The making of the Film Magazine Cover (Ancillary Task)

For the past week, I have been working towards making a magazine cover for our film using Photoshop. Paxton and I decided using a unique name for the magazine, so we came up with “review” magazine with the sub heading of “exclusive interviews only with review magazine”. I then made a decision of tweaking the word “REVIEW”. So i removed the V and added a film clapper board instead, as it relates to movies. To make it look more professional i added “EXCLUSIVE” on top off it with the colour of red.



Because our film trailer looks pretty serious, i decided to give a black and white background using the gradient tool in Photoshop. So the black and white colours blend with each other equally.

I then added our films title name at the bottom of the page which is “VIGILANTES” with its original colour and font type. Because its font colour is neon red, I tend using the same red colour for the headings under the topics, as you normally see these days on a film magazine cover, which in my magazine is “Hot News” and Top Tips”. Underneath the two headings i added really cheesy news that would make the reader to the actual article that is directed by a page number printed below the news.



The next thing i added to the magazine cover is the one of the main elements the image. This is what a reader first looks at, as it is big and it sells the film from it. So Jamie and I took some pictures of Baxter and Joshua at a mid range shot using an 8.5 megapixel digital camera at the time of daylight. We wanted such pose that will make the reader understand of the type of genre the film is, so we told josh to point a gun at one of his sides. And we told Baxter to make curious facial expression. So we basically wanted the reader to understand that this is an action based film. We decided not to include Phil because he is a villain and is not really important for the front cover of a film magazine.

Then using Photoshop I carefully cropped both the images out using the pen tool and started playing around the Brightness/Contract tool, after turning the image into black and white. To give a professional look I added some light feather effect around both images using the lasso tool.

















I then still though there is something missing, so then I went over to the internet and started browsing for film magazine covers to see what other elements they all contain. And realised they all have a barcode, issue number/date and an extra headline mainly at the bottom of the page. So then I searched for a barcode from Google images and pasted/adjusted till it fitted on the side of the magazine cover, I added a suitable date of when the magazine was published underneath the magazines title which is “REVIEW” and made up and issue number and placed it next to the barcode.



Now if have closer look at the different types of font style I used on the magazine covers are uniquely different. There is Bolts SF for the headings for each in strong red bold and New Times Roman for the headline in the colour white. I purposely have picked some words from the sentences in bold so it makes the reader focus more onto the word itself more than the actual sentence, for example “DISCOVER HOW TO GET RIPPED LIKE JASON STATHAM”. So the reader will automatically be dragged onto the words “RIPPED and JASON STATHAM” and so are more likely to read the article further on. House style makes the reader/audience recognise the magazine layout and it consistently.



Finally I noticed that most of the film magazines have some kind of Free! Stuff inside such as an internet link where the reader could log on to a site and play interactive games that links to the film. So I decided to add a “FREE VIGILINTES FILM POSTER INSIDE” text in a different layout with a little rotation. I first created a circle using the ellipse tool, with inner colour active, so the inner side of the circle gets filled with the colour which I used red again to give it as consistent and a unique look. I transformed the “FREE” word is in a semi circle layout outside the circle which I created. And inside I added the following text “VIGILIANTES FILM POSTER!”


Lastly I added “COMING THIS SUMMER” with the New Times Roman to tell the audience that this film will be releasing this summer so they can go to the cinema. I have rotated this text diagonally just on the bottom right of the movie’s title name “VIGILANTES” by go to Edit>Free Transform. If you look carefully at the text “COMING THIS SUMMER” is symmetrical to Joshua’s arm. I have done this on purpose so the text does not look odd one out from the other text as this is the only text that has been rotated except the “FREE VIGILINTES FILM POSTER INSIDE” which is mainly targeted for the appropriate audience which is teenagers 13-18 years old.



Here is what the final product looks like: