Magazine research

These are examples of some Total Film magazine front covers which i have analysed and helped me and my group to create some inital ideas on what our magazine will look like. When looking at these magazines it suggested some conventions of magazines which me and my group needed to decide will be kept or challenged within our coursework. These magazines all have a bold title of a film in which the picture on the front is normally from. Also when researching magazines we found that the picture on the front was off the main characters in a particular pose that suggests their character in the film. We decided that we would keep these conventions as the picture we wanted to put on ours will show there specfic characters that are vital for the film.

This poster is a good example of a conventional film magazine, which has all the necessary conventions that a magazine of this type should have.

-It has a big, bold masthead which is instantly recognised by the audience
-Conventional layout with the main image being the cover story (Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes)
-The bright blue and white colours dominates the front cover and is eye catching for the audience. The dominating colour usually changes depending on what film is the cover story

-Information and content is the main focus, clearly shown with the lack of empty spaces
-The Slogan 'World Exclusive' serves as the selling point as this will attract the audience because the world exclusive will make this magazine unique and eye catching

Magazine inital ideas

We have also planned a front cover of a magazine around our simple idea for our film. We wanted to represent their characters in the front cover but also suggest that it is a Rom-com so it would attract the right audience. The ideas we have created include:
The simple plan of our magazine----

These are the four ideas in which we came up with. The picture to the right is the most popular idea which fitted in with the characters, storyline and target the right audience:



Poster idea

We have done lots of research into different posters for rom-com films. We found specific elements that we seen in rom-com posters which we have decided to follow into our poster such as bold title at the bottom of the age with the billingblock and the image on the front of the main characters with a specific pose to represent their character. We have come up with a few ideas with the most popular, creative idea being the picture below.

The poster which we have as our main idea at the moment is a torn picture of the two main characters to suggest their relationship, as she is the girl with the attitude totally incompatiable with the male character who is the nice guy. We want the picture to look as if it has been pulled apart and tapped together to suggest the enigma of the film. We wanted them to be posing as if to represent she is the girl with the attitude and he is the kind hearted guy who is too nice for her. We have the title of the film which is Hating Faith as our research showed that Rom-com films normally have a phrase or more than one word titles, we have kept this convention and used two words as our title. The title Hating Faith is quite effective as it is what he should be doing towards her. She is Faith and for her terrible attitude towards him he should hate her not fall in love with her, it contradicts their relationship.

Storyboard planning

We have discussed a basic outline of a plot for our film so we can create a teaser trailer, poster and magazine front cover around this storyline. As we are doing a Rom-com, we decided on a simple but effective storyline in which we have decided to add in an extra elements to the film to make it more different and unique from other sterotypical romatic films.
This is our first draft of a storyboard in which is our basic plot but is still being altered to improve it to make it different and better than others:



Target Audience research

Over the past view lessons we have discussed our target audience and done tasks to see whether a choice is the best for our genre and whether they would enjoy the teaser trailer, poster and magazine. As we had decided on a Romantic Comedy genre for our coursework we discussed and researched into what target audience are most interested in this genre. When watching other teaser trailers of Rom-Com genre such as 27 dresses, 10 things I hate about you and he’s just not that into you we found that just by watching them they were attracting us and that we were interested in them. This was a big help towards deciding on a target audience as we ourselves found them interesting. We then decided on a target audience of 13-19 teenage girls, as that is the age range we are in and if we were the audience we would be attracted and interested in it. When we had decided on having a 13-19 girl target audience we decided to do some more research and go and ask people who would come in this age range and see what genre of film they prefer and why. The common response from teen girls was Rom-Coms as they contain romance, love, girly stories that they fantasise about and wish would happen to them. Also they contain the comedy element which makes them more attractive to this audience and makes them more humorous to watch. As we have decided on this target audience we are going to try and include this in our short teaser trailer to appeal to our target audience and create something that teenage girls would happily pay money to go and see. We also chose this audience because when watching these teaser trailers they do not seem to be target at boys as they don’t contain elements that you would expect boys to like such as action movies with car chases and fight scenes. I think when a 13-19 teenage girl audience is watching Rom-coms they are an active audience as they can take what they want from the film and have different understandings of the films. Romantic comedy films consist of love and humour but the audience can take this in different ways as they can agree with the relationships or fantasise that it was them, wishing they were the characters. The audience can get different understandings of these films, as when I watch a film of this genre I may perceive one thing while when it is discussed other people may have different opinions.
The research I have done on target audience is basic questions asked to young girls in this target audience age range and finding their opinions and seeing if our decisions have been the right ones so far. I have also analysed posters and magazines front covers to see whether they attract me as I am in the target audience age range and enjoy rom-coms myself. This will help us to discover whether our chosen target audience will enjoy and be attracted to them. I have looked at 27 Dresses, Valentine’s Day, Finding Greta and 10 things I hate about you.

Poster Planning!

In the last view lessons we have had of media we have begun to discuss more indepth about our poster and different aspects they we wanted to have. As we have decided on a Rom-Com genre for our teaser trailer and a basic outline of the what the storyline would be we could then start to plan our poster ideas. Th basic plot of our Rom-Com is based around a girl who has an attitude and a boy who is the nice, kind guy and the relationship between them. By having this basic outline of our storyline it made it easier for us to start our poster planning. When researching into other posters we found specific conventions such as the title of the film at the bottom of the page like in 'Hes just not that into you' which has the title at the bottom of the page above the billingblock. We also researched into the images, and taglines that are on Rom-Com posters. By doing this we could see that many Rom-Com genre posters have the two main characters on the front in specific poses that portrays their character such as 'how to loose a guy in 10 days'. The main pictures we found on these posters were usually trying to represent love and romance. This is what we decided to incorporate into our poster. We had a brainstorm in Tuesday's lesson about movie titles and taglines.
Possible Titles:
Hating Faith
Incompatiable
Opposites Attract
Hot N Cold
Hate to Love
Taglines:
Every rose has its thorn
You dont have to like someone to love them
Also in our research we found that titles of Rom-Com films are normally more than one word, like a small phrase such as 'He's just not that into you', 'Pretty Woman' and '13 going on 30'.

Research and Planning 11/11

For our A2 coursework we have decided to create a teaser trailer, poster and magazine front cover for a Romantic Comedy film. We have done research into the types of teaser trailers and more specifically how posters of Rom Com films are portrayed.  The typical poster we found of Rom Com films was plain white backgrounds with brightly coloured fonts to attract the audience and make them think of romance and happiness when they look at the poster. These types of posters consist of having pictures of men and women portrayed to be in love. The posters tend to be simply but effective in the message and genre they are representing.

This poster called According to Greta is one that I researched into. As it is a typical Rom-com film which targets the same audience as what we plan to do. The layout of the poster is similar to one of our intial ideas and gave me some new ideas of how we can set out our poster. This poster has a main pciture of the character who is played by Hilary Duff and bright colours to attract the audience. The overall look of the poster also looks quite comic like and drawings which is one of the inital ideas we have.

While researching into rom-com posters these were the ones in particular that helped us to create some initial ideas for our own posters. For example The ugly truth has the picture of the characters and the use of the red hearts suggesting love and the title at the bottom of the page.