Audience Feedback on Storyboard and Mock-ups

Storyboard of Film Trailer

Mock-up of Film Magazine Front Cover

The idea behind our film magazine front cover was set in our minds from early on after researching existing products. "Total Film" and "Empire" are the main film magazines sold in stores, and both follow a very similar set of conventions and guidelines in regards to layout and style that have proved to be very successful, so we decided to take inspiration from them. Upon research, however, we also discovered that not many horror films are given the front cover of a film magazine, so in order to adhere to codes and conventions and still complete the task given, we decided that in order to create a realistic magazine front cover featuring a horror movie, we would have to create a special edition issue for Halloween that would be dedicated to horror films. Upon that decision, the design laid itself out with the stereotypical pumpkin for Halloween and the classic cartoon 'sludge' font for our banner; "Halloween Special".

Mock-up for magazine front cover:

Mock-up of Film Poster

The first mock-up that we created for "Darkness Within" was to feature our antagonists hand holding an image of her and her family when they were all younger with the deceased's faces scratched out whilst standing in a hospital ward. After creating this, we discussed the practicality of our design as well as how it adhered to codes and conventions and deduced that whilst the design would be aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't exactly fit the codes and conventions of our sub-genre, and so we went back to the drawing board.

First mock-up of film poster:

Our second attempt at our film poster proved to be much more successful. After examining existing products and identifying the commonalities, we each had a much better idea of what our poster should look like. We then combined each of our ideas for this product together to create an entirely new poster that is seen below. We decided to use the conventional medium shot instead of a close up, and wanted to show the two sides to this character by using a mirror. This came from the old myth that if a vampire walks past a mirror, he has no reflection. Playing on this, we thought that if a person was possessed, would they see their true self in the mirror, or what everybody else sees? We were also influenced by the gif seen below, and began to play around with the idea of using a mirror as the focal point of our poster.

Gif:

Second and final mock up of film poster: