Task 11: Film Review Practice 1

To do a draft of the two page spread film review, I worked in Photoshop. I set the canvas at 50cm (width) and 30cm (height) as a rough guideline of the shape the final print product will be. The black line in the middle of the canvas is to indicate the split between the two pages.

I then took a screen grab from the first edit and made it larger so it covered the majority of the second page. After doing research into film reviews in well-known magazines, such as Empire, I found that there was little blank space on either page, with one page almost completely covered in an image or several images.

Finding a font was difficult as it needed to look realistic. I looked at Empire film reviews to compare what fonts are used for the titles. The closest I could find on Photoshop was Ariel Black as, even though it is simple, it is clear and bold. I also noticed that the text that overlaps images blend into the white background as there is a white border around the text. To do this, I simply placed the text over a white rectangle which I created by using the rectangle tool.

I then wanted to add in some sort of rating. To do this, I searched for how Empire do their star ratings and found an image of their single star symbol. I experimented with adding a white border around the four stars, similar to the title, but it didn't work in the same way.

Looking at various reviews, There are different colour schemes and black text is only used for the main body of the review. This makes the review more aesthetically appealing to the reader. I changed the colour scheme to a deep red as darker colours are more commonly used.

After further research, I found that almost all film reviews for new films have 'In Cinemas' in the top corner of the page. I decided to put this in the bottom corner because of the layout I had already made. On our final draft of the review, I will put this in the top left corner.

Another way that reviews in magazines fill up the space on the page is to add shapes and lines. In  Empire reviews, it is common to see thick black lines to fill blank space. This is what I did on this practice and I experimented with the positioning.

I then added another screenshot. For the final product, we may add in an extra image and make them brighter so that they are clearer. However, I think that the darkness of the images goes well with the genre as it is a thriller and the film is dark in places.

I wanted to add something to the article to state when the film will be released and to do this, I created a bold yellow circle with the release year stated. After formatting the writing, I saw that there was a space which needs to be filled. I think it might be a possibility that the star rating could be placed in the circle instead of to the side.

This is a possible layout to how the two page review may look. For the final product, some elements may be moved around, as stated above. Depending on the amount of text in the main body and the size of the text, I may put in extra images, experimenting with cropping and different shapes so that the page is interesting to look at. Another idea that could be on the final product is the use of social media links, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. There will also be a thin border around the content so that it looks more realistic.