Textual analysis.

Having done my major plans for my trailer I thought that it would be a good idea to start on my magazine front cover. Before starting on the production of my front cover I thought it would be best to do a textual analysis of two different types of magazine front covers. The first front cover is a conventional cover which involves all of the conventional aspects such as: tag lines, custom logo to fit the theme of the front cover, house styles, previews of the content of the magazine, descriptive words such as ' amazing', 'ultimate', 'exclusive' and 'first look', the large image of an iconic character and even the barcode location.

As this front cover looks amazing and has all of the eye grabbing aspects that you would expect to see on a front cover. however I prefer the idea of a simple but affective front cover similar to the one you can see here, with Marlon Brando on the front cover, as this is not a conventional front cover I am apprehensive about creating one for my media coursework as I do not want to risk getting a bad mark.

As you can see from this cover it has limited any conventional aspects to a point. They still have the iconic image and the tag line on the cover but thats it. Seeing the image you can see that there has been a lot of thought and planning that has gone into the photo. The lighting has been done to highlight the wrinkles on his face and darken his eyes to give a powerful facial expression. Also the image has been taken in black and white which i believe shows class and gives the cover a classic feel.

The magazine title is the second point of focus in this cover as your eyes are completely focused onto Marlon Brando.

I believe that doing this textual analysis has given me a good understanding on some typical magazine covers and I now have some great ideas that I can use for my magazine.

Storyboard.

Having completed my storyboard I have decided to upload it to my blog. As you can see from the storyboard my trailer will begin in a dusty car park where my father who is the drug dealer will drive into the car park at high speed this will be shot from multiple angles to give a range of different effects. Following this the drug dealer will pull up in front of my car. This will be representing the drug dealer and the cast in my car as the drug addicts. After this shot I am going to have a shot of the drug dealers foot stepping out of the car onto the dusty car park.

Then we will see a shot of the drug addicts inside of the car, this will be as an over the shoulder shot from the point of view of the drug dealer. This will show the drug dealer as being mysterious as we will not be showing his face in the trailer. Following this shot I will have the drug dealer speeding out of the car park and this will signify the end of this part of the trailer. I want to be able to get the audiences adrenaline pumping, so i may take some shots of the rev counts and the speedometer as well. This will give the effect of speed and danger.

Following this shot we will see a shot of some empty cells in a prison, in my previous posts you will see how i plan to gain entry to the prison. Showing blank cells will give an enigma code in the trailer making the audience wanting to know why we are n a prison and what is going on. After this shot we will see an aeroplane taking off from a runway, this will be possible as my father fly's planes and has arranged a date for me to go and film him on the runway. This again links in with the enigma code and makes the audience think about why is there an aeroplane taking off. This will be followed by the same style of shot as before with the drug dealer stepping out of and aeroplane this time instead of a car.

Finally we will have some text on the screen with the words 'What you don't know wont hurt you', then we will cut to the final shot again over the shoulder of the drug dealer in a stand off with the drug addicts from the start of the trailer. In this shot there will be some rubbish scattered on the floor. I need to think about the mise-en-scene carefully in this trailer as i need everything to be perfect as if I have something that isn't needed in a scene it could ruin the film. For example if we had a school signpost in the background of the drug dealing shot this would ruin the shot as it would be unrealistic that a drug dealer would use this location.

I am excited about my idea and am looking forward to starting my trailer, please excuse the awful drawing on my storyboard as you can see this is why i did not take art as an A level.

Progress.

Having emailed the prison that i plan to film in to try and gain aces. I have emailed the admissions officer and i have had a reply telling me that they will get back to me when they have cleared it with security. I am very excited about this possible idea and will be filming as soon as I get clearance.

Empire magazine front cover analysis.

As you can see this is not a conventional magazine cover. There is nothing about what is inside of the magazine, for example 'top 10 movies of all time'. The cover doesn't even feature a barcode. Although it is not conventional and does not follow the 'rules' of magazine front covers, it does stand out and makes you think ' wow'.

Personally I would love to create a front cover like this one with minimal text, that emphasises the iconic figure. But I believe that doing this cover for my coursework would not allow me to gain the highest marks possible. This cover does not show that I understand the conventions of magazine front covers. Also it does not show that I am aware of how magazines advertise their front covers to get their potential audiences to read the magazine. For example, Having 'World Exclusive' written in bold writing, in an experimental font and a large image draws the audiences attention.

So rather than risk getting a poor grade for doing something simple but affective I have chosen to go down the conventional route with a cover that will hopefully look as good as this.



As you can see it has all of the conventional aspects that a magazine should have and i believe that with some time and effort I will be able to create a cover that looks as good if not better than this.

Ideas...

After speaking to some people and thinking of some ideas myself, I have found a studio that I can use at Cranfield Univercity. I will not be able to shoot all of my movie in this studio as i want to be able to shoot some of the opening shots in a dusy car park, also i would like to use the airport and the runway to shoot some planes taking off and landing. Finally I plan to use a prision that I can gain acess to and do some filming of empty cell. This will depend on if I gain permission into the prision.

I have done a story board to follow this and it will be uploaded soon.