Monday 12 December 2011

Magazine & Poster Research

Colours:
In particular I found that colours used in posters/magazines indicate what gender they are aimed at. For instance pink is typically known as a very femanine colour and this will aim the piece of media towards a more female market - this would be true for males if the main colour were blue. Colour also indicated the theme of the media form. If the poster was about a horror film for example the colours were more often than not kept very dark and in contrast they were lighter if the film were a comedy for instance. The colours used also had particular meaning, if the magazine article were about love or marriage red was often a main colour theme throughout, which is a shade particularly associated with romance.

Text:
The font varied according to which gender the magazine/poster was aimed at. For males it tended to be very plain and standard where as for females it was often slightly more flowy and letters were more pronounced.The size of text was also important as it indicated certain words/phrases which were important. For example the title of a film, its date of release and the names  of world famous actors were often in bigger text on a poster in order to attract people's attention.

Language:
For magazines/posters aimed at a younger audience vocabularly, sentence structure and punctuation were kept minimal and very simple. For those who are middle class citizens the tone was more structured with complex sentences yet still without any hugely long complicated words, in order to cater to the everyday average person. For those of a higher status language was more formal with substantially longer characters.

Content:
The content for the posters was kept minimal, only the key information was included, this being because people only tend to glance at a poster and prefer not to have lots of text. For magazines however they contained more text content, although mainstream ones less so than higher status ones.

Images:
Posters were mostly filled up with images in order to attract the eye. If it was a poster advertising a film sometimes popular actors/actresses were used which would hopefully intregue the audience into coming and watching. Magazines contained images too, depending on what the topic was related to. Magazines considered to be for a higher educated audience tended to have less or smaller images than those for a mainstream audience which were bigger and often overlapped a double spread.

Positioning:
For posters the images tended to be in the middle of the paper as the focus. For magazines the images were small and put to one side for high status ones, whereas for a mainstream audience the pictures were situated in the middle and there was usually more than one and of a poorer quality.

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Props

Similarly to the issue of costumes,  as my Short Film is a Documentary I am not going to be using any props. Any objects which are captured in my Documentary will already be visible, I won't deliberately place them there. This is because Documentaries are true to real life, if I was to use props and put them in certain places this wouldn't be truly representing a real life situation as the props don't fit with the natural setting. The only objects which could be considered props which I am are photos of my Nan when she was younger, in order to document how the clothes we wear have changed throughout generations/time.

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Costumes

Definition:
A style of dress, including garments, accessories, and hairstyles, typical of a certain country, period or profession.

As I am doing a Documentary short film, I am not going to choose costumes for my characters. Documentaries are incredibly realistic and represent real life. As they're non-fictional I am allowing my interviewees to wear what they wish. I want the audience to grasp a true concept of what my characters are like and an individuals appearance strongly reflects what they're like as a person, so in order to gather an idea of what my characters are really like, I want them to wear want they want to. Especially as two of my characters I am interviewing when they're at work, seeing them in their uniforms and work etire I think would be really good. I want my documentary to be as realistic as possible and me choosing what my characters wore would be false and not truely reflect the characters properly.

Saturday 3 December 2011

Filming #3

Today I did some filming at a clinic called 'Skin.' Below is all the footage I filmed UNEDITED. Once I have interviewed all my characters I will then edit my Documentary all together.

Here is another video of me talking about how I felt the filming went today;

Thursday 1 December 2011

Magazine Review Research

Definition:
A magazine is a publication which contains a combination of articles, photographs and advertisements that is published every week/month and anual subscribtions are often available. Reviews are commonly seen in magazines however are also published in other media forms. A review is when an individual considers something in order to make changes to it, given an opinion on it or to study it. Reviews can be made about a variety of different things from films to the latest albums. They're usually given ratings from the reviewer out of 5.

Audience:
Most commonly those who read film reviews have a profound interest in films. They enjoy going to see the latest ones out therefore read about the reviews in order to chose which ones they will best enjoy. Primarily, these people tend to be higher status. They deliberately go out to seek information on their topic of intersest (film). The audience for reviews also depends on what sort of magazine/newspaper the review is in. If it is in a magazine that is specifically designed to cater for film enthusiasts

Facts:
UK magazine industry is worth 2.8bn - 49% market share
Over 3,200 consumer magazines are published in the UK
Nearly 9/10 UK adults read magazines every year
Nearly 1.4bn consumer magazines are sold in the UK each year
Advertisers spend nearly £800m per year with consumer magazines

Among some of the most popular magazines include: Supermarket magazines such as, Tesco Magazine, Asda Magazine and Sainsbury's Mag. Magazines which in form the public of the most recent television programmes/radio shows such as, What's On TV, TV Choice and Radio Times. Plus general gossip magazines such as, OK!, Hello!, Chat and Heat.

This is because all the magazines above cater to a wide market. Whether male or female and regarldess of age a massive proportion of the population will do their weekly food shop in one of the leading supermarket, Tesco, Asda or Sainburys. Bar the minority, almost everyone watches/listens to TV or radio and majorit of our culture love to the latest gossip about celebrities. Magazines specifically written about reviews are not within this leading market therefore their sales are not so high.

Examples:
Daniel Radcliffe, Empire Magazine
One example of a magazine that looks at film reviews and that has been successful is Empire Magazine. It is a British publication, originally issued in July 1989, with a copy being produced per calander month. It's the best film magazine selling in Britain, outselling its nearest market rival, Total Film by over two-to-one. The magazine has some regular features such as film news, previews and reviews, however it also has some unique features for its readers. Each issue has a Top 10 Feature List which chooses the top ten examples of something film related, i.e. Top 10 Best Chase Scenes.Reades are encouraged to write in and state whether they agree/disagree with the choices that have been made. It is these regular features combined with something unique and different for its audience which play a big part in making the magazine have such a high revenue today.