1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?
Magazine Review and Poster

2. We decided to challenge the use of using a close up of an eye as we wanted to show
our protagonist’s face as she is a little girl who looks evil and we believe this will attract
our audience more as it is more disturbing and frightening to think of, we thought that
if we only used the image of our protagonists eye it may not be enough to portray the
themes and horror that will be within our film. However we did conform to the use of
editing the eyes on our protagonist to make them look more diluted and unnatural.
We challenged the use of a house within our poster as the use of a house was not within
our theme and did not make sense in relation to our narrative, we thought the use of a
black background would be more effective as we could use it to make the protagonists face
blend into it to show the disorder in her personality and let the audience get an insight into
the themes within our film.
Poster

3. We conformed to codes and conventions
of posters in terms of colour. We used
black to symbolise death, loss of hope,
fear, darkness. The white symbolises
innocence, purity or sometimes mystery,
ghosts and the unknown however we
challenged the use of blood as we didn’t
want our poster to look as if it had loads
of violence and gore in it due to the
connotations of the colour red being
associated with blood, and we wanted it
to focus more on the psychological aspect
of the poster.
.

4. We conformed to the use of lighting as
they lighting we used was a mixture of low
key lighting to allow shadows to be formed
on the protagonists face as there is a sharp
contrast between light and deep dark
areas. However mostly we conformed to
the use of profile lighting which occurs in
most psychological posters when the main
image is of the protagonists face, we did
this so our protagonist is showed in
shadow while the other half of her face is
visible and lit to show the split personality
that the protagonist has between evil (the
shadow) and innocence (the lit area). We
challenged the use of under lighting as we
believed it wouldn’t have as much of an
effective effect as profile lighting would.

5. We have also conformed to the psychological horror posters in
terms of text as the font colour we used was white to stand out
against the black background. We have also conformed to the
use of font usually used in a poster as the font we have used
looks distorted and eroded to represent confusion and distortion
to make our poster look more frightening it. It also reflects the
idea of something normal being destroyed and eroded, just as
the serif font is being. The font is legible, but the destruction of
it is clear, as can be seen above

6. We have conformed to the use of a release date but have used the words ‘coming
soon’ to create intrigue and intrigue and anticipation around the release date.
However the font of the release date is not the same as the title of our film as we did
not want the audiences attention to be steered away from the most important parts of
our poster being the picture and the title.
We have also used institutional information such as in many posters to make our
poster look more professional and give the audience an idea of who is staring in the
film and the directors and editors etc.

7. Magazine Review
Reviews are important both to film-making companies and the film fans
themselves; whilst reviews can often help consumers decide between which
films to see, they are also crucial to film companies to help them promote
their film. People value respected journalist's opinions such as the late Roger
Ebert, and attaining the all-important five stars means that people are far
more likely to go see it. Short film makers on minimal budgets, like us rely
quite heavily on reviews for promotion. This is due to film makers on minimal
budgets cannot stretch to the millions of pounds worth of marketing on a film
such as Universal or Warner Bros’
Therefore, I have designed a film review that is well written and looks
professional. I ensured that it conforms to what a review typically looks like. I
used my style model for the magazine review from The Empire, this is
because it has the largest target audience for people who like watching films,
as it is the biggest selling film magazine in UK, and is also published in many
other countries such as the United States, Australia and Turkey which gives
our magazine review a bigger potential target market.

8. Layout
Overall you can see that I have followed the codes and conventions for a layout from the
Empire magazine review as I created a template for my magazine review. My layout is very
organised and looks professional, I have included one photo, one text box with information,
and four columns of text for the actual review. There is a lot of white space and the house
style colours are black and red which I have also conformed to.

9. I have conformed to the codes and conventions of the title as my magazine review title is
also in big bold capital letters and is under the photograph with a thin white line underneath
it. Also I have made this the largest and boldest text on the review as this is a typical
convention of a film review. Also typically the title is not in bright colours or diverse fonts,
the reviewer wants the page to be simple and easier to read therefore my title has been
written in a plain black font so there is a sense of professionalism, as usually in film reviews
there is no need for flashy colours to entice the audience.
Title

10. Info-Boxes
My text boxes conforms to my style model by using the exact same information from the
red text box such as the- Release date, certificate, director, who it’s starring, the
screenwriter and the running time.
I did the information font in black, capital letters and bold, I also conformed to the font
and colour for the rest of the text after the information from my house model as it is
italic and white. I have also made the release date white and bold such as the one in my
style model. I have also conformed graphologiclly to my style model by using white
dotted lines to separate each section exactly like the on in my style model, the line is
quite thin and small but still very visible.
Plot
The text box below the red text box is in black, it contains the Plot. The text ‘plot’ is
written in the same font as the ‘released, certificate etc.’ however the colour is different
as this time it is red. The text next to it being the plot is the same font and style as the
text above it. We conformed to the style of the font by summarising the narrative of our
film without any spoilers so our audience gets a brief overview of our film. This gives the
audience an idea of what genre the film will be.
Introduction Of Text
I have also even conformed to the small details within our style model as at the
beginning of the review a few words of the review are written in capitals and are bold
and slightly bigger than the rest of the text therefore I have copied this style and included
it in my review.

11. Captions
We have conformed to our style model by using captions as we have wrote a caption on our
photograph used in bold and white font which explains what is happening during the scene
of the film.
Photographs/Pictures
In our review we used a still image from our film which shows we have conformed to the
photograph use in the Empire magazine. This makes the audience aware of the genre and
themes in our film as the photograph we have used is quite creepy and weird. We have also
ensured we conformed to the style model by making our image dominate the page of the
review therefore made it around 1/3 of the size.

12. Journalists name
As you can see the journalists name has been printed on
the end of my review and on the style model, and the text
is in bold capital letters with a red font. Again this shows
how we have conformed to the layout of the Empire
Magazine.
Verdict
Slightly underneath, we also wrote the verdict exactly like
our style model. We used almost the same font, colour and
made our font bold also and the size of the text of the
verdict is bigger than the text on the rest of the review. We
have also conformed to our style model by including a red
line under the verdict.
Star Rating
We have conformed by using
the star rating to make the
audience aware of how
successful the journalist feels
the film is. We have done these
stars quite small and black
exactly like our style model.

13. Again on nearly all the reviews, there is a title saying ‘InCinemas’ on the top left hand
side of the review just above the photograph. I have also conformed to this by doing
exactly the same, using the same colours and two underlines beneath the text such as
my style model.
We have also conformed to the Empire Magazine by using the page number, date
and name of magazine at the bottom.