Poster & Magazine Designing Process

In order to create a poster and magazine that was effective for the combination of these ancillary products along with my main product, I drafted different designs and considered many conventional factors of poster and magazines as well as taking into consideration the trailer as well. It is important to create brand synergy throughout all three of my products so by drafting multiple ideas I was able to explore which way of laying out these products was most effective regarding house style, colour scheme, fonts, feature photographs and more. 

Final Titles and Credits for Trailer

In a real media text such as a trailer, an 'end card' is always featured on the end of the trailer to announce the release date of the movie, any social media links which may give more insight into the trailer and the title of the film usually. I chose the release date to fall on Halloween due to the scary nature of the film as I thought this would be an appropriate time in the calendar month to realise a film like this. I also added the certified rating of 'PG13' to let the audience know the age you have to be to legally watch this film at a cinema. In addition to this I put the website 'www.killernextdoor' at the bottom of the page, this gives the audience more information about the film incase they are interested to read further into the plot before they chose seem the film. I also added the hashtag of 'killernextdoor'. I did this because social media is a great way of gaining more attention to your product and people are more likely to find out about the film through the sharing of the hashtag on audience members social media platforms such as twitter and face book. 

I made the bottom small print on photoshop which included the names of actors, directors, producers and the rightful film companies which where associated with in the making of the film.

At the beginning of the trailer I added a disclaimer stating that this following trailer had been approved for viewing by a higher authority. This allowed me to relate my film in the first place. This is a very common feature of a real media text. 

The next set of text cards were featured in the trailer. I made these captions on photoshop and quoted what film review critics had said about the film. This is a common in a real media text trailer as it emphasises how good the film is and makes people want to watch it when they see good reviews from professional critics. 

Next I created the font which I wanted to be the face of 'killer next door' and would be featured on other products as well to crate brand synergy between them all. SO as to make it obvious to the audience that they are all advertising the same thing. I used a website online rather than using photoshop because there were very limited options in terms of font on the photoshop software which didn't fit my trailer or correlate to my genre. I used the website '1001fonts.com' to create the font which I thought conveyed the correct tone of the film and matched the aesthetic of the product. The font I chose was 'ringbearer' font.

Now, I had the font which I wanted but I wasn't completely happy with the way it turned out. I wanted to added texture and a 3D quality to the text as it was very flat and didn't stand out very much.  Therefore I imported it onto a black screen on photoshop and played around with 'layering styles' in order to enhance the look of the text until it met the requirement to fit my genre perfectly. 

This was the finished end card for the title of the film and I felt that it was a drastic improvement from the first version of the text as it fitted into the aesthetic of the trailer more and reflected the tone and genre of the film. 

Choosing Fonts: Trailer Titles

There were limited amounts of fonts which directly related to the genre of thriller on the in photoshop software. To avoid the problem of limiting myself on fonts to suit my genre I downloaded different fonts form '1001fonts.com'. This is a free website for download purposes and had a variety of fonts which related to my genre; e.g. texts written with blood splatters.

The fonts below are some which I considered before finalising the fonts which I would use on my magazine cover and my film poster.  

Editing Process: Adding Sound to Anchor the Plot

A conventional feature of a trailer is to have some sort of sound included, whether that is dialogue, ambient sound, diegetic sound, non-diegetic sound or foley - all of this accounts for anchoring the genre and tone of the trailer. When picking music I had to make sure it was appropriate to match the tone of the shots, e.g. if the scene is eerie and spooky, having a running soundtrack over the top of happy and joyful music would completely disrupt the tone of the trailer and thus may confuse the genre.

At the beginning of the trailer the equilibrium is in balance. To connote this I wanted to have a fairly simple running track under the shots for this section of the trailer. I chose a fairly upbeat and positive instrumental song - "Wiffle Ball" by Joel P. West.
This enhanced the harmonious balance of the equilibrium and the audience were able to understand this with the combination of non diegetic sound and camera shots. 

As the trailer moved forward through out the plot, there was a break in the equilibrium as the killer is introduced. I used changed the track to a darker , more mysterious and ominous vibe. This helped anchor the idea that this male character on screen (killer) is associated with a dark and unwelcoming presence. When this music is heard there is a change of tone and the killer appears, ultimately the audience subconsciously take note of the change of tone and therefore they understand that the equilibrium is about to be disrupted. For this section of an ominous atmosphere I used the track "Radius" by Hi-Finesse. This track added a jarring and scary ominous sound to the trailer 

In addition to adding two tracks to contribute to the anchoring of the plot, I also added loud, scary and ominous sound effects and ambient sounds to enhance the thriller genre.