Magazine influences

We researched many different film magazines to use as an influence for our magazine cover. We looked at the different formats,unique selling points,logos use of text an colour, font size/style, and relevance to genre etc. It was difficult to find one that embodied what we needed in terms of genre.
We looked at Total film which is one of the largest film magazines in the world which features a range of different types of film. We looked at the features of the magazine and how we would incorporate things like the title,barcode and price.


Salt being on of our main influences encouraged us to use the total film logo as a base structure for our magazine cover. We found it very difficult to find a logo which had a good quality pixel so we decided to come up with our own. we used magazines like Empire and Little White lies as inspiration. We used concepts like using the title and the picture to create a 3D effect. We tried to market the film using genre and we did it in a way that makes the audience want to know more by not giving away to much of the themes and ideas of the film.

Magazine Influences

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magazine cover and theory.

The magazine cover conflicts the theory of british film theorist, Laura Mulvey who talks about the male and female gaze. viewers are encourage to identify with the protagonist of the film which tends to be a man. Playtime has a female protagonist which is portrayed on the magazine cover which doesn't portray her as desirable which is the 'norm'.
The male gaze is a well established phenomenon in film,advertising and other types of media. The concept of it is the tendency of media to view its subjects of heterosexual men which is aimed primarily at females. In the case of Playtime it conceptualises the idea of the female gaze.
People watch movies like playtime give people a sense of enjoyment and thrill. Male viewers may be attracted to it because it gives them visual pleasure as the protagonist has a dominant role and is shown to be a sexy criminal. Women may her position as empowering and as Mulvey talks about the beginning of annihilating patriarchal Hollywood.
An example of the Male gaze is this scene in the movie Heart- Magic man-The virgin suicides.




Cropping pictures is a tool used to put an emphasise on different element of the body correlating to the male and female gaze theory, so instead of this....


you might get this....

Possible Magazine titles

Premiére
Cannot use this as it is already an established film magazine

Cinematic
Sounded A Bit Too Amateur

Disturbia
Matches our film as it is a disturbing concept but doesn’t sound good as a magazine title

Scream
Would suit a magazine for films that are much more horror based

Film Central
Perfect. As There are no adjectives relating to a specific genre in the title, it is a title that can advertise any genre of film and for this reason, perfect for Playtime.

Photoshop Practice

Before we could really start up and create our poster, we needed to brush up on our skills on photoshop. During a Media Studies Lesson, we took a few quick flicks of images similar to ones that will be on our actual poster and began to edit and mesh them together to see if our idea would infact work.

The main idea for our Poster is to have an extreme close up shot of our protagonist, Ursula, wearing her trademark midnight shades. In the reflection of the shades will be an image of the boy in the trailer as a way to create synergy for our audience and create an association between the child and our main character.

This idea will require us taking two images. With the image of the boy, we will have to use the 'Select' pencil on Photoshop to carefully draw around the boy and then press 'Cut'. If this is done successfully, we should be left with the required image of the boy cut out of the picture, leaving only a stencil behind with the rest of the image that too is unwanted.

We Tried This Out On Photoshop And Here's What We Ended Up With...

As you can see, this is very similar to what we described above. Unfortunately, the shoe has been left behind in the image and this has taught us to be very careful when selecting and to ensure that we check that all aspects of the image that we want to select is actually selected.

Once we had this image, We pasted this onto our image of Nicky of LNC impersonating our main character. This worked well and appeared somewhat realistic once the edges had been softened and smudged out. We had previously played around with the editing of Nicky and had used all sorts of effects to give us a basic idea of how we wanted our final production to look.

Either way, here's how our 'Trial Poster' turned out :

You can quite clearly see that we have put the image that we previously cut onto the main character's glasses. This works quite well although with the real image, the framing of the glasses will be more residing and so will provide a better outline for our character to sit in than the scarf used in this.

On our actual poster, our character will be wearing her signature bracelet of which is colourful, The dark editing that will be used on our poster will allow the beads of the bracelet to really stand out along with the editing on her lips that will be made a bold red.

In terms of writing, we wanted as little as possible. We want the image to be the main focus of our poster and so simply used text for the title and tagline. We will make these bright and colourful to further emphasise the childhood theme but use a smudged paint font that although appears quite innocent on the surface, still has a sinister tone to it.

The importance of Taglines on a film poster

Posters are essential to building up a voice and following for a future releasing of a film. In order for a film to be mentioned in conversations by future audiences, there must be a certain aspect of the poster that stands out substantially from other films soon to be released. Features such as a Tagline on the poster are essential to building up a following. If effective, they will be easily remembered and unintentionally fixed into the minds of the audience when the name of a film, in our case ‘Playtime’ is brought up. A successful Tagline will constantly be associated with the film and stay in the minds of future audiences.

LNC have decided that “Are You Ready To Play” will be the most effective tagline for our film. It is short and straight to the point and easily associated with the title of our film (Playtime). The tagline does not give away too much about our film but simply gives a vague idea of the playful theme. This is definitely the most effective Tagline to associate with our film

Influence for Playtime Poster

Sin city was also one of our influence as it is a crime thriller just like Playtime. The film's unique colour processing renders the film mostly in black and white but retained some bits in colour was the kind of theme we was going. Initially we wanted Playtime to be in black and white but we decided not to do this because we felt it would not appeal to our target audience so instead we used this concept in our poster. We were also attracted to the way the camera used angles to emphasise the importance of the characters. We tried to use a range of different angles from low angles to aerial shots but e then decided it would be more effective to do a close up shot of the protagonists' face.


The Movie Salt starring Anglina Jolie is one of or main influences for our poster. It has a similar genre and it also features a female protagonist which isn't very common and predictable. We were attracted to the way the main focus in the picture was her face and we thought we could develop that idea and incorporate the childlike theme we had. The eye catching feature on the salt poster is the prominence of the characters eyes and the contrast between light and dark. we tried to incorporate this by using a black background and the use of colour. We decided to make her lips bright red so they stand out and is the main focal point alongside the use of colour in the title and the young boy shown in the reflection of the glasses. The use of colour in the title depicts the relation how young children can be attracted by colour.
The simplicity of the structure of the Salt poster reminded us that clear and basic texts,fonts and boldness can elaborate the meaning and significance of how the film
can be portrayed in an exciting way without making it to busy.

Poster : Initial Ideas