FINAL - ANCILLIARY TEXTS - MOVIE POSTER AND FRONT COVER OF FILM MAGAZINE

Front Cover of Film Magazine - Critical Analysis and Evaluation of my own media construct.


This is my final magazine front cover which i have produced as one of my ancilliary texts. After researching the magazine and print indiustry and researching into the codes and conventions of magazines i then inputted this research to form a basis of which to build my product around.

Whilst producing this cover, i had to think of the codes and conventions of magazines and follow them in order to make my magazine meet the standard format whilst also making decisions in order for me to ensure that my magazine front cover would meet my target audience of younger people.

My first concern with the construction of my film magazine front cover was the main image, knowing that this had to be a big and bold, interesting image which would attract my audiences attention and stand out off the page. Therefore my first main task was to search through the range of images which i had taken in order for me to decide which image i thought would look best. It is the above image which i feel had the effect of standing out off the page and immediately drawing in my audiences attention to the image. For this image i adopted a dominant pose as i wanted my films hero to appear strong and fearless as he looks out directly towards the audience. I chose to interpret this in my magazines main image as i discovered that this is a regular feature in film magazines main images, i also felt that this type of image was adopted mostly in images suggesting action heroes therfore i felt it would work well in my main image as my main character is the typical action heroic stereotype which i wanted to display to the audience so that they can see the main image and instantly know the genre of my film and certain things which it is safe to assume they can expect to see from this genre.

There where other certain decision which i had to make when creating this particular image. For instance, i had to decide whether i wanted to portray my character wearing the army clothes or not. In the end, i decided against this idea and decide to display my character in his normal clothes which he is wearing most of the film. I opted for this decision as i believed it was more important for my audience to see just a normal and average man which is what my character is now, i wanted my audience to clearly see the decision which my main character has chosen in chosing the truth and his beliefs over his loyalty to his country and his army. I also felt that the hat and the jacket looked like normal, everday clothes suggesting that my character is no special super hero or world class warrior and that in fact he is actually just an average and normal man.

I wanted to create a relaxed image to my character whilst also show determination and strength therefore i decided his stance and posture would create the strength aspect as he is standing tall and not backing down highlighting to my audience that my character is not afraid and is prepared to fight for what he believes in, this is also highlighted by my characters hard faced and determined expression staring out directly towards the audience again suggesting the strength and focus of my character. I believe i achieved the relaxed image of my character due to the way in which he has got his weapon slung over his shoulder. This highlights to the audience that the character does not believe there to be any enemies nearby or that he isnt afraid of the prospect that there are enemies nearby which highlights his relaxed attitude as he shows no fear, which also adds the heroic imagery to my characters personality.

Due to the fact that i have chosen my character to be holding a machine gun just slung weightlessly over his shoulder again whilst also sugesting the strength of my character, it also shows that he means business and due to the choice of showing him holding a machine gun instead of a pistol it highlights to my audience that the character knows how to handle weaponry like this and has a destructive side to his personality due to his powerful weapon choice.

After creating the main image and feeling happy that my character has the powerful, strong and heroic imagery that i had visulised i decided to get to work on my background. I decided that i wanted to go for an interesting image of possibly a war-ravaged or desolate place. My final decision was to go for an apocalyptic style background as i wanted to show the audience what my film suggested. By showing a desolate and virtually empty landscape i thought it had the effective of highlighting to the audience what is at stake in my film and provides them with a brief insight in what could be the possible outcome and in my film whilst also providing some of the narrative by showing my audience that the idea of destruction is going to be a key feature in the film which again highlights the films genre in my magazine.

I believe the background image of the road surrounded by a sparse surroundings and with churning thick black clouds overhead created an image of darkness and evil, suggesting to my audiences that the level of devestation which is possible, the colour black, having connotations with death and nothingness works well here as it symbolises to my audience that as the image is dark that death is going to be an issue as well as the idea of the propsect of nothingness and the result of everything being destroyed which also suggests the idea of some kind of bomb or weapon which has caused these levels of devestation which again provides my audience with an insight into my film. The background image and the main image both appear interesting and have the effect of appealing to my character and prompting them to pick up my magazine as they are attracted to my image an want to know what the image is about.

I decided to then create my main headline - after my research i discovered that these tend to be bold, bright and have the effect of standing out to the audience, they are also usually placed close to the centre of magazine. Knowing that my title had to stand out and be attractive to my audience i firstly had to make the decision of the type face and font which i was going to use. Having only a limited and plain range on software such as Word Art i decided to try elsewhere and ended up creating my font on the website http://www.dafont.com/. When deciding the text to use i kept in mind that i wanted it to appeal to the younger age range which are my target audience.

I decided to put my font against a white background and then include a black border running along the top and bottom of my text, i made this decision as i felt it had the effect of drawing more attention of my magazines main headline with the two contrasting colours of black and white standing out against each other resulting in my headline being eye-catching and drawing my audiences attention in. This was important as after my research i discovered that the headline could be one of the most influential selling points of my magazine therefore it has to stand out to my audience. I then placed the headline 'Truth or Dare' the title of my film over the main image so that my audience can make the connection between the two. By drawing my audiences attention to the title of my film could also have the effect of influencing them to pick up the magazine if they have heard about the film or seen a teaser trailer etc and are encouraged about finding out more about it.

My magazines title i decided to create in another font created on the dafont website. I decided i wanted to create a symbolic title which would be created in exactly the same style with each issue, as seen with 'Empire' magazines iconic title. I chose this font due to the reasons that it had the effect of being bold and standing out against the background, whilst i also believed that this font had a rock and stone sort of strong effect which i felt fit in nicely with my 'Action' issue and the action hero type image of my main character, therefore this helps the audience to make the association that this issue of 'Premiere' magazine was an action issue and instantly tells the audience of what they can expect to see featured in this issue.

I have also made the decision to provide some other feature around the cover of my magazine in order to show the audience other exciting and appealing features that are going to be included in this issue of the magazine. I have also chosen to display these in my magazines 'PLUS' section running along the bottom of my magazine. I made the choice to include these other feature elements as it has the effect of encouraging the audience to purchase the magazine, for example if the magazine only shows the audience the one main feature and no more, the audience may not be particularly interested in this feature and therefore not attracted to the magazine and so therefore they pass at the chance of purchasing it, however the advantage of included more features reinforces to the audience that the magazine also contains other features which are included which could appeal to a wide range of audiences and therefore encourage a wider range of people into purchasing the magazine. I also had to make the decision on where to place these addition features, during research i discovered that these are sometimes placed over the main image of the magazine or down a column down the right hand side of the magazine, however i opted against both of these ideas as i didnt want to take the emphasis and draw the audiences attention away from my main image. I also decided that most of the main features included in magazines boast about other big issues which the magazine has included such as interviews with top film stars or other big blockbuster named films. Therefore i interpreted these ideas in my own product and mentioned names such as 'Will Smith', 'Johnny Depp', 'T2' and 'Transformers'.
The well-known names of these top hollywood film stars are well known to my target audience as well as popular films such as Transformers and T2 - Using the filming jargon as i assume my audience which are film fans would know that 'T2' stands for terminator 2, however i have placed the text 'Judgement day' to add reinforcement to the text so that my audience know the film which i am referring to. These well known elements have the effect of interesting and exciting the readers as they are all well-known films and stars which will target a wide audience and encourage them to purchase the magazine as they want to read about these features.

I have also incuded text such as 'On-set exclusive' and 'World Exclusive', this has the effect of promoting the feature as being exclusive to this magazine and makes the audience think they are recieving something special and has the effect of making them feel lucky and privledged with this exclusive information with the magazine is sharing with them. It also has the effect of hyping up my magazines main feature by saying things such as world exclusive it creates a feeling amongst the audience that the film is going to be a huge blockbuster hit across the world and everyone is eagerly-awaiting its release but this magazine is treating its special audience with an exclusive feature on it which encourages them to purchase the magazine as they want to find out more about this hyped up film.

I have chosen to place the tagline to my film 'Would you risk everything for the truth?' running across the top of the magazine, this is effective as it is contained on my film posters and on the film trailer so it is a well-known tagline which accompanies my film. By placing the tagline running across the top of my magazine it stands out and is still visible if the magazine is stacked in a shelf were the main image may be covered up. This allows people to make the link between the tagline and what film my magazine is focusing on, by situating this text near the text 'World Exclusive' also excites the readers as they are constantly told that the film which is being featured in the magazine is a world exclusive film which people are eagerly anticipating to be a good film.

I have also incuded the typical elements which are seen in every magazine such as the barcode, price, date and issue number. However i have challenged the typical conventions expected as i made the decision of keeping all of these elements together, my reasoning behind this was due to the fact that i decided that these are the formal sort of business aspect of the magazine front cover and although not very important to the reader, it is important that they can easily spot where the price of the magazine and details of the magazine are and by placing them in the same position every issue tells the audiences where they can look to find out this information.


Film Poster - Analysis.


This is the final film poster which i produced as the other ancilliary text.

Before i began the production of this media text, i decided that i wanted to have a link between all of my products, therefore i had to make the decision on what features i could incorporate into both of my magazine and film poster.

Initially my idea was to include the same image from the magazine onto the film poster, however i decided against this idea due to the fact that i had a chosen photograph which i wanted to use for my poster production. Although both of the images where similar in what they suggested to the audience such as power and relaxed image of the character showing that he has no fear, this image was a low angle shot which had the effect of making my character appear dominant and powerful, i also like the overall appearance of this image and believe it is effective and looks attractive in the way that it suggests my characters personality whilst again the inclusion of the gun suggests the theme of violence to my audience, again as it is a machine gun and not a handgun it suggests the violent and destructive nature of my character which again indicates the genre of my film to the audience.

Therefore, as i decided i wanted to include this new image, i had to decide of another way to interlink my ancilliary media constructs. Therefore i made the decision to take the headline text and font along with the background image and interpret this also in my film poster. Therefore this provided an interlink between the media products and made it clear for my audience to see that the media products are connected to each other.

The background again works well here as it is again interesting and a dramatic image bringing to the audiences attention of what could happen in the film as the sparse surroundings and black and churning clouds suggest a dramatic view of total destruction and has connotations of death and a feeling of nothingness which suggests to the audience that the film is going to have a storyline surrounding something major happening which threatens the future of the world and threatens devestation on a huge scale.

The title also works in the same way as it did in the magazine, having the effect of appearing bright and bold against the the dark and threatening looking background to the film poster, which catches the audiences attention and complies with the typical conventions as the films title is the most vital piece of information contained in a film poster so therefore it is important that this piece of text stands out and brings the title of the film to the audiences attention.

I have chosen to place the names of the film stars above the title of the film in a bold and big font so that the audience can see the stars in the film, this is important as if they are big named film stars it can have the effect of influencing people to see the film because of the big named stars who are starring in it which encourages the audience that this must be a good film, whilst also likewise if the audience like the film they can easily see the stars names who where in the film which they can remember if they liked their perfomances and watch out for them in other productions.

I have chosen to include the tagline of my film running towards the centre of my poster so that it has the effect of standing out for the audience to clearly see, the tagline is important as it can encourage the audience into wanting to see the film as they like the sound of the films tagline and it sparks an interest and excitement in them of the film. 'Would you risk everything for the truth?' I believe this works well as it sums up the whole narrative of my film which is about a man taking the biggest risk of his life to ensure that the world knows the truth about what is happening. The tagline also provokes though in the audience and interests them in the film.

I have chosen to place the pugs at the bottom of my film poster as this is where they are typically placed, i also didnt want this text to clutter up my main image or the background of the poster which is attractive and eye-catching to the audience so therefore i made the decision to place them at the bottom of the poster.

Underneath this i decided to place the release date for my film as after researching into film posters i discovered that they are frequenntly placed here, therefore i am relying on the knowledge that my audience will typically know where this information is placed on the film poster and will be able to find the film release date easily. I have also chosen to create this information in a white and bold font so that it stands out against the dark background and attracts my audiences attention which has the effect of directing them to the second most important piece of text on the whole movie poster as this tells my audience when my film is going to be showing in cinemas so that they can make a not of this date and go and see the film if they have been encouraged about the film through the film poster.