conventions of a Film Magazine

Conventions of a magazine cover

In my coursework as well as a trailer I will also have to produce a magazine cover and a film poster. I am about to look in depth at the conventions that are used in a magazine cover.

Here is an example of a Film based magazines: 

Conventions

Main cover picture

As you can see from the image above the main cover picture consists of the actors in character. This enables us to have an insight into what film they may be focusing on in this magazine. The actors being in characters also help to show a little bit of the story line. If the cover was brightly colored and had a picture of a clown on the front we may think about the story line being different in comparison to the one that is labeled above. The fact that the girl is hold on to one of the two men in the picture shows us she is timid but curious. The middle of the three characters shows a protecting kind of figure. The picture shows a great story line because from the image we can understand a basic view of how the characters are in the film.

Title of the magazine

The title of the magazine just shows a basic understanding of the fact the magazine is film based as the title of the image above is called “Total film”. This just gives the reader at a quick glance what the magazine may be about.

Title of the film

As you can see from the image above the main film title is often in a much larger font text then all of the other miniature stories that are also included on the front cover. Its is not as big as the title of the magazine but more often then not it is easily viewed by the reader, where as the magazine title may be behind the main picture in some cases.

Miniature tag line

The miniature tag line ‘ No one is safe…’ this draws the target audience in. The line 'no one is safe' helps us to understands the main feature of the magazine. 

conventions of a film trailer

Conventions of a film trailer

>Film trailers often show snip it’s from the movie to give the audience an idea of     what the film is about. More often than not they show a lot of the more interesting parts of the film but not enough to give the film away. They have to be careful not to exploit the whole movie in the trailer but so they have given enough information about the film to show who may be in the film, what genre the film is and maybe a kind of story line that may appeal to the target audience that had been chosen for that particular movie.

Title

The title of the film is not released until the end of the trailer and the release date more than less likely follow that. Unless the trailer is released months before the film and therefore the trailer may say for example; “coming this autumn”.

Actor’s names

The names of the actors will appear very early on in the film this help to show the audience who they can expect to see in the film as an audience often, unconsciously, bases whether they are going to see it based on the stars in the film.

Voiceovers

Many films opt to use a well-known voice or a very strong deep toned voice to do the voice over of the trailer (narrate the trailer) as this helps to entice the audience showing the audience what is going on and what is happening. Because often trailers can sometimes be confusing as it is a mixture of different events in the trailer and so the narrator helps to explain what is happening in it.

Directors and producers

If the director or produce have previously created a very well-known film that has been successful to maybe the target audience they are trying to reach of maybe even not a film the target audience may enjoy- they use the success of that movie to promote the movie they are advertising. On the trailer it will often say “from the directors/makers of…”. This helps the audience to relate back to how well the other film did and gives a generalisation with- ‘if that film was that successful then this film must be.’

Music

The music behind the trailer helps to promote the genre, plot and the style of the film. There may also be sound effects in the trailer that helps to create an atmosphere. Most modern trailers that I have watched tend to use music that suits the time period the film is set in, so for example of the film was set now then the music used would be up to date chart music.

Rating cards

The rating card at the beginning of the film trailer is normally the green screen that appears on the screen. The green band originally meant that it was ‘suitable for all audiences’ until April 2009. In the April 2009 the MPAA changed it to ‘suitable for appropriate audience’ so if you were to go and see a rated 12a film, a trailer that may contain things that are rated for a 15 would not be allowed to be shown in the adverts before the film is shown at a cinema. 

skill progression

Skills progression

Looking back at my as coursework I can see there are a lot of improvements that I not only need to make to my individual way of working but also to the way that I work within the group. I have thought carefully about how I aim to improve the efficiency of my work, I have concluded a few thoughts and I shall aim to achieve goals that I have set myself in order to achieve a much higher standard of work.

Last year I handled my AS Coursework with care until it came down to my blog. I feel that my blog was not up to my normal standards and so this year I am going to try my very hardest to improve on the low standards that I had let myself fall to last year. This year I have decided that in order to improve on this I will set myself individual deadlines that is going to help to stay on top of my work and also maybe be ahead of others in my class. I feel that keeping up to date with my work is going to help give me an extra boost of confidence within my lessons and class work and will also help me to strive to complete everything to the best I possibly can.

A problem that my group came across last year was that of leadership. All of the individuals in my group are often a leader figure within groups and so we found it difficult to get our points across and we sometimes laid in disagreement with the others judgments. This therefore made me take a sort of back seat in the group leaving one individual in my group to make all the final decisions in our group, which sometimes I felt was unfair. This then had a knock on effect when I came to evaluating I found it hard to say would could have gone better because my decisions as well as the other member in my group was rarely recognized. This year I will therefor aim to make my group a hard working group that is able to take everyone’s opinions into account and this will hopefully boost team motivation and therefore create a successful final project.

From the begging of AS coursework I have been able to develop new skills that I may not have even used in the final AS coursework that this year I will be able to. As I aim to make my group as compatible as possible we will be able to combined all of the group’s skills together in order to produce a creative piece that is not cliché and achieve a higher level then what we did last year.

As I am a competitive person I tend to use my competitiveness to my advantage when it comes to coursework, as I will strive to be the best in the class. This was one of the things that I did last year and this really helped me to produce a high standard final project. I just need to keep the competitive spirit when I am doing my blog also this year, as this is what I lacked last year.

This year I will aim to make a precise plan that when filming I will have to stick to as last year we struggled when it came to planning because we all had so many idea they became very narrowed down. I fell that this year if my group wad to make a very precise planning schedule and exact shots that need to be filmed we will have a very successful time when editing. I also found last year that I would have been easier if I would have had a lot more things that our group had filmed as last year sometimes it was hard to drag out timings and make things last. This time I will make sure we over film in order to create a piece that doesn’t look as if we have used things that aren’t needed.  Thus creating a more interesting film trailer. Obviously this year as a trailer I will need to think about having different locations because a film trailer typically shows parts from within the film- concluding that if it was to all be filmed in the same place then it would not be a high level of creativity. After we have decided what direction we are going to aim for I will research different places that we could film that would be interesting when coming to add it to our final project.