Creating our Horror magazine

Not only did we have to create a movie poster as a means of advertisement but we also has to create a magazine front cover to go along with it. All of us had previous experience on creating a magazine from the previous year so we all ready new what we were getting ourselves into only this time the magazine was based around movies rather than music. As I mentioned in my research on magazine front covers I would have like the magazine to be genre specific since I thought they the most effective at grabbing the audience's attention through imagery associated with that particular magazine (e.g. sci-fi now used science fiction type imagery like lights, lasers, robots etc). However as my other group member's pointed out to me using a general film magazine would be better since they are the most popular types of film magazines and they are much more simplistic in design which would make it easier for us base our design on. So in the end we decided to jump on the band wagon and make a magazine based around 'Total Film'. 

The first stage in creating our magazine was to choose an image that we be used for the front cover. We took several photo's of our main actress behind our film 'Damnation' and went through them all to decide which one was the best, eventually we all agreed that the shoulder/close up shot was the best since that type of shot is often used in magazine and we felt it was the best looking shot we took. So like with the poster we used Photoshop to create the magazine and the first thing we did was to paste our image of our main actress onto the canvas and the remove the background from the image of our actress since it was an odd greyish-white colour which didn't look to great. Once we removed the background we filled the space around our actress with a black background.... which only made it look worse since it really didn't go well with the lighting on our actress' face and hair and even when we tried adjusting the lighting it still looked bad.   

Eventually we decided to make both image of our actress and our background black and white, and it really look good after we applied these settings since it had a nice grainy feel to it and we figured that it would help to make the text stand out more. So once we had the image sorted the next step was to add all the text and extra images onto the magazine. For the title of the magazine we simply cropped out the logo used in a total film magazine from the internet (the largest and highest quality one so that the quality would still be good once we pasted the image) and added it to our magazine in the exact same spot used in every total magazine cover for consistencies sake.  next we wrote out all the sub-headings for our magazine which were mainly features that correspond with the theme of the magazine, which in this case was horror (we had headlines about the 50 greatest horror films ever, the release of John Carpenters 'Halloween' in 3D).  


Once all the text was in place we then changed the colouring of the text to differentiate each type of text from each and to help it stand out from the background and keep with the theme of our film (the major colours used in our film being red, white and black) since the main title and sub-headings are in white and red, and the description text was in black. 

Next we added the image of the cross used in our poster into the magazine and then decreased the opacity to make it rather faint so that it looked like part of the background since we wanted to have an image that we could related to our film but we wanted the focus of  the magazine to be on our main actress. Next we added the bar code to our magazine so that it looked like a legitimate magazine and we also added small dots at the top and bottom of the page between each of the films name mention in the magazine to separate them from each other and avoid confusion. Next we decided to add a button onto our magazine since it was something that was commonly used in magazine and it helped to give the magazine a more professional look. Once we finished we printed out the magazine and took a look at it, and we weren't completely satisfied since although the imagery and layout were great some of the wording in the magazine looked rather dull and it really didn't jump out and the reader plus some of the text was rather difficult to read (particularly the white text) and the read text seem to be on a completely new layer rather blending with.

So after observing what was wrong with the magazine we went back into Photoshop and made our changes. Firstly we added drop shadows to the text so that it stood out more from the background and also helped to make the red text blend in more (as well as making the tone of red used slightly darker), plus we added drop shadows to the logo and button. Next we changed some of the text so that it look more powerful and interesting for example we changed "world exclusive" to "exclusive in interview with the star of". The final change we made was to the title of the film since we copied it from the poster but it looked far to bright and didn't mesh at all, so we decreased the lighting of the text and it blended well. However because of this we then hand to change the lighting on both the poster and in the film trailer, luckily this change was a good thing since it looked really good. 

Finally once the poster was finished we printed it off and look and it once more and the changes we made really helped post the presentation of the magazine since it look like a real 'Total Film' magazine. I'm very happy with how the poster turned out and I think the decision for a 'Total Film' magazine rather a genre specific magazine was for the best.