Total Film Cover Analysis

Total Film Magazine - Cover Analysis

This issue of Total Film focuses on "Inception" starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His character is used as the main image, as is he is the main character in the film.
The concept of the film being "mind blowing" is used as a concept for the entire issue and cover theme for the magazine. Taking the theme from the film, of playing with the mind and the nature of dreams, one of the main sell lines is "The 27 most mind-blowing movies ever!" This is likely to feature a list of psychological thriller films , attracting fans of this genre to purchase the magazine. This sell line is coupled with another- "meet the master of mind tricks" , following the same theme.  The issue is even titled in bold red, "The mind-blowing issue!"

The masthead has been edited so that images fit into each letter, an aerial view of various skyscrapers and buildings have been cropped and angled to fit into the individual letters "F" "I" "L" and "M." The aerial view of buildings and roads also continue to surround the cover around the title. The background theme here has clearly been made to fit in with the film, as we view the cover, almost from half way down, the image steadily transforms into a regular view of a city setting. The whole cover background fits in with the character and the film which he represents.  The city setting represents and reflects the corporate/business world and the sub-genre of the heist film. The "Total" letters are created by images of swimming pools on the roof, making it appear luxurious.
The film title, two sell lines, and the splash is in silver font, which neatly reflects the silver/white colour of the buildings in the masthead. It also creates a futuristic theme.

There are no subsidiary images as the masthead and background are busy enough without any additional focal points.
Neatly underneath each end of the masthead, we can see the issue number, and then the website on the other side. This creates an almost symmetrical feel, making the layout seem organised and visually appealing.
Some of the sell lines bound to attract attention include,
"First Looks! The immortals, Let me in, Thor"  and on the splash, "Tron , everything you need to know." These articles are made to sound like exclusives, enticing potential viewers to buy the magazine, so that they can be updated on the latest film news.
The colour red is also used in the colour scheme , which contrasts against the blue but also compliments the silver and white, standing out against them.
As the magazine is already a well established brand, the masthead is slightly obscured by the main image, but is still obvious and readable. The barcode is positioned at the bottom right of the cover , and takes up a very small amount of space. The overall appearance of the cover is not crowded with information and imagery, it looks sleek so that the main feature is the image, but enough key articles are still featured to attract the audience to buy it.

Horror Posters Presentation

Animatic Shooting Schedule

ANIMATIC SHOOTING SESSIONS



The following dates are the sessions which we used to shoot our animatic. In order to complete our animatic, we had to photograph the scenes from each sketch on our storyboard. This allowed us to make an animatic version of our trailer consisting of purely still images , rather than moving video. 

Our first session was primarily used to identify which rooms would be best to represent the settings in the scenes from our storyboard. 
From then on we started taking photographs to use in the animatic, we began with shooting the conversation between the Psychiatrist and the Patient. 
Four of the sessions were set primarily in the same building (Mulberry House) . We then used the final session to photograph the train station scene, which meant walking from school to the location. Finally, we finished up by taking a few montage shots back at Mulberry House to add to the animatic.


Friday 29^th November - 1 hour

 Basic shots of asylum

Thursday 5^th December – 1 hour

Shots of patients, other basic shots of asylum

Friday 6^th December – 2 hours

Shots of exterior and patient’s rooms

Tuesday 10^th December – 1 hour

Shots of chapel scene, scary/jumpy scene

Thursday 11^th December – 3 hours

Finished the rest of the shots for our animatic, including the shots at the train station from the flashback scene.

Poster Analysis

The Purge Poster Analysis

The main focus in The Purge  poster, is the main image of the masked face.
We can see that the image is a mask because though it's very realistic, there are clear eye holes for the person to see through, and we can differentiate between the real eye and the rest of the mask. The mask also has a painted effect, rather than the image looking purely photographic. The mask has a menacing grin designed to unsettled the victim, and in this case unsettle the viewer of the poster. Masks are synonymous in horror films, as they are an iconic way of hiding a person's identity, usually meaning that the person is hiding their identity because they have sinister intentions. Here the mask creates the code of enigma, who is taking part in the purge? Why don't they want to show their faces?
The title of the film is in a plain , simple white font, featured in capital letters. All of the text appears in the same block font, almost as if it's official, showing that it's to be taken seriously. This is more effective opposed to a more creative style which might reflect a fantasy film or supernatural horror. The poster's simplicity works well as the straight-to-the point text almost reflects a news warning. This is used to emphasise seriousness and reality, if it appeared too fictional it probably would not scare the audience. The definition of purge is to "rid someone of an unwanted feeling, memory, or condition." This combined with the tagline will make the audience wonder if the purge is about getting rid of evil, aggression, negative feelings on the night where "all crime is legal."

Below is the second promotional poster for The Purge, displaying that the filmmakers wanted to create the effect of a real event taking place. This was placed predominantly in public transport areas, e.g. the Underground, so gained quite a large amount of attention from passers-by who are used to seeing genuine warnings about Public Services. Publicising the Purge as a real thing makes the concept far more unsettling, as it becomes even worse if we imagine "a night where all crime is legal" in our own present-day society.

The tagline on the original poster is, "One night a year, all crime is legal." This is a self-explanatory statement, but the concept itself is original and unusual. The idea of something so unnatural in society is likely to capture a great deal of public interest. They would want to know why this has been legalised, and how bad the crime is. The following line "Survive the Night" also captivates the viewer, possibly making them question whether they themselves would survive the night if it were a real idea. "Survive" also makes it clear that a lot of violent and brutal crime takes place on the night, and creates an "every-man-for-themselves" kind of story, implying that there will also be betrayal.

At the top of the poster the line "From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Sinister" is likely to attract regular horror film viewers. These two films have been extremely successful and are also both quite recent releases, so people who enjoyed those films are likely to want to see a film made by the same producer.

The release date of June 7th is also significant as it states that the annual Purge takes place on June 7th in the film, so by releasing the film on the same date, we again see the idea of wanting to make film concept seem realistic.

The billing block then features at the bottom of the poster , following the conventional position of billing blocks. At the end of it we can observe the hashtag "#survivethenight. These are used to create "twitter trends", encouraging the viewers to mention the film on social networking sites, which promotes it even further.

Poster Analysis

Film Poster Analysis for Sleep Tight

The film poster for Sleep Tight is very busy compared to the poster for "the ring." It uses all of the conventions we might expect to see in a film poster, including title,main images, famous names,reviews and tagline.
The main image displays a female sleeping in a bedroom at night. Where we assume her window is, an enlarged eye watches her through the curtains, and darkness surrounds her apart from the floorboards leading up to her bed, which are covered in blood. The imagery of the eye watching her eye obviously reflects the title of "sleep tight." The idea of someone watching us sleep is unsettling, meaning that the title is most likely ironic, as the character will blatantly be disturbed during the night by probably horrific events. The position of the eye between the curtains appears as a threatening invasion of privacy. The second connotation of the title is that "sleep tight" actually means that the character will be killed, and therefore sleep forever. The blood on the floorboards is typical imagery expected in a horror poster, it tells us that there will be violence and gore, but does not reveal who suffers it, or who inflicts it.
The title is in a more stereo-typically bold font, in capital letters. The colour scheme is clever as the top half of the letters is in white, standing out against the black background, whilst the bottom half is red, almost merging into the red blood on the floor boards.  The title features under the main image rather than at the top of the poster, where instead the film director is featured, as well as an impressive review.
The tagline "Someone is watching over you" clearly links to the main title, of someone watching you whilst you sleep. It is positioned under the title so that the viewer connects the title and tagline together.

At the top of the poster, it states "From the Director of [REC]" this information is obviously made clear to show that the director has made another extremely successful horror film. This means that it will attract a wider audience, as fans who enjoyed that film will be interested in another film by the same director.
The review "A dark, psychological thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock's very best," is clearly impressive and so the filmmakers have strategically placed it at the top of their poster in order to sell the poster in the best way possible. Comparing the film to Hitchcock's best assures the audience that it must be extremely well produced.
On either side of the eye, multiple reviews are listed. Eight four star reviews are quite impressive for a film and so again , it's obvious that the producers will want to show them off. The numerous positive reviews are an effective way to entice the audience, assuring that the film was considered a success by film magazine and website critics. The star symbols are a fast way to clearly convey the message that the review was positive.
Sleep Tight is a Spanish film and the well-known names in their culture, "Luis Tosar", "Marta Etura" and "Juame Balaguero." As these are already established names, they have been featured on the poster separately from the Billing block to attract audience attention, if fans of these actors and the director see and recognise that they worked on the film, they will probably want to watch it.

The billing block uses the standard format, placed at the bottom of the poster. It is faint and hardly stands out against the floor boards in the background. This is because whilst the people involved in the production must be credited for their input, the key names are already featured elsewhere on the poster. The billing block is always visible, but should never be a focal point of the poster.

The Ring Poster Analysis

The Ring Poster Analysis

The poster for The Ring is fairly simple and non-complex. The focus lies solely on the main image and title, which is centered in the middle of the poster.
The only colours used are black and white. Using black in a horror poster is conventional as it has obvious connotations with darkness and the unknown. This emphasises the mystery, what is the ring? Why do you see it "before you die?" The black background also makes the light circle of the ring stand out. Using white text is the most effective to then stand out against the black background. The colours of black and white also represent the key theme in the film, which is the videotape. The videotape in the film is old and shows film in entirely black and white, so after the watching the film, the audience will make links between this and the poster.
There also appear to be blurred lines across the main image and text, these are the same fuzzy lines which appear on a television screen, for example before the tape begins playing. So the poster uses the same symbolic imagery as is used in the real film. It is likely that the audience will have a vague idea that the film is about a videotape , so they will probably have made this connection prior to viewing the film.
The title of the film uses quite a child-like font. Most film posters use a text which is bold, often in capital letters , but this font is rounded, in lower case and appears to be hand-written. Many horror films use symbols linked to children as it becomes more haunting when someone who we expect to be innocent becomes involved in something scary. This font makes us question whether a child is behind the story, or is even the killer.
The tagline of the film is "Before you die, you see the ring." This is obviously for effect, scaring the audience. It reveals that people in the film are obviously going to die, but also makes them question what the "ring" is. The text is shadowed in bigger , yet fainter font behind it. This creates the effect that the words are being echoed.
The billing block for the poster is unusually small, though it is placed at the bottom of the poster following conventions. There seem to be a small number of names on the block, but the standard format is used.
Though this poster is simple, and there are no highlighted actors surrounding the main image, it's ambiguity is what makes it effective, making the audience want to see the film.

Five Key Images From Our Animatic

These are the five key shots which I felt were most significant in our animatic. 

The first shot I have chosen is the implied sexual assault scene. Hopefully, this photograph was not graphic and purely implied the horrible circumstances that Cecilia was forced to live with. We made it black and white, to ensure that the audience would differentiate it as a flashback as opposed to present time in the film. In the real trailer, we may also blur the background slightly out of focus, so it creates a more silhouette-like appearance.

The second photograph is of the Head of the Asylum (Cecilia's father) handing her a religious necklace. The necklace is similar to rosary beads, symbolising that he believes their religion will protect her, and solve her problems.

The third image is of The Head of Asylum. This is important because he is a key antagonist in the trailer. He represents evil , his position over the desk displays that he is in power, and that he is antagonist.

The fourth photograph is of the train station flashback scene. This is integral to the whole story line as here we see Cecilia hand over her baby to her father, trusting that he will take care of him.

 The final photo is iconic of the horror genre. It portrays violence as the patient physically drags someone down the corridor, with a saw in his hand. The audience will not know how the saw is used, and the idea of the dark narrow corridor makes the scene claustrophobic. The hand opening the door is positioned so that it appears to be exposing something shocking to the audience, something that they should not be seeing.