Initial Horror Magazine

Our initial Horror Magazine Design

Christina

Weekly update: 25th January 2012

This week we talked over many decisions about how we were going to start filming some scenes from our teaser trailer. To help us come to some decisions, Gabrielle & Cyprian took photos of our potential locations. Also, progression has been made on the planning & research for our magazine cover.

Example of one of the locations

Photos of original location

The photos below were taken of various locations that we thought would be acceptable to film our teaser trailer in. As a group, we settled on the idea of an office setting and all of our options fitted this description - bar one. The one location that didn't fit this description was a 'conference room' that we decided could be rearranged to resemble an office setting, however we didn't go with this room as we wanted more of a realistic feel.

Gabrielle

Weekly update: 16th January 2012

This week our team came to an agreement on the date of when to film our teaser trailer. We also used these lessons to finalise how many actors we will be using and where we will be filming. We discussed issues regarding our magazine cover & audience research, as well as our film poster.

Weekly update: 9th January 2012

This week we finally decided on which concept we preferred and on a date that would be convenient for all of us to film.

We also filmed several test shots using different mediums. We began filming using a Canon DSLR 550 camera but the battery soon began to die on us so we improvised with what we had available to us which was a Blackberry bold camera.

Progress was made towards the development of our movie magazine, this primarily consisted of carrying out more audience research but on this occasion relating to movie magazines.

Horror Magazine Sketches

These are the sketches we've come up with as a group for numerous different movie poster ideas.

We have made our final decision as to what sketch the magazine will resemble. We decided to go with the first sketch because it has a simple and realistic layout.

Christina

Horror Magazine Audience Research

We would like the target audience of our magazine to be aged 15-25. This is because, we class this age group as "young adults", which is the group that "horror" tends to appeal to the most. As we already decided who we wanted our target audience to be, we decided that the best way of obtaining the answers to our questions, was to carry out our research through blackberry messenger. The vast majority of BBM users are quite young and we thought that this was a good way to receive quick results. In our research, we asked a handful of people about what they would expect from a horror magazine. However, as we are only producing the front cover of the magazine the questions were asked to gain knowledge on the preferences of our potential consumers. Generally, the questions helped to see what they would expect from a horror magazine, especially the front cover. 

 To conclude the results of our research, many of our responses said that they would expect to see dull colours on the magazine cover. The colours red and black are very popular. Our target audience expect to see a lot of dull colours presented on the cover. Taking into consideration that they are familiar with gothic/horrific themes, we thought that it would be a good idea to decide that the colour theme would be Red & black, creating a dull effect. We also thought that these colours will help to make the front cover stand out.

Although we gained similar answers as to what our horror magazine should look like, the answers to how our magazine should be priced was different. For example, in the screen shot below, on person said that they would willingly buy a horror magazine for £5. He also adds on that it also depends on how the magazine looks like. This is interesting because it shows that our potential consumer is interested in the visual content of the magazine. This means that if our front cover is attractive, then he is likely to buy it for any price even if it is quite expensive. We decided that we would like our magazine to cost £4.00. This is because it would be a good way of attracting and maintaining our young audience as it is quite cheap. Also, we took into consideration that our audience for our magazine are more likely to be in education, part time jobs or even unemployed - which is another reason for why we priced the magazine for £4.00.

To get some ideas on the information our front cover would display, we asked our potential consumers what they would expect to see in a horror magazine. As our front cover will be advertising our horror film (teaser trailer), we decided that it will be a good idea for us to mention a few horror films. One of our respondents said that he would expect the magazine to include information on recent horror films. So this helped us to decide what most of our cover lines would be about. We also agreed that it will be a good idea to include things about gothic costumes because it will attract fans of horror. It also something that one of our potential consumers expects to see.

We also decided that on the front cover we would advertise things such as freebies and competitions. By adding these, it will add value to our media product - and we decided to do this as a way to sticking to some of the conventions of magazines in general  so that it looks realistic.

Profiling our audience


David is an 18 year old student who enjoys hanging out with friends and reading in his spare time. The types of film he enjoys watching the most are Horror & Comedies. David reads a lot of magazines and always likes to be kept up to date with films. This is one of the reasons why he reads magazines, simply because he doesn't want to miss out on the latest issues.  Also, he believes that horror films and magazines appeal to him because they present images and ideas that relate to the theme of horror which is what he is interested in.  He is a very trend-conscious person and is always on the alert for new fashionable options. He also likes to experiment with new things and loves using technology.
The type of music he listens to varies because he likes a wide range of genres. Although he spends most of his time at college, he also makes time for extra curricular activities such as sport and games.

Written by Christina

Test Shot 7 - Camera Phone

  

This test shot shows our team members acting out a scene where the protagonist in our teaser trailer is revealed. This is a medium long shot of the cabinet door being closed and someone standing behind it.

Christina

Test Shot 6 - Camera Phone

 

This is a medium close up shot of one of our team members illustrating one of our scenes for our tease trailer. This shows him opening and closing the cabinet doors.

Christina

Test Shot 4 - Camera Phone

 

This is a test shot of one of our team members acting out a characters role from our storyboard. It is a tilt shot from the phone upwards, which examines the prop as well as the characters body and most importantly, the characters facial expression.

Christina

Test Shot 3 - Camera Phone

 

This test shot simply shows the doors being shaken by a member of our team to illustrate one of the events that will take place in our teaser trailer.

Christina

Test Shot 2 - Camera Phone

This shot begins with a medium close up of a mobile phone ringing on the table. The medium close up shot gradually turns into a close up by a 180 degree crab as the camera gets closer.

Christina

Test Shot 1 - Camera Phone

  

This is another test shot but of a different actor yet again carrying out a scene from our storyboard.

Christina

Test shot 2 (filmed with DSLR camera)

  

This is a medium close-up 180 degree crab of an actor that we are considering using for our teaser trailer acting a scene from our storyboard.

Cyprian

Test shot 1 (filmed with DLSR camera)

 

This is a still close-up shot of a phone similar to the one we plan to use in our teaser trailer. In our actual trailer we plan to have the phone vibrating and 'Unknown number' to come up on the screen.

Cyprian

Motion Tutorial

Before we were able too add visual effects onto our logo, we sought help from not only our teacher but also some youtube tutorials on how to use the software. Below is an example of a tutorial:

Michael

Motion (Apple Software)

Fig 1. Picture of Motion software


Motion is a software application produced by Apple inc. It used to create and edit motion graphics, titling for video production and film production, and 2D and 3D compositing for visual effects.

From our perspective, we used motion to compose some visual effects for our production logo. Since this was our first time using motion, it was a bit of a challenge at first however with help from our teacher we were able to learn how to use motion to our own advantage. We added an visual effect called "Earthquake"   to our logo to give it some sense of realism because many film production logos have some sort of visual effect. Below are examples of our few ideas:

Michael