Introduction:
This ancillary task is where, in our production teams, we design a magazine review for our film that is original to our film and once again, more or less every photo must be taken by us unless we need a photo of a desert for example. We need to use QuarkXpress to construct our magazine page so that we can demonstrate a use of a variety of software within the production process of the ancillary tasks. We have roughly 3 weeks to complete our draft magazine review page, this including the time for training with the new software, before we present our draft to the class for peer and teacher assessment which will then result in any improvements that need doing.
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| The criteria that we are aiming to achieve in our magazine film review. |
Magazine Film Review Research:
Okay, so the first thing my group and I had to do was research magazine film reviews and find out what exactly they involved and what elements were on them that made them, well, film reviews. In order to do this and help deepen our understanding we had to create deconstructions of real life film magazine reviews - preferably ones that matched our film in some particular way - and explain the elements of a magazine review within them.
There are quite a few magazine page elements that we had to learn so that we could involve some - or all if possible - into our own creation:
- Headline = this give the reader the very first clue as to what the film is about and what the pages contents could be about. It's main purpose to attract the reader's attention.
- Subheading = the subheadings are common elements on a magazine page due to their role of drawing in and building up a reader's interest because they contribute more information about the pages content.
- Drop Cap = These are large letters that start off the beginning paragraph and add to the graphical furniture/text elements of the magazine review because they help to create better eye flow on the page
- Pull Quotes = These are simply pieces of text that are set aside from the body to emphasise a part of the main text and draw attention.
- Sidebars = The sidebar accompanies the longer article and often include opinions, resources for further information about the film or a true life applicable story which goes with the magazine article. Sometimes even an experts viewpoint is put into the sidebar - depending on what the article is about.
- Gutter = these are the spaces between columns and if the magazine review is a double page spread, then the gutter also refers to the space joined between the pages.
- Image Margin = this refers to the space that is around the image on the review that prevents the text from butting up against the image.
- Caption = the caption is the text near an image which helps the reader to understand the connection between the image and the piece.
- Photo/image Credit = these are often small pieces of text that are located on or just offset from the image that are used to give credit to the creator of the image that has been put on the film review or to discuss the cast member's performance in the image etc.
There are quite a few magazine page elements that we had to learn so that we could involve some - or all if possible - into our own creation:
- Headline = this give the reader the very first clue as to what the film is about and what the pages contents could be about. It's main purpose to attract the reader's attention.
- Subheading = the subheadings are common elements on a magazine page due to their role of drawing in and building up a reader's interest because they contribute more information about the pages content.
- Drop Cap = These are large letters that start off the beginning paragraph and add to the graphical furniture/text elements of the magazine review because they help to create better eye flow on the page
- Pull Quotes = These are simply pieces of text that are set aside from the body to emphasise a part of the main text and draw attention.
- Sidebars = The sidebar accompanies the longer article and often include opinions, resources for further information about the film or a true life applicable story which goes with the magazine article. Sometimes even an experts viewpoint is put into the sidebar - depending on what the article is about.
- Gutter = these are the spaces between columns and if the magazine review is a double page spread, then the gutter also refers to the space joined between the pages.
- Image Margin = this refers to the space that is around the image on the review that prevents the text from butting up against the image.
- Caption = the caption is the text near an image which helps the reader to understand the connection between the image and the piece.
- Photo/image Credit = these are often small pieces of text that are located on or just offset from the image that are used to give credit to the creator of the image that has been put on the film review or to discuss the cast member's performance in the image etc.
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| A second deconstruction |
QuarkXpress Software Training:
Before we commenced with any actual construction of our film's magazine review, we needed to train with the software, QuarkXpress, we would be using as to get a brief understanding of how to use it - it would be pointless using the software with no training. To get the training we used videos on various websites and the websites created by the teacher, Mr Hood, as well as having practise sessions on the software to try out any aspect that we want to use.
This video was the main one that my group used to learn the basics of QuarkXpress. It explained very well how we could access the look we wanted, however anything that wasn't covered we simply researched quickly or asked advice from our fellow class mates.
So, overall it is pretty basic and now where near the standard that is expected of us for our final film magazine review, however this is simply just the first time we have ever used QuarkXpress and it isn't that easy to use at first, so this training was incredibly needed so that we had the basic skills in the bag. Now it's time to build upon these skills and extend them out into more advanced skills so that we can add in furniture and taglines and so much more.
Construction of our practise training magazine review :
After we had watched some videos on using QuarkXpress we began to do a practise magazine review. We chose to do a magazine review that would go with the practise film poster that we did (see ancillary task 1) and so we followed the video above but applied little changes so that we could experiment and get to grips with the software in a way that we could best learn it.
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| Adding the running head and the image |
So the first stage of the magazine review practise was to create the border for the whole thing to fit inside which allows it to be all aligned and look professional. Once this was done we chose the best suited image to use that would represent both the film and its genre - the lovely beach scene is typical of a romance film and could signify a honeymoon or some special day/event. The running head was also added as this is conventional to many magazine film reviews.
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| Adding the body text and final touches |
Once the image was out of the way it was time to set about doing the columns for the body text, which was filled with a lot of Lorem Ipsum as we didn't have time or the need to write out a full review - it was just to learn how you added text in the first place. We also had a look at the different fonts available and played around with the positioning of the title etc. A pull quote was later added onto this magazine review.
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| Our finished practise magazine review |
Lorem Ipsum:
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| Lorem Ipsum is basically a scrambled mass of text that replaces meaningful content that would be distracting with simple placeholding text that allows the viewers to only focus on the graphical aspects on the review = e.g: typography, font and page layout. |
Flat Plan of our Magazine Review:
So now we have researched the basics about magazine film reviews and the conventions of them - this including what elements are included to construct a distant one, we had a go at creating a flat plan. The flat plan is a rough idea of how we will design our actual magazine review and allows us to decide whether the particular layout will work or if something needs to be altered. A flat plan is a quick and easy way to put your ideas on paper rather than spending hours doing it properly on the software and then finding something doesn't work quite so well. Below is my groups rough idea of how we want our magazine film review to look like, with everything simply labelled and not too wordy. Next up will be the construction of our draft magazine review.
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| This was done in QuarkXpress |
Construction Evidence of our Draft Magazine Review:
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| Creating the border/outline for our review. |
The first thing that we needed to do was create our review's border. This will set the boundary for where are images and text can go and provide us with a perfect working space that looks professional and neat, We created the simple border by using the box tool in QuarkXpress to draw around the page, leaving about 1cm between the edge and the border. This would be where any page numbers, folio and bypass would go.
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| Adding image and film title. |
Following the border, we then added in our chosen image that has been taken from our film and put it in the conventional place - which is at the top of the page. We made sure that the image was accurately placed and touching each edge of the border (except the bottom line) so that it looked tidy and professional looking, we didn't want it to look sloppy. Once the image was set and agreed upon, we then added in a backdrop on which the title of the film will be placed so that it stands out against the image. This backdrop was a transparent box with a red tint while the film title was set to white and put in the 'impact' font style so that it really stood out and looked bold against the image and the rest of the review's text.
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| Using Lorem Ipsum within our film review. |
Okay so now all of that easy stuff is out of the way, it's onto the fancy footwork = adding in the body text of the review. This was a pain to do because every time you made an alteration to the text EVERYTHING moved, however we pulled through and created 4 columns of Lorem Ipsum (which I have briefly discussed previously on this page). Within this we chose a pull quote and placed it within the body text so that it would draw in the audience and make them want to read it. To do this we decided to follow conventions and make the pull quote considerably larger than the body text and a different colour (sticking to the house style of the magazine). Once this is done we will be moving onto adding in star-rating and summary.
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| Adding the star-ratings and summary of the film. |
As you can probably tell from the screen shot above, the first thing that we altered was the columns; changing them from 4 to 3 columns. Once we did that it was time to add in some furniture (this being the dividing lines that separated the body text from the summary section) to break up the large amounts of text and to corner off the more important parts of the review (this being the summary, verdict and over-all rating) which the readers will find the most useful as to whether to watch our film or not. We also changed the Lorem Ipsum into proper text - allowing us to test out what we wanted to be written in our review and if it would all fit and look correct.
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| Adding the final touches before we finish. |
Now it's time for the finishing touches. These were the 'In Cinemas' running head in the top left of the magazine review which was on all of the magazine reviews we looked at from the Empire magazine and seemed to be a common convention throughout many magazines, only they had different running heads at the top of their reviews in different house styles. Furthermore in this screenshot we added in a small bullet point - the plug-in - over the top of the image to describe either what was happening in the shot or describing something about the actress in the image; for example her performance as Alice in our film.
And that's it, our draft is complete:
FINISHED DRAFT:
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| Our finished draft magazine review |
Peer Assessment Feedback and Evaluation:
Plus construction evidence of the improvements:
Exactly the same as for our film poster, my group and I presented our draft magazine review to the class and received the feedback. In truth the feedback was mostly negative points which came with improvements however we hope to turn this around for our final deadline. Overall I found the feedback quite helpful and have allowed us to stop and look at our magazine review and decide exactly what needs to happen to get this review in tip-top condition. Once we had recorded the improvements, and any positive points, our peers then gave our magazine review a level and a mark: these are presented just below.
Level 3
Marks: 7-8
Positives:
There were little positives, in truth, about our magazine review however we have taken this as a chance to make our review even better instead of crying in a corner. On the other hand we did have a few minor positives which I thought I would still put on because, after all, it's still feedback.
- The magazine house style worked well with our film.The house style for our magazine review was mainly black and red with white, which matches our film poster and goes along with the genre of our film - which is thriller and intense drama. In certain areas the colours clashed and needed to be altered but more on that below.
- The page number and the URL was okay. The positioning of our folio at the bottom of our page was good and nothing bad was said about these. They followed the usual conventions of a magazine film review which was exactly what we wanted.
Improvements:
Here come the improvements. In my opinion all of these improvements are very good, valid points that in all fairness we should have noticed ourselves, but that's the beauty of peer assessment.
- Add in 4 columns. As you know from the construction evidence posts above, we had originally started with 4 columns of writing but then changed this two three to preserve room and stop words from hyphenating all over the place because we thought this looked untidy BUT we broke the conventional rules of most magazine reviews and looking at it, it really does look like an immense amount of text in the big blocky columns we have currently, so this will be addressed immediately and hopefully have positive results.
This screenshot shows the improvement from the three columned draft and our final magazine review with the four columns. It looks much more professional and conventional.
This screenshot shows the improvement from the three columned draft and our final magazine review with the four columns. It looks much more professional and conventional.
- Detail/Plot of movie/Review must be at the start of the text. We put the summary of the film at the end of our film review which didn't exactly look well an as it is normally the part that many readers are interested in, having it shoved at the bottom of the page doesn't quite catch their eye and doesn't sit well with magazine conventions.
- Change the image - too blurry. The image was a big let down for our film review because it is the image that has one of the biggest impacts on the reader and draws their attention. Ours did nothing for our film and was neither here nor there with what was happening. It was too blurry and out of focus with the glass and Alice, the audience didn't know where to look etc. It needed changing to something with a bit more bite and that will make the reader want to read more to find out about the film because the image has started making them have questions.
We hunted through our film to try and find a suitable image that represented our film, intrigued the audience but didn't reveal EVERYTHING about it. This didn't leave many options because trying to find a decent still was hard because everything ended up blurry but we managed to find the one of Alice lying at the bottom of the stairs. This fit our magazine review perfectly, however we did have to flip the image as to match it around the 'Behind Closed Doors' title.
We hunted through our film to try and find a suitable image that represented our film, intrigued the audience but didn't reveal EVERYTHING about it. This didn't leave many options because trying to find a decent still was hard because everything ended up blurry but we managed to find the one of Alice lying at the bottom of the stairs. This fit our magazine review perfectly, however we did have to flip the image as to match it around the 'Behind Closed Doors' title.
- Spelling + punctuation must be corrected. No good magazine film review can have grammatical errors, punctuation errors and spelling errors within it. It's a big off putter and can make the review look unprofessional. This improvement needed to be act upon quickly and this meant the body text had to be read through thoroughly to check that everything was in the correct place and spelt perfectly.
- Pull quote moved to within the text and changed. The pull quote needed moving to within the centre of the three (soon to be four) columns to really attract the reader with its big bold words that have been plucked from the body text. We decided that our pull quote wasn't spicy enough and didn't seem to do anything for our film so we have decided to change it to something else instead.
As you can see from the screen shot above, we completely changed the pull quote. We felt that 'Chilling' made it sound like our film was in the horror or supernatural genres and 'Spectacularly Tense' doesn't sound right, so we decided to change it completely and base it off the cast members performances. We felt this was a better pull quote for our film because we have often had and heard many compliments about the two actresses' acting skills in our film.
As you can see from the screen shot above, we completely changed the pull quote. We felt that 'Chilling' made it sound like our film was in the horror or supernatural genres and 'Spectacularly Tense' doesn't sound right, so we decided to change it completely and base it off the cast members performances. We felt this was a better pull quote for our film because we have often had and heard many compliments about the two actresses' acting skills in our film.
- Plug-in on the image changed. What we had put really wasn't the best thing for a magazine review to put; mainly because it was negative and not necessarily helpful to what we wanted to do, which is draw our audience in. Furthermore it had many spelling mistakes within it - some of which were incredibly silly but hilarious mistakes.
- The pink/red writing on the black background is too hard to read - colour must be altered?? In my opinion and those of my peers, the red on black writing for the plug-in and running head was hard to read and so we think it is better for the colours to be changed either around or to a completely new colour like white on a black background to make it clearer and crisper instead of blurry.
As you can see from the screenshot above, we changed the plug-in as requested. We started by changing the colours from black and red to a clear background and white font which allows it to be much easily read. Furthermore we completely changed what the plug-in said, focusing more on the actress herself and her performance instead.
- Add in a sub-heading beneath the film title? In many film magazine reviews, there is a sub-heading beneath the film title and on our draft we never had one so it was thought that applying one would be a good idea because it further draws in the audience with a quick catchy phrase etc.
As you can see, there is no sub-heading beneath the draft version. We decided our sub-heading would be "No stairs were harmed in the making of the film" because it was a funny phrase that links in with how our female protagonist dies in our film - for which took many, many shot takes to get right during the filming process.
As you can see from the screenshot above, we changed the plug-in as requested. We started by changing the colours from black and red to a clear background and white font which allows it to be much easily read. Furthermore we completely changed what the plug-in said, focusing more on the actress herself and her performance instead.
- Add in a sub-heading beneath the film title? In many film magazine reviews, there is a sub-heading beneath the film title and on our draft we never had one so it was thought that applying one would be a good idea because it further draws in the audience with a quick catchy phrase etc.
As you can see, there is no sub-heading beneath the draft version. We decided our sub-heading would be "No stairs were harmed in the making of the film" because it was a funny phrase that links in with how our female protagonist dies in our film - for which took many, many shot takes to get right during the filming process.
Deconstructions of our Final Magazine Review:
Our Final Magazine Film Review:
As you can tell from looking at our draft review and our final - we have altered a whole bunch of stuff that was recommended to us to try and make it way more professional and appropriate looking. It's pretty much a whole new magazine review.
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| Our improved and final magazine review |
