Conventions of a Film Magazine cover

1. Masthead

The masthead of this magazine is in a bright colour (red) although it is behind the image of the Harry Potter characters. The masthead being in the background connotes that the magazine is well known, as the full logo does not need to be seen. The bright colour contrasts with the white background, making it clear and easily read. Although the images are in front of the text, the bright colour draws the reader's eye to the title.

2. Pug

The pug in the corner of the magazine is coloured gold, which connotes the best possible treatment. It also helps to draw attention to the colour and therefore the words in the triangle.This helps to attract the audience as it draws their attention to that part of the magazine, while not taking up too much space.

3. Puff

A variety of puffs are used on this magazine. An  example of this is the black circular puff on the left of the cover. By using the colour black, the circle contrasts with both the white background, and the coloured image behind it. The white text on this circle contrasts with the opposing black colour, making this stand out more against the black and background. The text reads, "The exclusive the world wanted." This connotes that the audience want to read what is in the magazine, and therefore will buy it. Also, by using the word exclusive, it connotes that what is inside the magazine cannot be found anywhere else.

4. Star power

 The image on the cover shows 3 famous actors, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. These three actors together play the main characters in the Harry Potter franchise, and have since they were young. The magazine is advertising the final film of the franchise, which is the 8th film. This is useful as over the previous 7 films, the world has gotten to know and love the three characters. By showing them on the cover of the magazine, they would be easily recognized by most people, and fans of the films, books and actors would buy the magazine simply because they are featured.

5. Contrasting colours

The main colours featured on this magazine are white, red and gold with some small parts in black. These colours both compliment and contrast each other. The background is plain white, meaning that any images and colours used are more defined and easily noticed.

6. Strapline

The strapline reads,

"Harry Potter
The Perfect Farewell"

By using the word perfect, it connotes that both the film and the article can't possibly be any better, and is of the best quality. The words 'Harry Potter' are in a larger font and contrasting colours to the rest of the magazine. These words are recognised universally and will attract audiences to the magazine easily.

Times Up Planning: Storyboards and Assigning Roles

One of the first and most important parts of planning our trailer was to assign the roles that each of us were to carry out for the remainder of the project. This would make the planning much more simple, as each of us knew exactly what jobs we had to undertake, as well as what responsibilities we had. We devised 8 roles, so that each member of the group could have an equal amount of responsibilities. The roles that each of us were assigned were:

Director: Rhiannon
Producer: Tom
Editing: Rachel
Camerawork: Elizabeth
Storyboard: Rhiannon
Music: Tom
Costume: Rachel
Script: Elizabeth

Although these roles are assigned, all of the team has a say in every aspect of creating the trailer.For example, even though Rhiannon's job was to storyboard the trailer, we all had an input and gave ideas as to what should be included, Rhiannon simply put the ideas together.

Here are our first drafts of the storyboards:
 

We then created a full, more detailed storyboard:

We will use these when it comes to filming and editing our trailer, as it enables us to envision exactly what we wish it to look like. This gives us a simple framework, to which we can then add effects and more clips if they are needed.

Time's Up Pitch

Title

The title of our film is Times Up. We decided to use a specialized font that looks like those used on a digital clock, to fit the connotation of time running out. The colour of the font is red to connote danger, and also to create a sense of verisimilitude with the font and colour used on digital clock numbers. We also used a black background to create a sense of mystery. We used this as it is common for people to have a fear of the unknown, and this is a theme that we wanted to represent throughout our film.

Production Company

Our production company logo is the title Chilling Entertainment in two sinister looking fonts, "Symbiote" for Chilling and "Necropsy" for Entertainment. Both of these fonts connote different common conventions of psychological thrillers; white noise or paranormal activity and blood and gore. The text is white and presented on a black background for a polar contrast, and so the colour white can connote the meaning of the word chilling. Behind the text is a murky white handprint that would common.

Narrative

Our protagonist Gabrielle, is left alone for the week by her mother who is working abroad for extra money. At first the main character is happy with this because it means that she gets to spend more time with her friends having parties etc. However, this all ends up badly when one night she sees a masked person standing outside her window waving at her. She sees this through her mirror and when she turns around to look outside, the person is gone. She speaks to her best friend, William, who tells her to speak to the police about it because at least she stopped it happening from the future. The police send Gabrielle and William to a detective who says that the masked antagonist is a serial killer who has never failed at his schemes. When he calls to say how much time they have until they die, they always die when the timer hits 0. Throughout the movie, if we created a full one, there would be a time in the corner that would appear every now and again and it would show how long the main character had left until the time will run out. Her best friend decides to stay with Gabrielle to help make her feel safe from the antagonist until one night he calls and says that she has 12 hours to live. The detective keeps CCTV looking at the house to make sure that she’s safe and this killer can’t get into the house. Somehow, the killer finds his way in the house and has locked all the doors and cut all communication from the outside making it impossible for Gabrielle to get the detective’s help. William goes missing and the protagonist now has to survive on her own. The killer chases her throughout the house and there are emotional scenes where she was trying to hide or defend herself from his attacks. After a series of events, she realizes that she has survived over 12 hours and she finds out that a person she knows has been the killer the whole time and that normally the killer poisons their food, but Gabrielle hadn't taken any poison. After an ending battle to the death, Gabrielle manages to stop the killer and escape through the basement where she finds William. The detective finally breaks his way into the house and finds the dead killer along with Gabrielle and William. This ends the killings once and for all.

Characters

The characters that we will use in our film include an unknown killer. Having a murderer or serial killer as the antagonist is typical of the psychological thriller genre.  The killer’s face will be hidden by a white mask, therefore hiding their identity. This follows the conventions of films such as Scream.

Another character we will use is Gabrielle, the female protagonist. She will be played by Rhiannon, and shown throughout the film as a dominant female character. This is atypical of the thriller genre, as females are often shown at damsels in distress, needing rescued by the male protagonist.

Gabrielle’s best friend Emma will be played by Rachel. We chose to include this character as a voice of reason, and someone to keep Gabrielle calm. She will be the one who decides to go to the detective, who will be played by Rhiannon’s father.

We chose to use these characters as they are roughly the same age as our target audience, 18-25, therefore the audience will be able to relate to the characters that are portrayed on screen.

Target Audience

Our target audience is men aged 18-25 as this age and gender is stereotypically more likely to enjoy psychological thrillers as they involve violence and scary or unsettling material. Our audience will be a global mass audience. This means our film will attract people of all ages, nationalities and film preferences due to its genre. Horrors and thrillers are particularly popular upon cinema release as mainly teenagers and young adults are known to view it in cinemas in groups of friends as entertainment.

Setting

We wanted to have our trailer mainly shown in a home because this is seen as where a person is most comfortable and relaxed; however in our trailer we see the antagonist invading this space and destroying this comfort zone. The door and the window are two of the areas we will be filming as we need to show Gabrielle’s mum leaving the house at the beginning of the trailer and this is to connote that she is already leaving her comfort zone slightly. The picture of the window is also what we have in mind as she sees the antagonist through it and this is also to connote that the antagonist is getting closer to invading her space. These are only just some of the pictures of settings that we have in mind. We have other ideas for places to film in, but this will be decided when we practice filming.