Here is our final film of Tracing Steps.

Our Commentary

Here is our tracing steps running commentary. We have gone through the film and

recorded ourselves speaking about it on garage band.

Coming to an end...

basically our coursework is coming to an end and hopefully our hard work will pay off.
we have only a few things yet to do and here is a quick list...

- upload of our final film (it is finished now!)
- an upload of our final poster
- an evaluation on how all the products work together and how effective they are
- an quick evaluation of the evaluation (if you understand that, I have been evaluating it as i go along so i will just sum everything up)
- an upload of the commentry me and my partner did in the last lesson, this will be put up tommorrow and will all be included in my evaluation.
- anything else i can think of! but its pretty much all been covered!

Our final magazine cover

We called our magazine 'Reel', we were really happy about this title as it
is a play on words, 'Reel' - to do with a film reel in the movies but also links with the
word 'Real' - like real life actors, films and events which are all included in a film magazine.
We made only some minor changes to the last blog, for example a bar code is
now added, this makes it look more realistic and conventional of a magazine cover.
We are overall really happy with it. The whole colour scheme of blue, green and white
gives it a sophisticated but also 'fun' feel to the magazine and also attract both male and
female readers.
The pretty close-up is conventional with any magazine but we used this one as it looked better
with the colours and was also inspiration from variety of magazines that we looked at.

We used a conventional layout and added in extras such as audience pleasures to make
it overall more appealing 'free movie poster inside', but also look like a real magazine. The consistent font gives it an in-house style and the tag-line underneath the title is also conventional 'The groovy movie film magazine' makes it flow and is entertaining. However, we feel simplicity is the way to go, we felt this was more conventional of film magazines compared to other magazines. The cover is not packed full of information whereas a glamour magazine would be. Maybe this is because there is a lot of competition between music and glamour magazines whereas people by film magazines to read about the latest block busters.

One last thing we thought was a good idea to do was have the movie 'Tracing steps' in a different and larger font to make it stand out, after all its the main film in the magazine issue. We choose this font because it is similar to the one in our trailer therefore gives the trailer, magazine and soon-to-be poster a in house style and an overall link.

We choose this shot...

We decided on this one, and its looking good so far! a couple of tweaks and its finished!

Our Magazine, which one?

It is a choice between these two shots. They can both be conventional but we need to decide on one that would fit the overall style of the magazine better. We have been looking at black and white film magazines which we like very much therefore we are leaning towards this one. The other one is bright and fun-looking. Imogen looks relaxed and proffessional.

We took so many and it was hard to pick just aa few to edit and work with, it has come down to these two...

All of the different types of film magazines

We wanted to make a list of all the different film magazines out there, and we found one! You dont have to read it all because it is long! but having research and planning is always good. We have looked carefully at a lot of these magazines and took ideas for ourself. This information has been taken off a website and used for our research and planning.

Boxoffice
Box office results, top ten, movie reviews.

Bright Lights
One of the best film magazines online that examines classic, commercial, and independent films from a wide range of vantage points from the aesthetic to the political.

Cineaste
Selected articles from the magazine on the art and politics of the cinema.

Close Up
Online UK film magazine. Find reviews, features and interviews for new cinema and dvd releases, articles on independent, low-budget and regional filmmaking, more.

eFilmCritic.com
Australian movie magazine offering film reviews by visitors to the site.

Empire
Features news, reviews, top movies, upcoming releases, box office results (UK), forum, and more.

Errata
Presents collection of essays, reviews, commentary, and discussion about cinema.

Eye For Film
UK site with movie reviews, news, critique and festival coverage.

Film Comment
Quality magazine providing articles on films old and new, foreign and domestic, narrative and documentary.

Film Journal
Movie reviews, news, and interviews for Hollywood, indie, and foreign films.

Film Threat
Covers cult films, underground shorts, alternative films and independent features.

Filmink Magazine
Provides film news and gossip, movie reviews, video and DVD releases, Australian and international film industry information.

Filmmaker Magazine
Presents an insider's perspective on the world of independent filmmaking, including: interviews, case studies, financing and distribution information, festival reports, technical and production updates, and more.

Films in Review
Online version of the oldest film magazine in the US. Find reviews, interviews and feature articles.

Future Movies
British movie review guide features profiles of new movies, cinema releases and latest DVD reviews.

Guardian Unlimited Film
Film news and reviews from the Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Hollywood Reporter
Newspaper providing movie reviews, box office info, entertainment and celebrity news, more.

iF Magazine
US magazine on indie filmmaking.

Images Journal
Quality reviews and analytical articles on old and recent movies, and popular culture.

Inside Film
Provides news and information on the world's film festivals.

Kamera
Intelligent UK magazine that mainly concentrates on arthouse and independent films.

MovieJuice
Hollywood's movie satire site.

movieScope
Magazine explores the various aspects of filmmaking from the perspective of the filmmakers themselves.

MovieMaker
Guide to independent film and filmmaking from around the world.

Premiere
Features Hollywood movie news, reviews and previews, celebrity interviews and inside stories.

Preview
International magazine packed with information on the latest big screen movies.

Rotten Tomatoes
Reviews and previews of Hollywood movies and videos from the nation's critics.

Screen
Online edition of the bollywood weekly magazine offering Indian movie news and interviews with stars.

Screendaily
Daily film industry news from around the globe, reviews from the world's leading festivals and box office comment from every major territory.

Senses of Cinema
Online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema.

Sight and Sound
Well-known magazine from the British Film Institute. Features top ten movies, the best film music, in-depth interviews, retrospective articles and news.

Strictly Film School
Online journal offering a collection of short essays featuring the respective filmmaker's notable films.

Uncut
Popular UK music and film magazine. Features hundreds of music and movie reviews, interviews and news.

Todays lesson, snap snap!

Today in this media lesson, I took some LOTS pictures of the gorgeous Imogen, who plays
Summer in 'Tracing Steps', this was for our magazine cover.
Even though our poster is still in the process we thought we would use this time to get ahead of the game and take some snaps.
Her hair and make-up looked very girly which is what we wanted to portray.
Again, we used a veryyy high quality camera so our pictures have a professional feel to them!
I have analysed magazines and we know what genre to we want to have, therefore I took initiative and gave ideas in the certain poses she did, to make it look how we wanted it too.
They turned out lovely and I am looking forward to constructing our magazine cover.
The problem now is choosing the picture we want!

Poster Mock-ups

Here are some mock ups of our advertising poster. The pictures show our initial ideas on what we want our outcome to look like. The character of Summer is clearly oblivious to Charlotte's behaviour, as you can see in the pictures she isn't even phased by her watching her closely, she doesn't even know she is their. Their body language is very different, Summer looks relaxed and happy, the first picture it looks like she is casually waiting for someone and the second picture she is texting, both showing she is a popular girl. Charlotte on the other hand looks tense and up-tight, her face is intensely watching Summer. Its very clear to see what is happening in the poster, especially combined with the slogan 'when obsession takes over...how do you control it?'.

We wanted a poster that raises questions amongst the audience but also not too confusing as they won't find this appealing.

The pictures have been edited and the font and layout changed to show differences. The first picture would probably be the best costume wise as Charlotte is wearing grey clothes and this represents her dark character. However, the pictures overall look too bright and this doesn't really fit in with the 'Psychological Thriller' theme.

Changing for the audience

Here are some editing changes we made due to our audience feedback.

We are starting to feel really happy with it.

Magazine Textual Analysis, Conventions and Our Inspiration

This is how we want our outcome to be like. The film

magazine promotes the film in a simple yet stylish way.

We have chosen a magazine front cover as one of our subsidiary tasks which will be one of the ways we promote our film, as well as a poster to go with the trailer.
I have been researching film magazines and posters and I will be doing a textual analysis.
I have chosen some magazines here that are similar to what I want my outcome to be like.
For example, most of the magazine covers in this blog are actresses in interviews speaking about
their most recent roles and promoting their work, which is what we will be doing too.

As you can see from the Johnny Deep magazine that film magazines don't have to be glamorous and they often are not. The actor is commonly in role or character dressed as the character they are playing, this helps advertise the film and will ultimately increase sales. We could do this and have Charlotte on the cover looking sinister but we might want to save these sort of shots for the actual poster itself.

Also, one of the most important things is what genre it is. Because of our target audience in our trailer, we have to think carefully what we want our magazine to look like. We reckon the ages of our target audience is around 15-40. It is quite a large age range but we thought that the type of film can appeal to teenagers and adults too. We think this because it is a combination of a lot of different genres and has a wide range of themes in it (love, obsession, jealousy, blood and a bit of gore, hatred and more) - it touches on a lot of themes therefore has something for everyone.
However, we have come to the conclusions both male and female teens would watch it but as the age range gets older, we believe it is more female dominant. Males would still be interested however in reading film magazines, therefore it will have to appeal to both genders and a wide variety of ages.

Our protagonists are both females therefore will be promoting the film and one will be on the magazine cover.
The conventions of magazine covers are fairly straight forward and easy to point out if you are use to analysing texts (something which i am very familiar with!)

A magazine has to be eye-catching and appealing to specific audiences. For example, if the magazine is of a music genre, a popular band would appeal to a large audience therefore increase sales. Here, famous actresses and actors are on the cover such as Drew Barrymore, Johnny Deep in Sweeney Tod, Beyonce, are on the front cover, these are all very popular celebrities therefore people will want to read the magazines.

A magazine (This is any type) would tend to have...
The main title (Masthead), A tag line, a main picture usually a attractive male or female which are famous in some way, sometimes smaller pictures showing what else is included, contain the date/bar code and issue number, cover line, often free things are given away for audience pleasure, teasers, plugs such as PLUS! and interviews. Film magazines are usually set out in a clear way, with informtion either side of the picture and along the bottom. It is usually not too detailed and fonts are only changed to make words stand out, we hope to take these ideas and use them ourself!



We could make our magazine simpler for effect like the one above (Beyonce) this is more common to a film magazine rather than a music or glamour magazine. We really like the simple effect the magazine has. Especially the contrast between black and white image and a bold colour, we may use this in ours!
You can see from the magazine they all have a particular In-house style and this would be consistent with every issue, giving the magazine its individual look.

Evaluation: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback, we can see that overall the trailer is a success. We have little bits to add, and it turns out the audience were quick to comment on these! But after reassurance of what we are going to do (such as music for the montage) they were happy and able to see what the final outcome would be. We purposely didn't want to finish the WHOLE trailer before the audience saw it, this was because what if they had something really important and helpful to say? We wanted to be able to change it to suite them! After all, it is the audience that will make a film a success.

Here is what the first person in our feedback thought we did well...
* Music at the beginning
* The voice over works particularly well and is good at telling the story in a different way.
* All the scenes in the darkness at the end of the trailer makes it have a creepy feel to the end of it and is a good way of creating suspense!
Here is what the first person thought we could improve on...
* Having a quicker paste montage
* Having a shot to show Charlotte looking at Summer and her boyfriend Sam, which
clearly demonstrates her jealousy and envy of Summer and that she is attracted to him.
* Having a shorter scene of Summer crying, this is to make sure you aren't giving away too much
and thinking its too long.
* Some clips being a bit shorter in length, some are a bit lengthy and unconventional of a trailer.

Here is what the second person in our feedback thought we did well...
* The montage, she says it is really effective and will be even more effective with the music over the top of it.
* The overall storyline is effective and appeals to her.
* She feels that a lot of people would want to watch it and enjoy it.

Here is what the second person thought we could improve on...
* By adding more transitions in it, such as titles like 'Who produced it', 'Who stars in it'
and 'Who directed it'
She says this will help make it more conventional.
* Adding music to the shots in the montage, she says it doesn't fit when its just being quiet and will defiantly would need some dramatic music.

Evaluation: Audience Rough Cut Feedback

Here is our audience feedback. We have asked two worthy

volunteers to watch our film and give information on what they liked

about it and what could be improved. They gave some excellent ideas

which we are sure to take on board. We will go away and watch our film through carefully, then we will try to edit some of it to please our audience. We took one older women and one younger teenager to get a contrast on the different things that they like, it gives a good indication of the differences in our target audience (ranging from teens to mid-aged adults)

History Of Music In Thriller Films

PSYCHO...

1960

Orchestral!

The famous music from Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, Psycho, has been voted the scariest movie theme tune by viewers! and was composed by Bernard Herrmann.

The music was only made up of strings!

Unusual for a thriller at the time, it used ONLY the string section of the orchestra. The violin music is described as 'screeching' and is heard during the famous shower scene (which originally was meant to be silent) is one of the famous moments in film score history.

THE EXORCIST...

Synthesiser

1973

Originally, Schifrin had written 6 minutes of music for the initial film trailer but audiences were reportedly too scared by its combination of sights and sounds.

Warner Bros. executives told Friedkin to instruct Schifrin to tone it down with softer music, but Friedkin did not relay the message.

The music in the Exorcist compared to Psycho, is more concerned with technology based musical editing rather than pure orchestral sounds.

HALLOWEEN...1978

One major reason for the success of Halloween is the moody musical score, particularly the main theme. Lacking a symphonic soundtrack, the film's score consists of a piano melody played, composed by director John Carpenter. Critic James Berardinelli calls the score "relatively simple and unsophisticated", but admits that "Halloween's music is one of its strongest assets".

The theme music for Halloween has been posted on a previous blog, it shows that simplicity is sometimes the most effective way to create suspense. Only consisting of a few chords, the soundtrack is overall really effective and the simple piano instrumental piece over the top works extremely well.

Friday 13th -1980
The music from Friday 13th was composed by Harry Manfredini and at first the decision from the director was that the music would only to be played alongside with the killer so it would not "manipulate the audience" into thinking the killer was there when they were not. A quote from Manfredini - "There's a scene where one of the girls […] is setting up the archery area of the film. One of the guys shoots an arrow into the target and just misses her. It's a huge scare, but if you notice, there's no music. That was a choice.". He also decided that when something was going to happen, the music would then cut off so that the audience wouldn't expect it, and relax so the scare would be so much more frightening and effective when it did happen. Manfredini was inspired by the film Jawswhere, as the shark is not seen for most of the film and the music appears when it is present.

Silence of the Lambs - 1991
Some of the songs in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) are:
"American Girl" written by Tom Petty
"Alone" written by C. Newman and G. Lewis
"Sunny Day" written by T. Ottaviano
"Real Men" written by B. Licher, M. Erskine, J. Long
"Goldberg Variations" written by Johann Sebastian Bach
"Goodbye Horses" written by W. Garvey
"Hip Priest" written by M.E. Smith, M. Riley, S. Hanley, C. Scanlon, P. Hanley
"Lanmò Nan Zile A" written by Les Freres Parent

Unlike many thriller films such as the other ones we have researched the music about, there is not a constant composer throughout the film. Instead, there are tracks that are freaky or suggest a mood at the time of the music.

Halloween (Original) Theme Music

Regions And DVDs once produced

All DVDs have a specific region and are allocated to where the film is published and released...

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Reserved for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc...
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.

This was put into our blogs to show our knowledge of distribution :)
As we will publish ours in England, and if we were to sell it, sell it in England, it will be a region 2 DVD.

Our Scenes

What a masterpeice! This is a collage of ALL the shots in our trailer to really show, broken down what it is like! You can see by looking at this the wide variety of camera shots that we used and different locations to really mix it up to make it look like a real film!