Thursday 22 May 2014

Poster Review

After doing all of my practising for the poster, DVD Sleeve and DVD Label and finished filming the production I began my poster for it. My first idea for the poster was:
This didn't go as very well planned, although it looked good at first, I got carried away with the lighting on the picture which ruined it but before I actually decided it was ruined I had saved the picture, then we had decided the background was too much so changed that in the final poster.

 
My final poster seen the background change happen, the image of Vera (Maddie) change, the font colour change and the credit block added.
 
The changes to the poster give it a much more effectiveness as the image of Jack never had to change as it shown his character very well. The new image of Maddie works better as it shows her in character more both images giving an affection look and also Maddie's image doesn't take up as much of the poster as it did previously. The background doesn't get as much in your face.
 
 
The DVD sleeve mainly advertised Jack as he is the star factor character of the front cover and is on every clip scene shown on the back cover. It took a lot of development as some images just didn't work. I feel as the sleeve is effective for the film as it shows the character/s and the images doesn't give a lot away about the film.
 

The DVD Label never had much detail in it as I felt like their was too much going on already with the poster and DVD sleeve. To compensate for the lack of image I made sure to keep the DVD have the colour scheme of war/army colours.

To summarise I feel as my Poster, Sleeve and DVD advertised the DVD well enough without giving anything away from the film.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



Tuesday 20 May 2014

Me & My Movies

Me & My Movies
Action

Active vs Passive Spectatorship
Action films tend to have a passive spectatorship because when people watch them they don't think "oh how did they do that" or "That's so fake" they just take in what they are seeing and don't question things such as the White house being blown up or vehicles transforming.

The two films I'm going to be talking about are Never Back Down (2008, starring Sean Faris, Amber Heard and Cam Gigandet) and Pain & Gain (2013, starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie). Both of these films fit into the action genre because they involve a person/group of people facing a challenge, fight scenes and in Pain & Gain there is explosions. 

The spectatorship for both these films is passive although for Pain & Gain some people could view it as active since it is based on a true story so it makes people question if bits of it are actually true or not. Never Back Down on the other hand is fully a passive spectatorship as there is nothing in it too over the top for people to question.

To summarise most Action films are for a passive audience but depending on how deep the story becomes some people could view them as active spectators.

Fandom
Some action films do have fandoms such as Dark Knight but then others such as Never Back Down and Pain & Gain don't have a fandom because there isn't anything very significant about them for people to go fanatic about.

Frameworks of Interpretation
Action films can be interpretated in different ways depending on who the audience is. Teens and Young Adults can get very energetic over action films, but more older mature adults either don't really enjoy action films depending on how cheesy they are or they enjoy them but don't get energetic and hyper over them.

Never Back Down is one of the films that can get people energetic and hyper because it's very high on fighting scenes whereas Pain & Gain tends to just keep you on your toes because you never know what's going to happen next with the trio.

Intertextuality
Action films don't really use intertextuality references unless they are referring to other action films, an example of this could be in The Expendables 2 since the cast are all famous for various different action films, each actor makes a quote from there most popular action films making the intertextual reference to the other film.

Media Literacy
In action films if you're educated with the behind the scenes of films you can't really view them the same because you're always analysing things in them like the effects and how the unique styles of camera work are used.

Social Networking
Action films now always have a Facebook page & Twitter Account to advertise them and give sneak peeks which is a great way of promoting the films because people who want to see little tid bits before the film is released will like the page or follow the account giving the film more promotion.

Conditions of Reception
Action films are the better films to watch in the cinema 3D or 2D because it grasps you more into the action that it would sitting watching it on a much smaller screen at home. Other genres such as romance don't really make a difference but a genre like action makes a big difference from being on the big screen compared to the small screen.

Pre & post-viewing Experience
Action films can be seen much differently from Pre & Post-viewings because watching all of the trailers, sneak peeks & interviews before seeing an Action film can make you think, "Wow this film looks so great and highly action-packed" but then when you watch the full film you realise that all the clips you seen that made it look action-packed were all the action scenes in the film.

Conclusion
To conclude Action genre films are the kind of films where if you want to view them you must WANT to view them because if you're watching them without having the intention of enjoying them you most certainly won't. I enjoy all kinds of Action Films but less preferably Super Hero films because they seem very cheesy.


















Monday 19 May 2014

File Formats

Printing Poster Graphics

Are you a budding film maker? Do you want a poster for your film? In this article I'm going to be teaching you about the different files & formats that you will need to make a poster.

Formats

First lets talk about the 2 different formats you will need and which applications these formats are on. Lets start with Vector Graphics, Vector Graphics are images that use lines, curves, shapes and polygons to create their images. These mean that the image can be expanded and shrunk without losing the image quality.

Vector Graphic Applications

There are a variety of different Vector-based Applications. I will not be talking about all of them but just to name a few, first and maybe the most popular Adobe Illustrator with it's many different tools, Illustrator can be used to make very high detailed graphics:



Formats (cont.)

 If you don't want to spend a lot of money on getting Adobe products there are others such as Inkscape or Xara photo & Graphic Designer & Macromedia Free Hand just to name a few. All of these programs use Vector graphics so can all be used the same way.

The other format is Raster Graphics this means that digital camera photos or photos from the internet which are made of pixels, these are also referred to as bitmaps. Also the larger the image the memory it will take when being saved.

Raster Graphic Applications

The same as Vector Applications there are a variety of Raster-based applications. The first is another adobe program, Photoshop there is a lot of different tools on Photoshop giving you endless options for your images.




















Other options for Raster programs if you don't want Adobe software are; MS Paint, GIMP or Painter. They all do the same as Photoshop but with a lot less tools to work with.

File Extensions




















When it comes to programs such as Photoshop there are a lot of different ways to save files, although you need them all here are some examples of the extensions you will need for creating DVD images:

  • .jpg (JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group) this is used for Digital images from Cameras or the internet.
  • .tiff (Tagged Image File Format) this is used for images that will be desktop published.
  • .png (Portable Network Graphics) this is used for palette-based images.
  • .gif (Graphics Interchange Format) this is used for short animations.
  • .bmp (Bitmap) This is used to save bitmap digital images.
  • .RAW (RAW) This is a camera image that has minimal processed data.
  • .psd (Photoshop Document) This is a saved Photoshop document that keeps all layers separated so it can be opened and edited another time.
  • ai (Adobe Illustrator) This is used to save Illustrator files that can be edited when re-opened and vector files that can be exported from Illustrator to Photoshop.
Metafiles

Finally metafiles, these are a piece of graphical information that is stored in a format that can be exchanged between different software.