Photoshoot Planning - Ancillary Tasks:

In order to get a sense of what i need to do during my photoshoot (i.e what props i will need, how much lighting will be appropriate, etc), i have created a prezi presentation which covers all the areas that i will need when taking photos for my magazine and film poster.

Recce For Photoshoot & Filming:

This is a Recce I have created for my photoshoot and filming. It covers potential difficulties, Plan B's,  planning arrangements, hazards etc, so that i have a clear idea and understanding of what i need to do and how i need to do it. (click the images for a clearer view of the small text.

Film Magazine Reconstruction:

After re-creating a trailer and a film poster, i thought i may as well also reconstruct a film magazine front cover, in order to give myself some practice and a sense of the magazine conventions. The magazine poster i chose to re-create is the one shown below; The Hunger Games edition of Total Film magazine.

1) I first added a photograph of a flame into photoshop on a black background. This is to mimic the 'catching fire' theme of the magazine and the featured movie. 

2) Next i added a bold white font that reads 'Film' and used the polygonal lasso tool to select and delete the shape of the world 'total' from the top of the letter F. I like this decision i made because i think the way you can see the background through the letters is very effective and reflects the original cover very well.

 

3) Next i added white text saying 'The hunger games' across the magazine, and used the 'drop shadow' layer style to add a shadow around it to mimic the original design. I also added the yellow rectangle beneath it to begin filling in my magazine cover. 

 4) I added 'Massive interactive issue' on top of the yellow box in the same style font as what was on the original magazine. i also added a rotated red rectangle with the word 'amazing!' inside of it on the left of the rectangle.

 5) I added the lines 'inside: the most influential film made in years' and 'use your phone to make the pages come alive! see page 6 to find out how' below both the subheadings of the front cover, in a much smaller font. I have also added 'Death! Destruction! Dystopia!' to the right hand side of the cover in bold yellow writing.

 

6) Here i have added a yellow circle using the shape tool, and by using the appropriate fonts and colours, i have created the '10 biggest block busters' sticker that is shown on the front of the original magazine cover. 

7) By adding more titles in the correct fonts and colour schemes, along with white squares for the image borders, i feel like my magazine is slowly coming along very nicely. I have also added the + sign at the bottom with the 'extra' stories and the bar code that are included on the bottom of the Total Film magazine. I obviously did not have an original photograph of a real-life spider man, therefore i have added an image from Google Images to the yellow rectangle at the bottom.

8) I have added existing original images of me and my friends at the top of the magazine that matched the type of photographs on the original cover. For example, the image on the right originally had two girls in dresses smiling at the camera, therefore i used me and my best friend smiling on our prom night. I have also added the date and issue number etc under the Masthead of the magazine.

9) Next i have added a photograph of myself to the center of the page to act as the main image. I wore black clothes with my hair in a side braid in order to reflect Jennifer Lawrence/Katniss Everdeen's appearance on the front of the original magazine. This completes my front cover of my third reconstruction task (The full version will be uploaded in my next blogpost).

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This is the final outcome of my movie magazine that i reconstructed from the original empire magazine (both are shown below.) When put side by side i think i have done a decent job in getting my product to look similar to the original, as all the layout is more or less in the same place and i have stuck to the main conventions of the total film magazine. The main image could have been a better quality as it was just taken with a webcam, however i know that i will be using the studio when i make my real products, so the photos will hopefully be a lot better in quality by the time it comes to making my final designs.

Resources needed:

Camera:

i need a good quality camera in order to record my film in the best quality possible. To do this, i will need to book out a canon camera from college in order to take away and do some filming outside of class time in my desired location. This will allow me to have HD footage, rather than filming on a low quality mobile device/camera. 

Adobe Software:

I will need a various amount of Adobe Software in order to create my products. I will need photoshop or illustrator to create both my poster and my film magazine, as they are the best programs for working with layout, texts and colours etc. I will also need premiere pro to edit my filming once i have all the shots. All of these programs are available at college so i should be able to access them very easily.

Film Poster Reconstruction:

In order to get a sense of what it's like to create a film poster, i have decided to re-create an existing movie poster using Adobe Photoshop. Below is the poster i have chose to reconstruct, which is from the film 'Carrie' which i have previously de-constructed.

1)   To begin with, i first selected a black background using the fill tool, and started to outline the basic shape of the girl shown on the poster using the pen tool, before filling the path with the color white. I layered this over the black background.

2) On a new layer, i then began to use the pen & fill tool again to draw out the shape of blood dripping down from the top of her head to the middle of her body. 

3) Next i added the text 'Carrie' in the font Impact and used the transform and warp tools to create this 'wave' shape. I also drew out a hand with the pen tool and filled it in with the colour black. I have made sure that the blood dripped into the letter 'A' in 'Carrie' in order to match the original poster.

4) I next added more text in the font impact that reads "If you've got a taste for terror...Take carrie to the prom", and have placed it in a new layer in the same position as the original poster.  

5) For this step i merged the dripping blood layer and the white body layer together, and have used the magnetic lasso tool to select various sections of her body. After selecting each segment, i held down the Ctrl button in order to drag it away from the layer, in order to create this shattered effect. 

6) Next i added text to display the names of the actors and producers at the bottom of the page. I have also used various types of paint brush tools in order to create the effect of blood splatters throughout the image. 

7) After a sufficient amount of blood splatters were added, i used the pen and fill tool to add grey shapes on the black background, in order to imitate the original poster. I have also used the brush tool to add a layer of blood along the very bottom of the poster.

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This is my final product for my second re-construction task (the one on the left). Overall i am very pleased with it, as it looks very similar to the original poster, which is displayed to the right of it. By doing this i have now had experience of what it's like to create a movie poster, as well as being able to get used to all the conventions that a movie poster contains.