Ancillary Task- Magazine Cover

One of my ancillary tasks was to create a film magazine front cover. I decided i would make a cover in the style of total film magazine, they often have one large character on the cover with everything else placed around it. My initial idea was to feature a large zombie on the cover with titles and information placed around it. I started off by dressing up a person to look like a zombie for a photo shoot, I put fake blood all around his mouth and down his t shirt to make it look like he had just bitten somebody, and gave him a t shirt with rips in to help show the zombie effect.

 Once the photos had been taken they were ready to be edited using photoshop elements. Firstly i cropped the background so it was just the zombie figure and then used some filters to make the colours a bit more standout. I then used the blur tool around the eyes to make it look like they were glowing and help make them really standout. Next i used a filter to make the red of the blood stay in colour whereas the rest of it turn to black and white, this really made the blood standout. Finally I created the background, i decided for it to be plain black as this would contrast well with the white of the zombie but have a glowing white cirlce behind the zombie just to give extra emphasis on it being there and help it standout. It would then be ready to be made look like a magazine, so i started off by putting in the title of the magazine.

Once the main Total Film title was cropped and in place it was time to do all the smaller headings and sub headings. I used the Arial font for these headings, the larger titles where in red to go with the blood on the page whilst the any other text was in white, so it could be read over the black background. Finally all the smaller details needed to be put in place to help the realism, so i put in barcode, a price, an issue number and a date.

 Overall I think it looks good and definitly looks like a real film cover. The use of the contrasting black and white and the bright red definitly makes the cover stand out and would get noticed from a glance if it was on a shelf.