1. Task 9: Reflection on Research
I think when looking into trailers and how they are presented and how they are produced, it has
heavily influenced me in a certain way where I would try not to make the same mistakes as the ones
who did make them. But also take into account why trailers were successful and also try to use that
in my trailer, like techniques such as diverse camera angles, camera shots and different types of
editing. I have learnt from my research into film trailers that making It too long can become tedious,
too short and it becomes boring, this is to be taken into account when making a trailer and I have
taken this on board and used found the right time for mine. I have also learnt that music is very
important and dialogue is not always needed. This has impacted my trailer because I don’t use any
dialogue because I think it is more effective for me personally to not have that included.
With the film posters I think that the poster to be effective has to be either simple or filled with
messages to the viewer. For me I prefer the look of simplistic posters as they give little away but at
the same time give so much to the viewer to think about and take in. I have learnt from my research
on film posters that it is important to make sure that colours are something that the viewer can
clearly define for the poster, it may be bright colours like in the Robocop poster I looked at or black
and dull colours like in the superman poster I looked at, in my production of the poster I went for
the dark colours and the Superman poster has influenced me and impacted my production because
my trailer has a dark story. I also learnt that the tag line is not always something that has to be
there, in Robocop there is a tag line ‘Crime has a new enemy’ which makes the poster look exciting
and the film is made to look the same and give excitement to the viewer. In the super man poster
there is no tagline and this may be because the producer thought that he didn’t need to include it
for his own reasons. In my poster I decided to include on as it made the poster look fuller and gives
the poster a supporting comment about the movie.
For my research on magazine covers, I was very interested in looking for images that had the main
actor/protagonist looking away from the audience or reader. I like the effect or emotion it can
invoke and the different messages that each individual can interpret from it. In my research I looked
at Total FIlm who use this technique a lot in their magazine covers, I looked at Man of Steel, Twilight
and The Amazing Spider-Man. I chose these three titles because I wanted to make sure that I used
similar titles from previous research that was used in posters and film trailers, although I didn't
research about Twilight in my other research tasks, the magazine cover was interesting because of
the effects that were used to capture thematics I then moved onto Empire magazine where I looked
at The Hobbit, Skyfall and Thor. I looked for magazine covers that had the central image showing the
main character looking away to see how the different ways of them doing it can give off different
messages and how I would implement that into my own product. The whole idea of the character
looking away is important to me because I feel as though it is something that I would like to
experiment with in my own production and to implement into my own product. I have learn also
that layout of the magazine cover is very important in terms of what message you want to give out
about the production being shown, for example, the James Bond front cover is shown to be very
simple because it doesn't need a lot of things on the magazine cover to hype something that is
already going to have excitement around it based purely from its franchise name but the Man of
Steel magazine cover is seen to have a lot of information about the film on it because it needs a kick
start to get the anticipation going and for my own product it is important for me to effectively use
my research to look into how I want to give off messages to the reader.