Magazine Front Cover

This is our magazine front cover for Blind Man`s Bluff, we decided to use Empire as our magazine linked to the film due to our film seeming to be linked to films such as Sherlock Holmes and TV programmes like Ripper Street. So therefore our film would be linked to magazines such as this due to it being a blockbuster.

We thought having a picture of the Rippers would look best for our film due to it showing gthe main villains plus they good as being serious, if there was to be a counter to this cover, we would have Abberline and Moore looking like they are being watched or turning on each other. I like the shadows on the Rippers faces as it adds to their dark persona.



We started with a brick background which was originally yellow. We then typed "EMPIRE", after the film magazine. We also put at the top "World Exclusive".



Using the same text from DaFont.com we wrote the name of our film in red and then other little information snippets at the bottom of the magazine which is typical of a conventional magazine  front cover.



We then made some alterations to the colour of some of the quotes on it to make it look more stylish, such as changing the background of the colour of the brick wall, this as well "Blind Man`s Bluff" form red to white, but then changed the tex underneath it was changed to red along with the dots at the bottom and the text at the top.

Our Final Poster!

This is our final poster for Blind Man`s Bluff. This is a combination of the first two posters we created; we took elements of the minimalist poster via the the use of the colours black and red, these connote the idea of murder and criminals. We used the font from the first poster for the titles and the billing list font from the second poster,which were downloaded from the website DaFont.com. We also got the idea to use the back of the heads and shoulders of the Ripper`s form the second poster, but decided to make them black outlines like the first one. If anything could be altered, maybe the website could have been something more catchy like BlindmansBluff.com or BMB.com. 

Rippers Screen Test

Jake, lewis and Joe Screen test from Evie Anderson on Vimeo.

Screen test for Jake, Lewis and Joe, The Rippers!

Music!

This is our orginal music for the trailer. This music was made for us very kindly by Ciarans friend Jacob, the music sounds amazing and was created via Garage Band on a mac. It has an intense feel to it which reflects what we want to see on screen. Now we have the music, we can tie the knots with regards to our trailers!

Abberline and Carter interview

Clip #243 from Evie Anderson on Vimeo.

Due to Alice and Charlie being round my house I managed to do their interview together. Though it is almost ten minutes long it shows a very natural side to the two of them and I think them being together made them feel less nervous about talking.

Creating our titles for the trailer

In this lesson we created our title for the trailer, we decided to use Live Type as we felt this would give the best results.

Here is the full screen of Live Type

We thought that Baskerville Old Face was the best font to use as it has an old fashion look to it, we also used it for our teaser poster as well.

We changed the font to be a little smaller as we did not want it to crowd the screen, simple is good!

Titles on the time line

Close up of Ciaran Pinnell`s titles

We thought that "Blind Man`s Bluff" should be bigger than the other three titles and in the centre.

Mary Kelly Interview/ Screen Test

Sequence 1 from Evie Anderson on Vimeo.

This is our screen test with Amy Holmes who will be playing the main prostitute in our film Mary Kelly.

Detective Moore Screen Test

Detective Moore Screen Test from Evie Anderson on Vimeo.

This is our second interview/screen test, we thought this would be a good idea to show the potential of our "actors" and gives people an opportunity to get to know the people in our trailer! This is the screen test for Ciaran who plays Abberline`s assistant Detective Moore.

Attempt at Poster Number Two!

This the second attempt at a poster, it looks a lot more professional look to it compared to our first attempt; I think the first one was more of a teaser poster and this is the stage on. I feel this poster looks like the type of advertisement which might be on the poster in the cinemas. I fell this is due to it being a freeze frame from it and the black banners at the top and bottom also give the impression of being a cinema poster.

To create this I used Photoshop and opened the image onto it, I made the image smaller and changed the colour behind it to black to give it more of a sinister look. I then looked on the website DaFont.com and found font which look like the billing list text and a sinister Jack the Ripper style for the title. 

We decided that black would be the best background for our poster as it gives mystery to Ripper, plus our teaser poster is red so it contrasts fairly well.

We found this font on dafont.com, it looks quite creepy and like its Jack the Rippers writing 

Our billing list! We tried to include everyone who helped, was in it and who in our Media group. Though I forgot to mention Jessa, who let us use her house.. 

I think this looks like a possible poster we may use for the end result, I think we will try a few different ideas and how they turn out. 

Magazine Front Cover Research

For our task of designing a magazine front cover we decided that the we should first do some research on some exciting front covers so that we could identify some common conventions to add into our magazine when we come to design it.

This is the first magazine front cover we looked at.  The magazine is by SFX and the main article and focal point of this particular issue is The Avengers 2.  This particular image is very useful to us because we can see what the image looked like before all of the writing was placed over the picture.  What is very easy to see from this image is that the main image that the again wants the viewers to see (iron man) is placed in the centre of the page.  This catches the viewers eyes and draws them to look at the magazine.  We will put this concept into our magazine so that we can grab peoples attention.  Also the image of Iron Man covers the title.  This clearly represents that the image is more important then the title of the magazine otherwise the title would be over the picture.  WHat is also interesting is the use of a limited palette.  On the cover there is only a use of about 4 colours.  There are not a variety of colours which is something we expected to see.  We will limit the colours we use like this magazine as we see this as being very impressive and we will imitate the style.  Also on the front cover there are pictures of other films such as Star Trek 2, Man of Steel and Wolverine.  This  shows the users what else is in the film.  We may add something like this into our film so that our magazine front cover is not entirely dominated by one story.  the use of the back ground image is very intriguing.  Fire and explosions are used in the background and the colour red is used a lot.  This connotes a violent film with lots of special effects.  This is something you expect to see in an Avengers film and if you haven't seen an Avengers film then by looking just at the background you can tell a lot about the film.  The choice of words is important to look at.  On the front cover it says "your definitive guide to a year of astounding films".  The word your implies that you already own the magazine and also that it will be yours if you buy it.  This is a good marketing technique as it implies to the viewer of the cover that they should buy the magazine.  Also the adjective "astounding" is used to show that the movies in the guide are particularly good.  If the magazine had said good movies for example then it would not have the same effect on the audience.  We will take everything we have learnt from the front cover and use it when we create our magazine front cover.

This is one of the film magazine front covers we decided to analyse.  The magazine is from the company Empire and the front cover is based around the film Django Unchained. Unlike the other front covers Empire uses limited text.  Apart from the title there is not much text.  The reason for this is that the company want the audiences eyes to be drawn to the three main characters of the film, Leonardo Di Caprio, Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz who are all well known actors.  When the audience see this they will want too read more about these famous actors.  like the other covers there is also a limited palette with only white orange and black being used.  This is clearly a common convention of a magazine front cover and we will include this is our cover.  At the very top of the cover it says "18 huge exclusives".  This is a clear marketing technique because it attempts to try and sell the magazine by offering exclusives that you can only see in this magazine.   The directors name is used on the front cover.  This is unusual because on the other covers we have looked at the director is not mentioned however on this he is.  This is because the director of Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino.  He is one of the most well known directors in the industry and because his name is mentioned it adds credibility to the film and makes it more interesting to viewers.  It also says "how tarantino reinvented the west".  This makes the viewers want to know what has changes from traditional western films such as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  The words above the title say the good the bad and the bloody.  This is a play on words from the film the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, one of the most famous western films ever.  This in a way compares the two films together and suggests that the film may be as good as that film.  This consequently interests the potential buyer and makes them want to find out how it is similar to the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

This is another one of the film magazine front covers that we have decided to analyse.  This is from the magazine total film and the front cover is based all around the Hobbit.  Unlike the SFX film magazine front cover it has a plain background.  The reason for this is so the main character in the film Bilbo Baggins is in the forefront of the cover and is easy to see.  the image of Bilbo Baggins is also completely on the page.  unlike the other magazines where not all of the character is on the page on this he is completely on the page.  the reason for this is so that the size of Bilbo Baggins is shown clearly as he is a hobbit in the film an Hobbits are generically small.  On the side of the cover you can see the title "12 films you should have seen".  What this implies by the use of the word should is that if you have not seen these particular films then there is something wrong with you.  This could potentially persuade a viewer to buy this so that the can clear this apparent wrong that they have done.  At the top of the page it says "the greatest one liner revealed".  This will interest potential buyers to buy the magazine to find out what the one liner is.  This is another tool of marketing to try and persuade people to buy your product.  near the title of the magazine it says "the world's best movie reviews".  This probably isn't true as there is no way to gauge who makes the best reviews in the world.  However like the other elements on the front cover i have mentioned it persuades people to buy the magazine because if they are interested in movie reviews then they will want the "best movie reviews".  All of these marketing techniques we will use on our front cover as we want to make it look as authentic as possible.  The actor who plays Bilbo Baggins, Martin Freeman is looking straight at the potential audience.  This will create eye contact and draw the audience in to look at the the magazine and potentially buy it.

After looking at all these magazines we have found many conventions and elements we will include in our magazine front cover and the research has been very useful to see things that we may have wanted to include but have seen that there is no place for them in the film

"Status Update" of Trailer

We have successfully edited the fist thirty seconds of our trailer, we plan to further this success on to the next minute of so.

This is one of the effects we have for the external part of our trailer, we have changed the contrast and gamma levels to create a bleak but striking look to the film; this effects look quite Steampunk like which is what we are trying to perceive. 

We are using fade in for a certain but we won`t over use it.

This is the music we are currently using till Ciaran`s friends rather kindly offered to create original music for our trailer. Its is full of drums which gives a feeling of suspense.

These are the clips we have at the moment only one more bit of filming to go.

We now have 30 seconds! 

Music on our timeline

Dorset Street Location Research

This is one of the potential locations for our film trailer of Blind Mans Buff. We have decided to do a video of the location because it shows a more in depth view of the location and we can explain why certain aspects of the location would either be ideal for our film or if they are not useful for our film. 

This location creates a Victorian atmosphere.  The reason for this is the bars over the windows and the fences with spikes on them.  They would be very good for our film because we can use them for our victorian theme.  Although there are other problems with the location.  There are multiple occasions were you can see bins, air conditioning units and cars.  These were not around during the Victorian time and therefore would create continuity errors in our film.  the road itself looks victorian.  There are cobbled stones and these were a common sight on victorian streets.  We could use this on a chase scene for example because if you see the cobbled streets then you will be able top relate them to the Victorian age.  The main problem with the location is that it is near busy streets, this means that there may be background noise that we may not want to feature in the film.  Noises such as cars driving past etc.

In conclusion i do not believe we will use this location.  The reason for this is that the negatives outweigh the positives and most of the positives in this scene are in other locations we have researched.

Mitre Square Location Research

This is one of the potential locations for our film trailer of Blind Mans Buff.  We have decided to do a video of the location because it shows a more in depth view of the location and we can explain why certain aspects of the location would either be ideal for our film or if they are not useful for our film.  This video that we have shot is from Mitre Square.  It shows the street and parts of it that may be useful to us and parts that are not.

The first seciton you see in this video is an staircase with a gate in front of it.  This could potentially work and be good for our film because with the right sound and lighting we would be able to create a scary atmosphere.  It could also represent a hiding place for one of our cast whether they were shown to be hiding from Jack the Ripper or whether they were Jack the Ripper themselves.  However they may be a continuity error if we use this.  As you can see in the short section of the filming there are a lot of colourful rubbish in the stairway.  These things would not have excisted at that time in history and this would therefore create a continuity error.  We obviously know that there may be continuity errors due to the locations we have chosen to film in and the fact that there have been massive changes since the 19th century in London however we want to try and reduce them as much as possible.  The next part of the filming shows a bench.  The bench appears to be old.  This is good because then it would be believable that a bench like this may have been around in the 19th century.  At the back of the bench there is a square of soil.  This could be useful to us.  However as you can see there is a street near the bench which has cars in.  When we go to film it is more then likely there will be similar cars there.  This limits us to either close up shots or mid range shots.  We will be unable to do long shots or establishing shots because the cars may be included and this is obviously not good for our film.  As you can see later in the filming Mitre square has been modernised since the time of Jack the Ripper.  There are now restaurants, roads and streets.  All of these things create continuity errors and will not have the same effect compared to somewhere where these continuity errors would not occour.

In conclusion we believe that this location may not be best suited for us.  The main reason for this is the massive amount of continuity errors that could occour whilst filming.  We may use it however we will not do extended filiming here and we will use other locations we have looked at.

Creation of the First Poster

We changed the colour of the background to red as it suggests the idea of blood, danger and possibly lust? 

We typed out the words "Jack", "1888" and the website "//406482.wix.com/blindmansbuff."- these words connote the idea of Jack the Ripper and readers may link it to this. the font we decided to use was Baskerville Old Face- this font has a blunt, Victorian look to it and may be the text they use on wanted posters. We made the text 200 for the two smaller words and the website in a smaller font of 30.

This was the poster of on Photoshop.

This is our almost finished project, all we have to do is add the website then is complete.

First Poster (the first of many...)

This is the first poster we have created for our film, its simplistic and gives away barely anything about it. Though very sparse it tells the reader the villains name, the fate it is set and a website to go to if they are interested. Though the poster is stark this interests the view of the poster and makes them curious of what this poster is advertising to advertise. This poster may be the type of advertising used on web sites and if clicked on it will link you the site mentioned on it.

Web Design Week Two

There have been vast improvements form last weeks website.  I have changed a great deal in terms of layout and information shown.  We have also created a mobile website for the film so that people can view the website when their on the go.  The URL for the website is http://m.wix.com/406482/blindmansbuff

This is the home page for our mobile website.  It has a simplistic and minimalist background with it being very plain with just black with white stripes.  this is a good connotation for our film because we want our film to be seen as being of a dark nature but also the white connotes a sense of achievement and in a sense a light at the end of the tunnel.  The Home page consists of a page about the film itself which is mainly a synthesis, a contact page where a fan can email us for example to find out more about the film, another information page about our blogs and release date etc and two social networking site which are twitter and facebook where a viewer can become a fan or follow the progression of our film.

This is the about page.  Its tells the viewer what the film is about.  It does this because this is the synopsis that we have used for our film.  It is not too wordy and is quite easy to read which is something we felt was essential becasue the majority of people who use mobile websites (teenagers and young adults) do not want to read a lot of text about something otherwise they may become bored.

The next page is a contact us page.  It includes different ways in which someone can contact the website about a particular thing they are interested in or if they want to know something about the film that is currently not on the website they can email or call us and find out about it.  We feel that this will benefit our mobile website because now if someone is interested they have the opportunity to contact us and find out more about the film.  this should make them more interested and this could spread the word about the film so that it can reach a wider audience which is something we are trying to achieve.

This page is similar to the information page.  It basically displays other websites where they can view more information about the film.  all of these websites are of our blogs which is a brilliant place to find out more information about the film.

Survey Research Analysis

Once we had sent out our surveys we looked at the results we were shown and we analysed them so that we can gain knowledge from them.  from the results we hope to improve our film.  We may be able to do this if we can identify a target audience we can aim our film at and see what they want in a trailer.

The first question we asked was if the people answering the survey is either female or male.  Te reason for this is that we can identify a certain demographic to aim at and from this demographic we can show what that particular gender wants.  Females are commonly stereotyped as wanting to watch "chick flicks" which generally include a romantic storyline with a handsome man in it.  On the other hand men are more commonly represented as wanting to see violent, fast paced films with swearing etc.  As you can see the main audience is males with 70% of the people answering being men.  This leads us to believe that more men will watch this film then women.  The second question asked the audience their age.  We found that most of the people who answered were between 11 and 20 years old.  This is consequently the target audience we will target.  This specific age group prefer to watch fast paced films and are not too worried about storyline.  If the audience were mainly 30 + then we would have to consider making the film have a more in depth story line that perhaps does not have as much action.

From the third question that asks whether or not people knew about steampunk.  The reason for this question is that we wanted to identify whether or not this was a popular or well known genre.  from our finding we can clearly see that it is not that well known.  This consequently means that if this film was presented to the general public we may have to target it at a more niche market who actually knew what steampunk was.  However from looking at the results we were surprised.  Most of our group did not know much about steampunk when we started our project and we feel that 30% is actually higher then we expected.  Therefore we could potentially release it to a major audience and our film could potentially be a innovative piece that makes the steampunk more popular in the modern film culture.  The fourth question we asked was asked to try and find out whether or not the people doing our survey had ever seen a film about Jack the Ripper.  We found that the majority of the people who answered had seen a film about Jack the Ripper however the results were very close.  This tells us that a film based around Jack the Ripper is not very common.  This is good for our film because our film will not be seen to be similar to another film which is something we are trying to achieve with our film because we want to be seen as having an original film.

The fifth question questions whether or not a film based around Jack the Ripper would interest the public. we found that 60% would find it interesting.  Obviously we would prefer to have a higher percentage but this is still a good section of the public that would like to see our film.  This proves that our decision to make a film about Jack the Ripper was a good decision as it will appeal to a majority of the public.  The sixth question asks whether or not a story set in the nineteenth century would interest you.  similar to question 5 the results suggested that they would be interested.  This is excellent for our film because it will appeal to a broad audience.  We feel that our decision to set our film in the nineteenth century and make the film about Jack the Ripper was a good decision and the data we received from our surveys backs up this hypothesis.

Question 7 asks whether the audience would prefer a fast paced trailer or a slower paced trailer that reveals more of the story line.  This is a very important question to ask because the majority of films gain advertising from their trailers as this is how most modern films advertised in the modern film era.  This therefore means that we need our trailer to be very good.  The results were very close however the majority say they prefer a faster paced trailer.  This means that when we are editing our film we will try to make it have a fast pace to the trailer.  The way we will do this is by either adding a fast background music that will make the film appear to be going at a faster pace.  We may also have scenes that are cut very short and change regularly.  If we use this then the film will appear to be fast paced.

Question 8 is relevant to us because we need to know if we should attempt to add special effects to our film.  A common convention of Hollywood films is to have spectacular special effects where as a independent film does not have as many special effects.  We found that an independent film is more popular choice then a hollywood film.  This therefore means we may not include that many special effects and we may attempt to make it more indie which is a convention of independent films.  Question  9 is very relevant top our film as we have decided to create a website for our film.  The research we got from this question shows a 50/50 split.  This is not ideal however even if only 50% of people who view the trailer visit the website then it is still a success and worth creating.

Most of the responses we received from this question showed the same thing.  The major thing that viewers want to be shown is based around the date of release and the cast.  The directors, editors etc is not as important as many people worried if this is not included.  With regards to the images shown the main response was aren't that they wanted to know a bit about the film and what the story entails but they also do not want too much to be given away as they want to be kept on edge.  This is better for us because if we execute a cliff hanger correctly then this may lead to more people wanting to see the finished film if we were to actually create it