film rating are 15. They contain no violence as the films are based around the psychological side of thriller films. The other two films were researched ‘Panic Button’ and ‘Taken’ were horror thriller and action thriller films. The level of violence was higher within these films to fit in with the genre and this is the reason that there rating were 18.

For our film we decided to use the 15 age rating because we plan to base of film around the psychological thriller side of the genre. Because there is less violence visible in the psychological thriller film trailers we researched we plan to use the same low level of violence in our trailer.   

Along with a 15 age rating certificate for our film the target audience for our film is going to be 16-26. 

After researching further and creating our film narrative we have decided that the film trailer we are creating is going to simply be a thriller film. We removed the psychological sub genre from our trailer because the narrative we created would notify into the genre and we thought that our narrative would be interesting in a film and we wanted to show this is our trailer.