Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media, the first issue was published in July 1989 It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival Total Film and is also published in Australia, Turkey and Russia.
Empire magazine very much relies on its font to attract its audience with it being bold and it red in a stylish font to capture their attention, this is likely to capture the audiences attention because the red font is going to stand out from other magazines as the audience flick through other magazines and this one will grab their attention. There are other features on this magazine as well, such as 'First Look' and then 'Heroes of 2010!' which is also in bold to stand out and intice the reader into buying this magazine, the feature acts as a hook for the reader. The main colours from the front cover of this magazine and most of the features on it are red and a greyish colour, this is a good mixture to pick because they compliment each other with the red standing out on the grey background, then the grey also standing out on the blacks. There is a distinctive feature at the bottom left of this magazine and its a big red plus sign, i found this good because often front covers have a little bit too much information and the reader becomes overwhelmed with the amount of text that is on the cover. This big plus sign then tells us what else is featured in the magazine. The main USP is the picture of Johnny Depp in the centre middle of the page and bold font if the name of the film 'Public Enemies'. Johnny Depp is a famous actor and can be used as a hook to pull the audience in, which is why the picture is inflated and dominates the page, the audience are imedietly drawn to this image. The font is big and bold in the centre as this is the most importnat feature of the magazine, above it right to the picture is the tagline 'Johnny Depp steals summer!' the exclamation marks tells us the urgency of this feature. To the top right of the magazine this is a small picture of Daniel Ratcliffe used as another selling point to the consumer, for those who are not big fans of Johnny Depp this shows that perhaps they might buy the magazine for the feature on Daniel Ratcliffe. Overalll we found this a useful magazine to analyse because it was similar to the product we wanted to crate, with our main USP dominatiing the page and the costumer mainly focusing on the image, then the features that would surround it.
Total Film, is published by Future Publishing, is the UK's second best-selling film magazine. It offers film and DVD news, reviews, and features. The magazine was launched in 1997 and is published every four weeks.
Total film genrally is aimed at the younger audience who casually see films as just an interest. The first thing that stikes me from this magazine is the dominant image of the main character, in this case Johnny Depp in the film 'Willy Wonka'. The header at the top has the top 50 must-see films for the summer in a white bold font and is very simple, this is a contrast to the rest of the cover as it is very bright and colourful. The audience can assume that it is very bright because this issue is realeased in the summer. The rest of the font on this cover is white to stand out on the colourful background, apart from the main selling point of this cover which is in a grey colour 'the ultimate summer preview' this is the main selling point, because the audience are going to be interested as to what is hapening this summer. The magazine title 'Toal Film' is set to stand out from other magazines because 'Film' is at the top of the magazine very big and bold in white font, so the audeince can see it when being sold in shops on a rising stand. With 'total' inside the word film, it is obvious 'film' is what the publishers want the audience to see, this also sets it apart from other magazine covers. Below the header is the main centre image of Johnny Depp which is also used to intice the customer into buying the product if they are a fan of the film of actor Johnny Depp, this is also one of USP's (unique selling points). To the left and right of the dominant picture are other items in the magazine with grey sub-titles to distinquish the importance of them. You could suggest that the audience this magazine is trying to attract is the younger teen audience by having the film 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Facotry' as their main film to advertise, this is because this film is often associated with young children who have that idea of the fantasy, magical world. But this might intice the older teen age group to go see the film because it is the new and updated version with some changes made, and using by using the bright colours to capture their attendence Overall i think this is a good magazine cover because it immediatly grabbed my attention with its bright colours and unique selling points, also with the item shown at the top which is featured in the magazine 'the top 50 must-see films for summer' this alone has the influence on the audience to pick up and flick through the magazine.
The second part of my coursework was to create a magazine cover, to do this i was going to have to analyse other film magazines to find similarities and things that attracted me and my collegue and other audiences to read the magazine. The two magazines we chose to look at were : * Total film * Empire
Another trailer we decided to look at was 'The Proposal' this was because it has been a recent hit in box office and we it was another film we thought our teaser trailer could relate to.
This trailer lasts 2:32 and the sound we hear at the beggining of the trailers is diagetic mixed in with non-diagetic sounds such as traffic where we can see looks to be in New York presenting to us the hectic lifestyle as the traffic is edited to be fast forwarded. The diagetic soundtrack is fast and uplifting keeping the audiences attention. Similar to the 'knocked Up' trialer this film also has tag lines, they are situated bottom left of the screen and in the form of typing on a computer, we can draw from this that some of this film is going to be set in an office location and later Alaska where we meet more of the families. Some of the tags read 'this is Andrew' So we have aready established a main character in the first 13 seconds and later on we see 'Magaret is Andrews boss'. The two main characters have already been established to the audience in the opening 25 seconds. Another tagline says 'Magaret has a problem' the dialog we hear in a office is that Magaret will get deported, so we have our common feature in rom coms, a problem. At that time coincedently Andrew walks in, here Magaret announces she is getting married, which will mean she can stay in America. The narrative is now clear to the audience and will want to find out how these opposite characters can handle being married in such a obvious problem as they do not really know each other and we see from Andrews reaction he does not want to be involved, how they overcome this is why the audience will want to watch the rest of the film. Unlike to some previous rom-coms these characters do not seem to be polar opposites, they work in the same environment, dress similar and we can assume that they share similar life goals, this therefore is going against some of the common forms and conventions of rom-coms, however the personality of Magaret that comes across in this trailer is very powerfull and quite mean, making Andrew hate his job and his boss Magaret. This is why the situation they will be forced in to will have obsticles beacause they simply do not get on. The setting at first in this trialer is an office environment where both of the characters are working, we then see later that with the characters getting married it gives the film a chance to go to many locations as they will each have to meet each others families. We found this a good way to introduce new characters to a film, creating a obsticle joing both main characters but affecting their immediate families. Later on in the trailer we have a diagetic soundtrack of Katy Perrys 'hot and cold' this refers to the couples realtionship, sometimes it looks like everything is going well and they are happy and looks like there could be a futre for them, while othertimes they cant stand each other and are at each others throats looking like the agreement is about to come to a end, their relationship is 'hot and cold' this ties in perfecty with the song as that is exactly what the song is about We later have more taglines but bigger and in the centre of the screen 'this summer' then the film title and also the release date. The audeince can form the conclusion that this films ideologie is what real true love is, these two characters were not ment to be together but due to a certain situation and form of luck they came to be and somehow ended up falling in love but is this real love ? that is for the audeince to decide, if the male character had not walked through the door at that precise time there is a good chance they would not have ended up together, so by luck and coincedence they have come together, but in real life for people that is not as simple and they will then come to their own conclusion of how realistic this storyline is and what they percieve to be 'true love'
The Proposal film poster
Once again after having watched and enjoyed both the trailer and film we decided to analyse this poster and gather thoughts and ideas on how we would like to incoparate any features from this poster into our own. This poster unlike 'Knocked up' has both the male and female character as the USP's to the left centre of the page, they both have completly opposite facial epressions on them, and the female is holding a engagement ring in a box, leading us into the narrative. The male character looks quite scared and nervous, while the female character looks quite cunning and like she has thought of a plan. This shows us the complete opposite thinking between these two that the audience are going to want to see develop during the course of the film. The text is all in red and black this appeals to a wide variety of audiences as the red is hinting at romance which may appeal more to the female audience, while the black font is hinting at a strong buisness type narrative which may appeal more to the male audience as both characters are also dressed very smartly. At the top of the poster we have the two names of the characters, appealing to their own fan base that will now want to come see the film purely because they are a fans of their films. We then have the title of the film, again establishing the narrative 'The Proposal' this has a double meaning as well, with both characters dressed smartly this could be a business proposal but also with the female holding a ring it could mean a wedding proposal. We then have the tagline pun in black font 'Here comes the bribe' noramlly bribe would be replaced by bride, so this is again helping the audience come to a conclusion for the narrative but leaving a question mark over it, is this film about a business bribe ? or is it going to be about a marraige scenario. With the pose of the female pushing the male up against the wall this is showing us it is the women who is being represented as the dominante character, not your stereotypical women seen as a house wife and mother, this character we can see has a goal and is very powerfull, going against your typical sterotypes of women. We liked this poster as it look simple, again relating to our objective we wanted to achieve, but it also had a few hidden meanings and a question mark over the narrative while going against typical sterotypes and representations, we were intriqued to find out how the reltionship developed between the male and female over the course of the film, and we also found that the main reason our audience watched this film was because they were excited to know how the narrative would unfold after seeing the two stances by the characters in the poster, one looked cunning while one looked scared.
When looking at recent films that have had huge success in our chosen genre we chose to look at 'Knocked up' as me and my partner throughly enjoyed this film and found some similarities between this film and what our first brainstorm of ideas.
This trailer lasts 1 minute 15 seconds and starts of with a non diagetic soundtrack which is about 'the birds and the bee's' a refernce to sexual intercourse, this reference is a indication of a sterotypical conversation when a father is seen to talk to his son about the birds and the bee's (sexual intercourse), so straight away from this trailer we know its going to have some sort of sexual content in it, the music is soft and flowing creating a relxing atmosphere. There are tag lines throughout this trailer with large white font on a black background such as 'what would you talk about' 'on the sencond date' and then it cuts to the main female cahracter telling the male she is pregnant. So the narrative has alreayd been established. The setting for the trailer is in a restaurant where these two characters have come to meet, the fact that it is in a restaurant suggests that it could be an important occasion that we are about to see, with the colours in the restaurant being darkish and hints of red this sets the mood of romance, however once we hear the first part of dialog we soon realise the scene is not very romantic. We can conclude from the apperance of the two characters we see, that they look complete opposites. The women is very attractive and presentable, while the male has big bushy hair, loose shirt and unshaven and looks like he has not made much of an effort, here we can see one of the main common features of a romantic comedy which we are trying to simulate after hering the female say she is prenant, its a situation where two polar opposite characters are brought together through unusual or comic circumstances, thus being the pregnancy. Then we have another tagline which reads 'from the makers of the 40yr old virgin' a previous production from the directors, attracting to that section of the public audience that will have seen the '40yr old virgin' and now will perhaps be inticed to go see this new film, a sign of good marketing. The final picture we see is the film title 'knocked up' with the 'O' in 'knocked' symbolising a female uterus egg which is being fertiliesed by sperm, once again enforcing the narrative on the audeince and showing us exactly what this film is going to be about. From this trailer the audience are going to be interested into seeing how this couple deal with their situation, and hear lies the hidden ideologie of whether they keep the baby or whether they choose aboortion and if abortion is right, we can see that the film is going to be a comedy from the trailer but the pro-life ideologie is hidden by humerous characters and sexual jokes.
Knocked Up Film Poster
When looking at the film poster for 'Knocked up' we liked it very much, this was because it was how we would like to base our film poster around. Here we have a medium close up of the protaganist character dominating the page as the Unique Selling Point, this is to maybe intice the viewers into seeing this film as the character is played by a famous actor Seth Rogen, targeting this particular actors audience. The colours used in this poster are a green background with the text in red and black, we have a mixture of colours used and none of them really go together but this works well as they are then able to stand out on the green background attracting the audiences eye. The character is wearing just a striped polo shirt and looks like your down to earth everyday guy pulling a funny idoitic facial expression, again appealing to their target audience of the comic fans, the auidence will want to see this film by the expression this character is making it looks like he is going to do some silly, stupid things that will make the audience laugh. The text at the top reads in black 'What if this guy got you pregnant ?' this here helps the audience establish a narrative, obviously the film now is going to have some sexual content in it and relating to a female being pregnant by this man, with the text being a question and the characters facial expression following it, it is clear to see some more into the narrative, the question followed by the expression is trying to say that perhaps this man is not going to be the best father and it is as if to say would women really want to be involved with this man ?, before the audience have even found out anything about him. The title of the film is then in big bold red lettering at the bottom centre of the poster, again establishing the narrative and gaining the audeinces attention. The font then switches back to black reading 'The next comedy from the director of the 40yr old virgin' the colour of the font switches back to black to show this is not now the title of the film but new information, and appealing to the audience that will have previously seen the directors first film and if they will have enjoyed it they are now more likely to want to see this film. At the bottom of the poster there is also the release date for the film and perhaps the cleveriest feature on this poster, the text reads '06/01/07 save the due date' this has the double meaning of perhaps the date the baby is born in the narrative and also saying it says actual date this film is being realeased. Overall we agreed this was a good film poster as it was simplistic but still manages to grip the audience with the focus mainly on the protaganist character and the font around the character helping with narrative towards the film, we decided we would like to create a simiar type of poster to this one.
Here are a few things that we found were common in our selected genre : The two main things we found in our research was..... * The encounter of two potential romantic partners in unusual or comic circumstances, the potential couple could comprises polar opposites, two people of different temperaments, situations, social statuses or in some cases all three.
* Often the two characters would encounter a obsticle that prevent them from being together, and they would have to overcome that obsticle with one character normally making 'the grand gesture' and proclaiming their love for the other one and ending happily ever after.
other things include : * light humour * lots of showing of dramatic emotions eg: sadness of a breakup, then joy being reunited. * A different range of characters from the dumb ditzy friend in favour for the realtionship, to the smart snobbish friend against the relatioship
In recent years these romantic comedies have been the top grossing films : What Women Want (2000) American Pie 2 (2001) My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) Bruce Almighty (2003) Meet the Fockers (2004) Hitch (2005) The Devil Wears Prada (2006) Knocked Up (2007) Sex and the City (film) (2008) The Proposal (2009)
In most rom-coms the way males and females are represented are vital, the male often is seen as the immature one and he is the protaganist character that has the main obsticle to overcome. The female is represented as the more wiser, more mature character who has to try and develop the male into what he needs to be. Sometimes it is the male who is seen to have to 'grow-up' and start taking responsablities, the female helps him on the way. This can be seen as the male sometimes being the main role as the attention will focus around him, being the dominant sex.
The language used in these rom-coms is pretty down to earth, the character are shown to be your everyday people, most films in this genre are not very interlectual and are based around problems that the audience will have to go through, to help them relate.
The audience in these films are majority of the teen ages but also appeal more to the female sex because of the romance and emotions that will appeal to them. With it being a rom-com it is likely there is going to be sexual jokes, revolving around how at this time in their lives teenagers are going through these experiances.
The narrative in these films as we have breifly touched on earlier is often a problem that will bring two characters of opposite to attract and come together. The institution will use everyday obstilces to get across their point, such as pregnancy and drugs as examples.
* Mood Board When looking at romantic comedies we decided to make a mood board so we could look at similarities and features to use in our poster that we would have to create.
When disucussing what type of teaser trailer we were going to make we came up with numerous ideas, however the genre that appealed to us most was that of a comedy genre. We chose the comedy genre because we belived that the common conventions that we would have to display through watching other similar comdey trailers, were easier to represent to the audience, and they would be able to assiociate more with those connotations, compared to a horror or action film where the resources for those genres were not avalible to us. One of the first things we wanted to establish through our teaser trailer was a friendship or a bond between two characters as we believed that it was vital to the storyline and also these relationships between two characters are very common in a comdey film. So we decided to go for a romantic comedy, because not only would it appeal to one type of audince being a comedy but also hopefully it would attract the female audience perhaps with it being a rom-com. So with the idea of a relationship playing a key part in our production we thought about how we could turn that into something that would bring comical value, so we thought about how a character (male) could be on his way to meet the female character but along the way a number of things happen to him to show just how bad his luck is, from showing a few obsticles that he faces in a teaser trailer we hope that this would intise the viewer to go watch the film.
* Audience research / Survey Before we could start making any deatiled planning we had to find out what our target audience would be ? and what they would be looking for in romantic comedy teaser trailers. To do this we divised a questionaire to find out what would make them want to go watch the film. We decided we would be targeting young teenagers from the ages of 13-19 and more females then males as they often tend to be bigger fans of the romantic comedy genre.
1) In relation to romantic comedy films, what have you previously watched and why ? 2) What do you expect from comedy films apart from the obvious laughter ? 3) How did the film posters influence you to go watch the film ? 4) Was there any internet advertisement ? and if so did it influence you in any way ? 5) Did any actors from previous films play a major part in making you go to watch the film ? 6) Did any directors from previous films play a major part in making you go to watch the film ? 7) What would be your favorite romantic comedy film and why ? 8) How do the first few minutes draw you in ? and help you realise its a romantic comedy ? 9) How did the teaser trailer make you to go watch the film ? 10) Is there any rom-coms you have been to see and not gone away happy with and why ?
When we gained feedback from our questionaire we found that the two most favorite romantic comedy films that the public chose were 'Knocked Up' and 'The Proposal' so we decided to look further into these films to find common conventions that would lead the audience into being attracted to these films and what exact feautres they liked.
For our A2 media course work we were given a set menu of briefs here is the one that we chose
2) A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options :
* a website homepage for the film * a film magazine front cover, featuring the film * a poster for the film
Out of those three options we chose to do a film poster, becasue we have been able to do alot of research into posters in previous assingments, so we have a good base of knowledge. The other option we chose was the magazine cover for the film, as both me and my partner have previous history in the subject IT so we belive we would be able to use the skills we have bulit up over the years to produce a suitable cover and also it was an option we felt that we could impart our own creativity to it more then the other options, so that was a good option for us.
These two options were to go with the teaser trailer, or teaser is a short trailer used to advertise an upcoming movie, game or television series. Teasers, unlike typical theatrical trailers, are usually very short in length (between 30–60 seconds) and usually contain little, if any, actual footage from the film. Sometimes, it is merely a truncated version of a theatrical trailer. They are usually released long in advance of the film they advertise. One of the reasons for the name "teaser" is because they are shown usually a long time before the movie comes out, so as to "tease" the audience. All three, magazine, poster and trailer are used to market the brand the producers have created, all of them are trying to intice the audeince into buying into the brand therefor making the producers as successfull as possible.
