Magazine Cover: Font Ideas

These were the four different fonts that we picked out to have on our poster. We chose these sort of styles because they are easy to read and simple but at the same they look old-fashioned and spooky which is the effect we were looking for.

We liked this font because the first letter of each word is larger than the rest of the letters and we thought this looked really interesting and different. We also liked the shape of the letters because they're quite bold and easy to read.

We also liked this font because with think it looks a lot like some fonts that are used on magazine covers because stereotypically, the font used on magazine covers isn't very complex, it's generally quite plain to make it easy for people to read.

This is the font we have chosen to have on our magazine cover. We chose this font because we felt that the 'old style' effect looked really effective and blended well with the font we have used for the title of our film. We also like how the font is slightly bolder in certain places and almost looks like someone has written it themselves.

Finally, this is the last font we looked at to possibly have on our magazine cover. Like the first font, we liked how the first letter of each word is slightly bigger and bolder than the rest because it looks quite scary and old-fashioned. We also think the shape of the font in general is really nice and blends well with our film title font.

'Scary Hand' Make-Up and Effects

In the bathroom scene where the 'demons' hand touches Laura's shoulder, we had to make the hand looking scary and gruesome to give the effect of 'death' and make it look scary. If we didn't do this, it would just look like a normal hand and it wouldn't look very scary at all. 

To make Faye's hand look like this we used 3 things, tomato ketchup, dirt and baby powder. 

We wanted to use tomato ketchup to give the effect that the hand was covered in blood. We thought this would be a good thing to use because we found that fake blood was extremely bright red and we didn't think this looked realistic. Tomato ketchup is quite a dark browny type of red and we thought this resembled the colour of real blood more than using a fake blood so we decided to use this instead.

We then wanted the hand to look really pale. When people die, they go really white and cold because the blood is no longer pumping around their body. We wanted to make the 'demon' look pale and give a sort of 'cold' and 'dead' effect to make it look more creepy. We decided to use baby powder for this because it's white and so we felt it was the best thing to use. We looked at using white paint for this but, like red paint, it's extremely white and doesn't really give the 'pale' effect that we were looking for.

And finally, we wanted to make the hand look dirty, as if it had almost 'come out from the ground' and so decided to add dirt to it. This made Faye's hand look really creepy and more effective. We then added water to Faye's hand afterwards because we knew that when you add water to baby powder, it goes quite clumpy. We thought this would look gruesome and almost look like the 'demons' skin was shedding.

The finished make up is pictured below:

After we'd finished the make up and filmed the shot, we needed to add effects onto Faye's hand to increase the spookiness even more and make the scene more intense for the audience.

We changed the exposure of the shot, decreasing the highlights slightly so it became more dark to look more horror like and scary. We also decreased the shadows, this made sure that it didn't highlight any parts of the shot and just made it all the same darkness which we thought was more professional.

Finally, we added the effect 'Prism' to our shot. This effect basically made Faye's hand look like there was a double and had a sort of shadowy effect on the hand. It also shadowed parts of the hand and made them look slightly out of focus. We thought this looked really good as it gave off a sort of ghostly feel to the shot which is what we wanted the 'demon' to be portrayed as. We also thought it looked better rather than having no effect at all because that may have looked boring and less scary. Below is the outcome of adding 'Prism' to this shot.

Magazine Cover Ideas

Idea 1 
For our magazine cover, we wanted to do something really different but at the same time, typical and that relates to our genre and our trailer plot.
Our first idea was to have Ella (Laura) on the front page, sort of like our poster. However, we wanted to have a full body shot of her wearing typical teenage girl clothes and holding a balloon preferably red or black because these colours are typically associated with horror/thriller genres.

We really like this idea and were influenced by the films above, The Shining and The Grudge. We like the idea of making girls look really sweet, innocent and normal but underneath, they're actually evil but the audience can't see this because of their disguise.

Setting
We want the setting/background of our magazine cover to be in a woods. We think the woods is a good place to have this because they look really creepy because of all the shadows that surround it. We also used a woods setting in our actual trailer so this would relate to it as well as having our main character on the front of the magazine.

Photoshop Tools
When editing our magazine, we will be using photoshop. On photoshop, there are many tools that we will probably be using to ensure that our magazine is perfect and looks professional.

The magic wand tool allows you to remove any excess background that you may not want/need on your photo. We may have to use this tool when editing our magazine cover incase there are any parts of the background that we don't want to be there.

The crop tool will also be a tool that we could use when editing our magazine cover. We may need to crop around the photo so that each side is even and that Laura (Ella) is centred in the middle of the photo. This will make the photo look more professional and therefore improve the magazine cover immensely. There may also be people/objects in the background of the photo that we possibly may not have noticed when actually taking the photo so we may need to crop these out too.

We may also want to use the blur, sharpen or smudge tool when editing our magazine cover. The blur tool would help to make the background slightly out of focus, emphasising the main object of the photograph which will be Laura (Ella). It will make her look more obvious and make the audience automatically drawn to her rather than anything else that's happening in the photo. We may also want to use the sharpen tool. This tool increases the pixels in a certain photo, making it look more sharp and therefore, standout. Basically the opposite to the blur tool. And finally, we may want to use the smudge tool when we come to edit our magazine. This allows us to smudge the photograph so everything in the image moulds together so it just looks like a big blur. We are less sure about using this effect, however we could adjust the amount and use it slightly to add more of an effect to the background or to Laura (Ella) herself.

Finally, any of these edits could be used on our image to improve the appearance of it. Each edit does something different to the image, increases/decreases the saturation, brightens it or darkens it etc. We will probably use the effect that decreases the light intensity the most as we want our poster to be quite dark to make it look more scary and horror like. We may also use 'Vivid light' to highlight certain areas of the image and possibly to increase the shadows around the trees/bushes in the woods to make it look more spooky and intense.

At the end of our image editing, we want our magazine background image to look something roughly similar to the image below:

Idea 2 

Our second idea for our magazine cover was slightly similar to our first. We know that we want our magazine cover to have Ella (Laura) on the front, in the centre of the image so she stands out and it's obvious she's the main subject of the poster. However, we weren't certain exactly how we wanted Ella to be pictured or what the background would be.

Our second idea was, again to have Ella standing in the middle of the image like the examples below: 

We felt this presented Ella as the main character which gave the audience an idea of what the film could possibly be about.

We then decided that, unlike our first idea when we had the woods in the background, we could have the house that Ella becomes obsessed with in the background. This would present more of the storyline to the audience and help the magazine cover relate to our film. 

Setting

Above is the house that Ella becomes obsessed by. Our idea then was to picture Ella standing in front of the gate looking extremely spooky and almost possessive. 

Photoshop Tools

When using Photoshop on our second idea we thought it would look good if we make it as dark as possible. We thought it would look good to have the poster looking dark so that the audience get the idea of what the genre is straight away. The tools below are what we will use to achieve this.

We will first adjust the brightness and contrast, when using this effect on our poster it made Ella look darker and so fade into the background which was black. We liked the idea of this as it made Ella look mysterious as her features weren't clear due to the darkness.

After changing the brightness/contrast we will adjust the colour balance. We edited the colour balance on our poster and we liked the effect is made when changing the colour to blue, we did this slightly to again add the effect of darkness and mystery.

Lastly we will change the edit of the magazine, as said before each of these edits will give the magazine cover a different appearance.  As we want to make this magazine cover look as dark as possible we will probably pick either darken, dissolve or hard light. Darken will obviously make the picture look darker, dissolve will make the picture have a faded look which adds to the effect of mystery and hard light highlights certain features of the picture which we thought would look good. 

Unused Shots

Below is a video of our shots that we decided not to use in our trailer. We felt that it was important to include these in our blog because we wanted to show why we didn't use them and why it would have a negative impact on our trailer if we decided to use them.

Our Finished Trailer

This is our finished trailer. We were really happy with the outcome of it and think that filming and editing went really smoothly and we were very dedicated and motivated to be able to create the final piece below: 

Editing: Video Effects

We used the effect 'Luma Keyer' on these 2 shots. This effect basically decreased the brightness of the shot and made it look more shadowy. It also highlighted the shadows that are within the shot. We really liked the look of this because it made the shots look more spooky because they were darker. Also, the fact that the edit highlighted the shadows made it darker in certain areas and as if someone was 'hiding in the shadows' which increased the tension in our trailer.
In the first shot, the use of the effect increases the reflection in the small river which we thought was really effective. It gives a larger variation of light rather than just having it all one brightness or darkness. It also highlights the 'demon' that is standing on the bridge more, making it look more clear because it's been shadowed.
In the second shot, the trees are shadowed really well, increasing the tensity of the shot and making it appear more scary. The light from the sun appears really well on the ground in some places which we thought looked really good and professional. Finally, the effect makes the end of the walkway really dark and mysterious which we thought appeared really well and made the audience think what could be down there which is what we were looking for.

We used the effect 'Film Grain' on this shot. This effect basically makes the shot look more grainy and increased the brightness of the shot. It also made it look more creepy because it gave an old-fashioned looking effect to it which is what we wanted. It also increased the quality of the image because it is quite dark so the quality isn't as good, it increased the sharpness which made it easier to see certain parts of the shot. 

We used the effect 'Crisp Contrast' on this shot. This effect basically increases the contrast of the shot to highlight certain shadows and decrease the parts that are too bright. We can see that to the right of the shot, it is brighter and the reflection on the water is highlighted. We really liked this because it looked really effective and gave a sense of the scenery. We can then see to the left of the shot that it is darker where there is no reflection. We like this as it looks spooky and more like a forest.

We used the effect 'Bleach Bypass' to this shot. This effect basically makes the shot look lighter but alters the colour of it, making it look almost sepia. It also highlights the main point in the shot and darkens the shadows more. We wanted to add this effect to this shot so that it highlighted the flashing light and made it look more spooky and unusual. It also darkened the edges of the light and most of the other parts that surround the shot so that the light stood out more and made the audience more aware of it.

Blog Feedback

This is the first feedback we received from our teacher on the 30th September. He said we had to add the 25 word pitch which we did and also our post developmental ideas for our logo. We added our logo ideas including different fonts we were looking at. Also, how we wanted the logo to enter/leave the screen at the beginning of our trailer.

This was the second feedback we received from our teacher about our blog on 11th November. We can see here how we went from a B/C grade, to a Ba grade in just a couple of weeks. He commented about our sound and said that we needed to explore other variations so we thought about how we could do this and looked at different sound effects that we could use in our trailer. He also said we needed to add our storyboard and so we did this too. Finally, we updated our Target Audience post and made it more informative.