​MEDIA

Initially we researched into other reviews from cinema magazines before starting our own. We wanted a general idea on the layout of other reviews as well as colours used and the actual text and what the critic had written about the production they were reviewing, this would make it easier for us when creating our own as we could essentially follow their ideas if we encountered any problems.

We looked at articles together before splitting into our groups, Jordan and Joe, and Faye and I. Jordan and Joe were finshing off with the poster at this point so Faye and I started with the content of the article as we hadn't started any.

Our first decision was deciding on the stance we would take on our film, whether it would be a positive stance or a negative. Due to it being our own short film we found it was easier to pick out flaws with it so we decided to slate our film and write a negative review. Afterward, we then made a list of each topic we wanted to discuss, such as costume, location, performance as well as a general overview for the audience to read as this is vital at the beginning of almost all professional film reviews. We soon started writing about each topic and just kept reading through it and making sure each paragraph flowed from one to the next.

Once Jordan and Joe had finished the poster, we all checked over the poster and agreed it was successful and then they began working on the layout of the magazine article. Faye and I then gave them a copy of our review draft and they added it to their designed layout. We then realised we needed to write a lot more than we already had as there was large gaps throughout their design, so we went back and expanded on our opinions in the review as well as trying to make it more entertaining for the reader, we added more elements to write about such as lighting and camerawork.

We then proof read it all multiple times before being satisfied that it was finished, we also sent a copy to our teacher to check through and give us any constructive criticism.

Once we looked at Joe and Jordan's design for the review we weren't pleased with it and thought it could be improved so we took the basic layout and completely revamped the design of the review.

To begin our own design, we had to create the columns for the text which took multiple attempts because they had to all be the same size and also fit the text. There was also problems with what program to use as Jordan and Joe had previously used Publisher for the original design but Faye and I lacked experience with the programme leading us to use Pages on the Macbook. Although we had never used this before either, it was a lot easier and simpler to learn which helped us recreate the design quickly. 

When creating the layout for the magazine review, we kept referring to an Empire cinema magazine which we also used to help us with the design; from this we implimented arrows and other stand-out features into our review to give it that creative touch and helped it look less boring. On the double-page article we looked at, they had a lot of colour which we found appealing so we decided to include 'bubbles' of colour as a background for our article. We played around with the colours and shapes available in Pages and settled with blue circles, although this was largely an accident we thought it looked brilliant and vibrant. We also changed the main picture so it wasn't the same as the one on the poster; we didn't want to use the same one because we wanted to show more of a variety of shots, plus we didn't really think it went well with the other picture because of the colour.

Final touches we implimented into the review were fun facts, to interest the reader more, these were largely featured on film reviews we looked at. We also added page numbers and humorous captions on the pictures. After numerous minor but effective tweeks we completed the film magazine review.