Ben’s Blog

My main contribution to the group trailer is that I am doing the editing of the trailer. I also shot some footage, acted as the person being dragged (although I/we cut myself from the final version with Aaron being used instead as a shot with Aaron looked better) and I co-held (with Danny) a lamp up to bring light to the scene, as it was too dark for the camera to see but the lights made it much too bright.

To prepare for editing, the research/looking at trailers had come in very useful and I had learnt how to work the Windows Movie Maker program (using it to edit the trailer) through my teacher who explained to the class and to me.

I have started editing the trailer, after 3 hours of shooting/planning the trailer was narrowed down to approximately 1 minute and a half of footage (without film logo, information, etc…), which through editing I have condensed down (mainly to increase the pace of different shots so they are quicker, eg: 15 seconds of a shot to 5 and also to cut unnecessary parts from the film). There was also a big problem with 1 shot/part of the footage, where someone is meant to be at a computer typing and then walking to the door. I was not present during this shot, as me & Danny were doing the running up the stair shots (Danny’s ended up being used), and when the footage from our 3 hour approx shoot was put on the school computers, I saw this shot that we only had 1 of and it was very bad. Not only was the screen obviously not being typed on (typing on the keyboard, nothing happening on the screen), but to make the shot easier another person had done 1 of the arms while Aaron did the other and they were very obviously not belonging to the same person. However, through editing, I managed to save the shot. I did this by cutting the start of it (split footage section into 2 and cut the first part I had split) and starting the shot with the hands moving away, so the problem of typing nothing is eliminated and it looks like the hands are both the same plus it still shows what was needed, person on computer, moving off to the door.

As well as condensing footage for effect and to make it look better, I also used the fade to black effect on some shots, plus I inserted pictures of other trailer features that were needed.

I created and put in a 12A trailer (trailers are classified seperately from films- eg: this film is 18, but the trailer is 12A), 2 lines of text ‘harmless fun…’ and ’…has never been so painful’, the film logo (the logo was created by Conor and he also sent the 2 lines) plus I did a coming soon screen with the 18 certificate (the film classification), and 2 film companies, Universal & Dolby Digital.

(The film poster pictures above are 3 different shots of my poster in planning/development and the shot below this is my final complete version of the poster)

Before creating my film poster, I had researched and annotated real film posters to get knowledge and ideas from. I did not get much ideas or knowledge from doing it this year as I had already done this type of research before and therefore I was already familiar with poster conventions, plus I knew what I wanted to do for my poster.

The program that I used to create this poster was Microsoft Publisher and I used fonts from the program, except for the “Through The Eyes Of A Killer” part which was created by Conor and the whole group used as it is the film logo promoting the same film. Although for the ‘chiller’ font on ‘Danny Millen’ and ‘Conor Campbell’ I imported from Microsoft Word because it has an ‘emboss’ feature  which makes the font stand out and it made it look different for a bit of variety but still keeping the red/black theme.

As for the picture, pictures were done with the filming and we planned for filming so plans are the same (plans can be seen in my research & planning)

(^^ OLD WORK IN PROGRESS VERSION OF THE MAGAZINE ^^)

I created my film magazine before filming and taking pictures for the film trailer of the fictional film “Through The Eyes Of A Killer”, using a temporary picture of female rapper Diamond so I could work on the magazine with a layout similar-ish to the shot I wanted for the magazine when pictures/film would be taken. So although I knew I would still have to change it around slightly after putting in the real/original image, it allowed me a basic layout to work on. So I got a barcode, the picture of Diamond and started work on it. First I decided the film magazine title which I decided would be Film Now, and then I thought about how to create a good text for it and instead of using word art from Microsoft Word, or text from Microsoft Publisher I decided to go on a font site and type in my magazine. I used dafont.com and didn’t need to change the automatic colour background of white (when copied and pasted) as I wanted this to go with and stand out against my black background/dark image. After doing this I decided fonts and created/typed film titles, features, etc…plus magazine date, issue number, magazine website and the price (which I decided as it is issue 1, a new magazine, it should be on special offer to attract new customers so I made it £2). As for my features I used real actors/actresses (except for my group fictional film “Through The Eyes Of A Killer”), ending up mentioning Halle Berry, Nicholas Cage & Queen Latifah on my final version. I originally also had Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller + Jim Carrey written with “The Laugh” feature but I ended up not featuring their names as through looking at the annotations/covers of real film magazines, the features were short, so I shorted down and slightly changed the features, an example is I changed “Exclusive film review: City Kill: starring Nicholas Cage & Queen Latifah” to “City Kill: Nicholas Cage vs. Queen Latifah”. And as well as changing/shortening features, I also made the main feature (my fictional group film “TTEOAK” as the magazine is promoting the film along with my poster & film trailer) much bigger and more prominent compared to the other features.

(^^ Finished version of the magazine ^^)

Since I last blogged about the A2 Media  task of creating a film trailer, my school teachers suggested doing a group trailer, shooting the film trailer together and promoting the film by doing seperate and different posters and magazine covers. I and other people decided to join a group, so me & 3 people: Danny, Aaron and Conor, as a group decided to choose Conor’s film idea to develop into our film trailer. His idea is a horror film called “Through The Eyes Of A Killer” shot in “first person” (from the eye view of who is featured in the film). The narrative of the film is…

To prepare for this, Conor had already prepared a storyboard for the film, but changed and added some scenes. And we also changed some more before filming to work well with the location we had planned, a flat building, featuring the inside of a flat. To get this location, deciding where to film. All 4 of us had a group talk, finding out where we could film it, Aaron arranged this, as he had the inside of a flat and the building inside available which was perfect for the film. Then we discussed when we could get together and film it, needing to find Conor’s work times as he works, so after Conor got the information, we arranged to meet 1 day after school, did so and filmed in about 3 hours.

For the filming, we borrowed 2 cameras and I brought them to the flat building/flat for the filming. With the cameras, Conor bought the storyboard he had completed with him. We used resources from the flat, such as a computer to type on and a lamp and extension for it (so it could travel further distance and still work). We needed the computer as part of the narrative and the lamp/extension for filming/mise-en-scene. For the film, we decided to shoot it when it was dark (set at night), and the camera hardly picked up any footage as it was too dark and if lights in the flat building were turned on it was too bright. So we solved this by getting using the lamp and extension cord, holding it over the actors when they were filming for the film so that it picked up the footage but didn’t make it too bright, still looking like night but with the camera able to see. Danny started off holding the lamp, but I then took over for the longest period of time. We used 2 cameras, a flip video and a professional looking camera. Shooting most the footage with the professional looking one, but some with the flip video incase 1 looked better than the other.

As for the pictures for our 4 magazines and 4 posters, we were going to use film stills as pictures but Danny & Conor decided to take real pictures with a digital camera another time.

 For my AS music magazine, I looked at various types of music magazines (BBC Music, Rap-Up, Kerrang, The Source, NME, Billboard, Smash Hits, King, XXL, The Big Cheese, Smooth, etc…). All of these magazine scans gave me inspiration/knowledge as they showed magazine conventions, ideas, etc…one of which for example was to have the artist or band (I wasn’t sure at the time when first looking at/researching other magazines) as a big image, covering a lot of the magazine as it the image is usually the biggest attraction on music magazine covers opposed to text. So I featured a large image of my fictional rap group HaterProof for my magazine cover. (below are some of the magazine front covers I looked at)

For research I also looked at magazine publisher websites: Kerrang (http://www.kerrang.com/), The Source (http://www.thesource.com/), The Big Cheese (http://www.bigcheesemagazine.com/), XXL (http://www.xxlmag.com/), Billboard (http://www.billboard.com/#/footer/biz), etc…

And as well as looking at and annotating front covers of many magazines and looking at magazine websites, I also found, looked at and annotated contents pages, interviews and other inside features. From looking at the magazines and annotating them, I learnt many conventions that I did not know before. These included knowing that usually the 1st letter on an interview is larger than other text, the magazine’s website is featured in the magazine, pull quotes are featured with interviews, etc…Knowing the page number, magazine name, issue information and magazine website were all featured in interview pages and the reason that there are gaps in contents page numbers is because there are lots of adverts inside magazines. (below is an example of my annotation of a Lil’ Kim interview front cover of magazine The Source)

Also I learnt things/was inspired by inside magazine features that I found, mainly on the inside interview features of female rappers Trina & Jacki-O. Although I did not use their ideas completely because I wanted as much text as possible in my magazine article so that the interview would look/seem real and of good quality. The Trina & Jacki-O articles featured an additional picture (as well as their front cover feature) of them with a pull quote (large quote of what was said in the interview) and although I had seen pull quotes and learnt about them through other features, through seeing these i was inspired to put pull quotes with a new picture as I thought it looked good. (below are examples of Trina & Jacki-O magazine features which gave me this inspiration)

So from studying these real music magazine covers I learnt conventions that were featured in them and used the following from them in my magazine: A title, sub-title, magazine website, barcode, issue number, date of magazine, a price, a free gift, pictures, pull quotes, page numbers, interviews, album reviews, best albums of the year, celebrity news and information on features inside the magazine. Although free gifts are not a very common feature in music magazines, I thought it would be an important selling point to include one. For example, if someone was not sure which magazine to purchase, they would pick the one with the free gift over the one without one (seems better value). Plus the fact that there aren’t many music magazines offering a free CD, it fills a gap in the market which is a good thing as it is a Unique Selling Point.

I decided to choose the genre of rap/hip-hop because I like many artists of the genre and have knowledge about it, which I used in my magazine, especially the interview as I used stereotypical american rapper language. Here are some of the artists I like which inspired me to choose the genre:

My school magazine and music magazine relate to other magazines that I have studied because they all feature what is relevant for the target audience and who it is for (rock magazines have rock bands on the front cover, rap magazines have rappers on the front cover, school magazines have a school student on the front cover, etc…) but do not relate in other ways. One being that school magazines are sold in school so do not need a barcode while my music magazine and other music magazines I have studied will be sold in a store and need one. But the main difference is that the school magazine features a variety in types of features as it needs to appeal to all types of people, whereas my music magazine and other magazines that I have studied focus on 1 type of target audience. This is reflected in my music magazine by having a feature on a rock album (Nickelback),R&B album (Mariah Carey) and a rap album (Remy Ma)- although there are more genres and I would have done more, it gets the point across that the aim is to attract different types of audiences (for the whole school) whereas my music magazine is just to attract rap and hip-hop people (albums featured: Fat Joe, Ak’Sent, Khia, Ludacris, Nelly and Trina).

Music artists/bands are featured on nearly all music magazine front covers, as they would probably look boring without. The music bands/artists often look at the camera- in effect, looking at the audience and therefore grabbing their attention. This is used in my music magazine as on the front cover picture of my fictional rap group “HaterProof”, 2 of them are looking directly at the camera/audience.

I have represented the stereotypical rap/hip-hop social group by showing rap/hip-hop fashion (Jeans, hoodie, baseball cap, jewellery, etc…)

IPC Media may distribute my “Street Beatz” magazine because they are a UK magazine publisher company and my fictional magazine is successful worldwide, but it is a UK edition. But mainly IPC Media would distribute my magazine because they do not already publish a rap & hip-hop magazine and there are no (or none very well known) rap & hip-hop magazines being published in the UK. This means that they would be filling a gap in the market, and since there will be no rivals, it will be likely to be successful which is good for them.