Melissa Moon's Media Blog: October 2011

I have created two photoshoot plans in which show how I am going to position my models when I am doing the print products. I thought that these plans would work very well in what I am trying to do and I have explained my choices on the plans themselves. However, I am planning on the female model always being on the left hand side because it is then in the eyeline of the audience and this is effective because the genre is mainly aimed at females and it is more likely that they will be able to relate to this character the most.

This is the plan for my magazine and it shows that the key lighting will be coming from behind the characters themselves and I want to do this so that it will resemble professional texts I have looked at and it will be different, more original. I am planning on using a white background so that the focus is mainly on the image and nothing other than this, and will attract the correct audience straight away. I am planning on doing this shot within the studio and I think it would be more effective in terms of lighting and the comfort of the characters because it is less out in the open and the pose will be less pressured. I am planning on having a close-up shot of the characters going into a kiss to clearly connote the feelings and the genres themes, unlike the poster I am planning on doing.

This is the print plans for my poster and I am planning on having the female still on the left with the male on the right, but this time I want the characters to be back to back and holding hands secretly whilst the male looks over his shoulder and the female looks on. I wanted to do this to once again show the drama and complications instead of just the romance. I am planning on using two key lights one from the left and one from the right so that there are no shadows and it looks more professional and this time it will be a full body shot with the camera being directly opposite the actors.

From doing a lot of research on romantic comedies I have found that on posters and magazines for the genre I am looking at they use large, bold texts that are quite simplistic and clear to read. From this I have taken into consideration using a plain bold text to make it more professional. However, some romantic comedies often use writing in which has a curled effect but it is still clear to read. Yet more of the researched texts use bold texts, that are a mixture of two colours - often either blue and pink, or red and black. I've gone with the idea of using a bold, clear text rather than a curly text. I used www.dafont.com to find the free fonts to download and use for my print products. For the title of the film I will use the same font to show continuity between all of my products to make it recognisable and professional. I looked at the following titles and credits of film posters that fit in with my genre:

The Notebook:

The notebook is more of a romance but I quite liked the text and thought it may work for my print work, but I am unsure about this because most romantic comedies use just plain bold text so it stands out. I am going to try find a font from www.dafont.com to see whether it would go well with the flat plans I had made, but I think I am going to try replicate something like 'the ugly truth' because it is bold, clear and eye catching.

Bride Wars:

I liked how this was set out because it uses a mixture of two colours and fonts which I thought was quite clever and interesting. I was thinking of using two colours but not two separate fonts because in the film 'bride wars' they use two texts to show 'bride' being a happy time so it is swirly- as if it was a wedding invite, whereas 'wars' is in bold, and red to show the danger and the bad half of the narrative. This is why I may use something similar to show 'two worlds' in either more colour, or bolder so that it shows the separation between the two main characters coming together when they 'collide'. The credits are quite close together but not too crammed, and use a more subtle text to show that they aren't as important to the film.

It's a boy girl thing:

I thought that this was quite good because it was well suited to the narrative because it is bold and clear which is an advantage, but the 'boy girl' part of the title shows the words 'boy' in pink and the 'girl' in blue which shows the two gender stereotype colours have been swapped around, which clearly shows it is a body-swapping movie and the girl becomes the boy and vice versa. The credits once again are a similar colour to the others I have looked at so this shows that it is a continually used feature used in romantic comedies.

The ugly truth:

This font was one of my favourite texts because it is simple but the main word 'ugly' stands out. I think it does this because it is not a stereotypical word to use to show a romantic comedy but it would catch the eye of the audience. I am planning on doing something similar to this and putting 'two worlds' in bold to show that this is the main complication in the movie. Once again the credits are like the others I had looked at but it includes the release date in bold, with a website in red underneath these credits, I thought these credits stood out more than the others so I am planning on doing this as well because I feel it is more effective.

Title:

VTKS News Label:

I chose this because at first I thought that it was a good text, but after I had looked at it again I decided it doesn't replicate my genre at all and it's not as clear as I wanted. I think that this wouldn't go well because it is too curled around the edges, and it doesn't have the effect in which I am looking for.

Bright Young Things:

I did like this text because it did stand out but like the first one it doesn't have the right effect, and doesn't replicate my genre in the way in which professional texts have done previously. I have then continued to look for texts in which aren't too plain but are also easy to read.

Nouvelle Vague:

Roadway:

Credits:
I had also looked at the credits of the posters above to see what kind of text I needed to use for these and they are often just plain and bold but quite narrow at the same time.

I am planning on using the two following texts:

Babas Neue:

I had chose this because it is a typical credit font as the writing is quite narrow and bold like the other texts I have researched, I am planning on using the text as a different colour so that it is like professional texts of the same genre I am replicating. However, I will have to have the font a bit smaller so that it isn't withdrawing the attention from the title of the film but I don't see this as an issue. I think I will use this as the release date and the website information underneath in a different and brighter colour, like that of 'the ugly truth' poster.

Ultra Condensed San Serif:

I think that this text is very well suited because it is not too bold and wouldn't draw attention away from the more important features on the movie poster. I am planning on using this as a grey text like professional texts I had looked at as I think this would be more appealing and realistic. I also think this would go well with my flat-plans because I am planning on a lighter background like that of Ugly Truth as it was my main poster inspiration. I also think this would be appropriate for the credits as it is quite easy to read and quite narrow and it is not too similar to that of the other texts I have used so it wouldn't just all blend in and look boring.

Names :

Roadway:

Captions:
I had looked through many texts and I had found that the captions on both posters and in trailers often use curly, or bold text to represent the romantic comedy genre. However, I am planning on using one of the two texts below because I think these would be more professional and well suited to the title also which I think is important because I don't want them to contrast. I think I am going to use the 'Romance fatal serif' then either 'scrypticali' or 'Colwell'

Colwell:

Scrypticali:

Romance Fatal Serif:

These are the texts I have chosen for the masthead of my magazine. I had looked at other magazines to see which fonts they use. However, there aren't many romantic comedy magazines so I have looked at mainstream magazines to see the features in which they have that I can replicate. Due to them being mainstream this means that they are not genre specific. I have looked at the following:

Total Film:

Total Film is one of the magazines in which I did research on when doing both primary and secondary research. It has been found that most people in which read this magazine are males and I feel with a few changes this could interest both males and females. I have looked at dafont.com to see if there are any fonts in which are similar to this that I can use. I had taken my masthead inspiration from this but I am intending on using more colour as this shows a more spooky atmosphere. The sell lines show multiple uses of bold texts in which I am going to replicate in my products as well as using the mixture of two colours.

Empire:

Empire magazine is similar to that of Total Film and I think that this masthead is more effective as it is bold and clear to read, with it being a bold colour it would also catch the readers eye before other magazines like entertainment would. From this I have taken that I am going to use colour red for my masthead to connote the passion within the romantic comedy, but I will use a lighter background compared to that of empire. Similarily this magazine uses bold sell lines with a mixture of three colours and I am intending on doing this as using a three colour palette, and using bold sell lines as it is one of the main features of a magazine.

Entertainment:

This magazine is less popular than the other two I have looked at but it has a similar masthead as there is a word inside the masthead, like that of total film and my own magazine masthead. This is bold and it shows colour so I think this is effective as it stand off the page, and I am planning on using a similar blue background to this. There aren't many sell lines on this magazine but once again they are of a bold text which I am planning on using and I may use the fewer sell lines as this is how I have made my plat plans, as I have a similar image.

From this research I have found that the font in which I need to take should be bold, and have some colour in them but I will probably end up changing the colours during the production process. I have looked at the following texts for the masthead:
Super Retro:

At first I did like this text, but after trying to use this on my magazine the font had made it look too childish and rounded out. I didn’t really think it suited my genre and what I was trying to do on the magazine, in terms of trying to make it stand out and fit well with the other texts I was using. Also I only wanted to use a maximum of three texts so it was not too busy and if I was to use this I think it would have looked largely unprofessional and it wasn’t well suited to the magazine, or my ideas.

Evil Dead:

This is the text I had ended up using for my masthead in the end because I felt it had stood out more to me than all of the others, and as soon as putting it on my magazine it just fit well on the page and was exactly what I wanted it to resemble. This text had made my magazine look more professional, however it is not what you would expect a romantic comedy magazine to look like but I thought if it was to use curly stereotypical it wouldn’t get a wider audience so I followed the same approach I had previously researched and kept it plain and use the image to clearly connote the genre, whilst also attracting a wider range of people to be my potential audience.

The texts in which I am using for the sell lines will be the same as that I have used for my poster because it will show some continuity between my products.

For my logos I have looked at making it so it represents the company and I have designed a similar logo that uses a few fonts like that on dafont.com. I wanted to do this so that it represents more than one genre that could appeal to many different people. It shows more the distribution and company of the production rather than the genre so it could in a way confuse people, so I am planning on making more than one logo so that the confusion would soon disappear of what genre the film is replicating. The fonts I have looked at are:

Logo One: I created logo one so it represents the company, rather than the actual film because I feel this might make my products more professional.

For this I chose Skyline because it shows the city buildings clearly and often the big businesses are within the city and I thought that this would then interest people further. I am planning on using this as my first logo and this is so it clearly connotes the production as well as just the genre logos.

Logo two and three: These two logos are going to represent the film genre rather than the company so I chose Romance Fatal Serif and Colwell once again for mainly the same reasons as before. I chose to use quite curly texts for these two to show the genre clearly so people automatically know what they should expect within the film; however I do also want to show the comedy side of the genre so I am going to animate one of these in order to show the comedy. I think that both of the texts I chose is clear and therefore would be well suited to its purpose in representing the genre and production and I thought this would be very professional in the trailer.