I have watched the trailer for the upcoming film, 'War Horse', directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie is about a boy who joins the army during WW1 after his horse, Joey, is sold to the cavalry for the fighting in France. The movie looks very high budget, lot's of special effects are used the set looks very expensive to create. In the trailer, the first scene is the horse running through a live battlefield, dodging explosions and machine gun fire. This gives us a clear view of what the film is about.
The film poster is very simple but also very effective. The main image creates a sense of partnership and friendship.
There is a slogan on the top of the poster which says "Separated by war, Tested by Battle, Bound by friendship". This is a very powerful catchline which anchors the themes portrayed in the film. The colours in the images work very well to create a warm feel, as well as represent the horrific events of the war.


http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/war-horse/trailer

I think that there is a direct link between the film trailer and the Film poster. These are both above the line forms of advertising. The film producers pay a lot of money for these to be produced. Film posters can be displayed in a lot of places, which is why they are so effective. The magazines however, are a bit different. They are below the line advertising. The magazine company needs material to write about, and the Film producers want to advertise. So the two help each other out. The magazines usually write about a film review after the film has been realesed. But sometimes they talk about the film before it is realesed, mostly interviewing the stars in the films, or the directors, at the film premiere. The magazines aren't as effective as the poster and trailr when it comes to advertising, but they are free for the producers.

Mock-up Film Poster

Magazine 4th Draft

This is the 4th draft of the magazine front cover. I have uploaded it to facebook, where my friends can leave me some feedback, which should help improve it and create a finalized piece. 



Martine Toften said: " I would maybe move the photo of the main actor down just a little bit, and also enlarge the date and issue number" 
This is true about the date and issue number, it does seem a bit too small too read, but the main photo is fine the way it is. I wanted it to overlap with the masthead.
Billie Stacy said: I really like the layout, especially how the bottom of the page shows snippets of the film trailer.. Also, I think that the trees in the background set a dark atmosphere, which can relate to many films of this genre"
This is true, the main goal i was trying to achieve with the trees in the background was to create a spooky atmosphere to support the genre of the movie.
Clive said : " You seem to have covered all of the magazine conventions."
Rhys Hall Said: " maybe bring the text above the title down a tad and make each subheading the same colour red/orange? it's really good though. "

Magazine Third Draft

This is my 3rd draft of the magazine front cover. As you can see, this one is much better the others. I used feedback from my teacher in order to improve the layout of the front cover. I used a photo of a film strip at the bottom of the page. Using photoshop i cut out the empty frames and put in screenshots from the film trailer I made with my group.
I used a gradient tool to fade the bottom part of the masthead with the background image. I also changed the colour of the images in the film strip at the bottom to make it look like an actual film strip

Magazine Second Draft

This is my second draft of the film magazine front cover.

First Draft Magazine Front Cover

This is my first draft for my magazine front cover, obviously this isn't yet finished, but this is what it will roughly look like. The front cover will consist of a big photo covering the whole of the page, like most of the film magazines do, and big titles put over the photo.

Feedback for the Trailer

So the trailer is finished, and i have uploaded it to Youtube.com. Now I had to get some feedback form my audience. I thought of different ways of doing this, one of which was to post the Trailer onto my facebook, and asking people for their opinion. This worked very well and i managed to get two, in depth, comments about what the people liked and disliked about the trailer.

The first comment was by Marta, she said, "I like the soundtrack, it keeps a very good tension throughout the trailer and gives the mood. Camera is not very steady which is the biggest minus here. The lighting is good, fog and dark shadows help create the mystery. If you'd actually make that film i'd watch it :) hope this helps!"

The music I added to the trailer really did it's job properly. The idea from the beginning was for the music to add tension and a scary atmosphere to the film, and that is exactly what it did. As for the cinematography, the camera was difficult to keep steady in some shots because they required the camera to be moving or tracking the subject. for example, the first shot we see in the park was supposed to be like a dolly shot, however, due to budget, the group and I could not get hold of a dolly track, so I tried by best to move the camera, but keep it steady at the same time.

The second comment on the feedback was by Greg, he said, "I like the idea alot, your creativity is there but could be improved in pre-production planning with a shooting schedule. Some very nice shots in the trailer though. lip syncing was abit out with the dubbing aswell. Also typeface needs to be changed to suit the genre. pretty good though mate hope that helped :)"

The lip syncing in the trailer is a slight problem, this was due to the fact that my camera did not pick up the sound very well, so I had to add the sound separately in post-production. The sound was recorded using a separate microphone.