Final Destination 5 - Colour Scheme and Photography

The first stage in producing my own Empire-styled production piece for FD5, is to choose my photography, graphics and colour scheme. Empire chose the colour scheme of the Dark Knight Rises article based on the colours within the photography, so I will do the same. 

Though all of my photography will be entirely created by me, I will still base it on that of FD5. 

I first took a look at one of the posters for FD5. 

The main colours I noticed that are present within this poster are REDS, DARK BLUES, and BLACK. 

Red is an aggressive, passionate colour, which attracts attention very quickly, but can also symbolise love. Blue can be calming, but also cold and depressing. Black symbolises power and authority, but also evil and death. The colours chosen in the poster reflects the themes within the film: The film is aggressive and violent, but also has 'love' within it (the main character and his love interest). The characters do have a tendency to feel disheartened and depressed when more and more people are killed off by Death. Death itself has a power and authority over the characters, as they are powerless to stop anything happening to them. Death is seen as something malevolent and evil.

The imagery itself is quite interesting: the bridge gives a hint at what the opening death sequence is, and is positioned in the middle of the poster. Bridges symbolise different things, for example, a crossing between two worlds which could be the human world and the afterlife, in the case of this film. Bridges over water symbolise emotions and getting over difficult decisions, which definitely relates to the characters in the film. 

The stormy sky could symbolise many things: firstly, it symbolises an omen of bad things to come. Storms are natural disasters: therefore symbolising greater powers than normal humans possess. 

The blurred text is interesting: It almost looks like shadows, which creates an ominous feeling, or it looks like smeared blood which relates back to the gore element of the film. Blurred things often create a sense of confusion, which does relate back to the characters, as they are confused about the situation they're in. The text itself is in a serif font, which promotes formality and tradition. The traditional element may relate to the superstitious nature of some of the characters, or the fact that Death is humanised, which dates back to mythology and folklore. The end of the number 5 has been edited to look a lot more pointed at the end. The number 5 in usual serif font is quite rounded. One reason for changing it, could be to make it look like the pointed blade of a knife, or the Grim Reaper's Scythe. 

The Grim Reaper, or Death, is commonly depicted carrying a scythe to 'reap' souls. This edit to the number 5 could be seen as a nod to this depiction of Death, or it could just be seen as a way of making the number 5 look more menacing. 

This second poster boasts a colour scheme identical to the first one, which in term contains all the same symbolism. However, this poster is different to the first one: there's no bridge image, but there is a skull with what looks like iron poles/rods obliterating and destroying it. This could possibly be a link back to the way that the characters are destroyed in different ways. The skull is shown here to be very fragile; it's cracked, splintered and is surrounded by debris that could be from the skull or from the explosion around it. This could also be related to how humans life is very fragile, and how easy it is to fall victim to a fatal accident that we are not in control of. The human skull is used to signify the Grim Reaper/Death, or to again signify the mortality of the characters in the film. 

The tagline "Death has never been closer" is typical of those of the FD5 posters. The idea of 'closeness' could mean either that the characters have even less time to live, or that Death is a personified entity, and is close behind the characters, following them. The number 5 in this poster is definitely meant to look like a knife or a scythe: it's metallic and the 'blade' is covered in red blood: linking back to the gore genre of the film. 

To decide on the right photography to use, I'm also going to have to think about the focus of my interview. 

My interview is not really about certain individual characters, like the Dark Knight Rises film, but it is about the themes explored within the film, and about the way in which the 5th film is a nod to the first film. Therefore, my photography will be general and relating back to the themes. 

My photography will include a skull/skulls, which seems to be a main feature of the images presented in the final destination posters. 

I would also like to create photography that relates back to the first film. I really liked the idea of the half skull, half face portrait on one of the Final Destination, so I was considering doing something similar with the fractured/broken skull idea. 

As for the photography within the article, I'm going to do something similar to the Dark Knight Rises and the Pirates articles. I am going to create 'behind the scenes' styled images for my interview, because Empire is read by audiences who are really interested in film, so therefore would want to see behind-the-scenes action which can give away more information about the way that the film was made.

I will be using three different people for the roles within my photography: an adult male (the lead character), an adult female (love interest of the lead character) and another adult male (the director of the film). My photography will include slightly gory images, and also photographs of the director talking to the actors.

Film stills like these would work really well within my article: they display enough action and enough gore to intrigue the audience without disgusting them. 

A photo of some of the actors from FD5  on set. These behind the scenes photos give the audience a little taster of what it was like to film the movie. 

These behind-the-scenes shots are from different films but still convey the right kind of look I want. There needs to be a distinct focus on the director, as the interview is with him. 

Behind the scenes of the Swedish adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Behind the scenes of the American adaptation of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I think that the style of these shots are very interesting: dark, moody, and with a kind of blue-ish tone which reflects the movie.

With my own shots, I want to really reflect the tone of the movie, stylistically and in subject too.

Deconstruction of Empire's Colour Schemes

To analyse the colours Empire uses in its articles, I compiled a large image of all the photos and the different texts and graphics together, so that it would be easy to see an overall 'theme' of colour.

The colours chosen seem to be BROWNS, TANS, DARK BLUES, BLACKS and WHITES. The photos used are all of these colours too: the images have a brownish, almost sepia-like tone to them which is complimented by the colours scheme chosen. The brown/tan/dark blue/black colour combination is also the colour of the character Bane's costume: as we can see here, there are more photos of Bane than there are of Batman, which tells us that Bane is the main focus of the article, as Empire is trying to introduce this new character. The colour scheme reflects Bane's character, which is a subtle way of indicating to the audience what the main focus of the article is. 

Analysis of Empire - Typography

To get a much more 'authentic' look to my production piece, I first began with one of the most important aspects of any publication: The typography. The particular style that the magazine adopts can tell a lot about what kind of publication it is: Serif fonts indicate traditionality and a more formal tone, whereas bold, sans serif fonts indicate informality and modernism.

I first studied the Empire masthead: bright red font, quite thick, sans serif. However, it has interesting little touches to it that aren't like normal fonts: some parts are rounded, and some parts are pointed, with some parts with diagonal ends.

Secondly, I studied the rest of the typography on the front cover. I took one word near the top, 'Exclusive' and used that as a basis for my font search.

I first looked through Word to find similar fonts: searching for thick, sans serif typefaces.

Out of all the fonts I found, the only font that was closest was TW Cen MT Condensed.

When the two fonts are compared (I took the letter C and the letter S from both fonts), there are still a few differences.

For one thing, the Empire font seems to 'slant' at the ends, whereas Tw Cen Mt Condensed is straight. However, in terms of the height and thickness of the two fonts, they are very similar.

Overall, I think I would probably use Tw Cen Mt Condensed, as it is the closest font I have found, and bears a lot of resemblance to the typography of Empire magazine. I think that Tw Cen Mt Condensed would work well within my production piece, as it is clear and easy to read, and bears a lot of similarities to Empire's typography. 

Deconstruction of Empire's Graphic Design

Moving on from looking at the typography of Empire, I decided to look at some examples of graphic design and the way pages are laid out.

I looked back over the Dark Knight feature, and studied the way that things were laid out by creating my own simplified version.

In this page layout (the first page of the article) the large photo on the left dominates most of the layout. The header also dominates the layout as it overlaps the large picture and 'cuts into' most of the other components. The small picture to the top right is almost overwhelmed by the text, but manages to stand out because it's dark, whereas the background it light. The content of the article itself is in a 'step like' formation, which helps lead the audience's eyes to the image at the top. Lastly, the small box out on the left of the large image helps to lead the audience from the first page into the second page, as it is the same font style/colour and background to the article itself. 

The graphical elements on the pages of Empire are usually very simple, and will be in block colours to match the theme colours of the page. In the Dark Knight interview, the graphical elements were strange triangular 'shards' that cut through the elements of the page (for example, quotes, photos, text, etc) This graphic design is meant to replicate the violence of the character Bane, as the graphical 'shards' seem to 'cut' and 'disturb' the elements of the page. This is a really powerful way of making pages stand out, and is very effective for setting the right tone for the interview. 

Some of the elements of the page (for example, in this image, a quote) seems to work with the graphics. The 'shard' shape here seems to 'underline' the quote, which gives it more emphasis. The 'shard' is a much darker colour than the quote, so really stands out against the pale background. 

Here, the graphical 'shard' works to frame the box out of the page. Again, this brings more emphasis to the text, and also is a small detail that improves the look of the page. Empire's graphics range from being very in-your-face to small and hardly noticeable, yet still important. All the graphical elements are carefully chosen to emphasis the text on the pages, and overall makes the pages exciting to look at, so therefore would engage the audience to read. If the pages contained no bold graphical statements, the audience would not pay as much attention. Before the audience even reads the text, they are first inspired by the visual graphics and photos. This is important for my own production piece, as I have to make sure that first my graphics and my photos are engaging and eye catching enough. 

Twitchfilm.com Real Steel Interview

To compare to the FD5 Twitchfilm.com interview, I also deconstructed a more recent interview with the director of the film Real Steel. This interview was written by the same person, Charles Webb, so I am expecting to find a lot of similarities between the two interviews.

The interview on Twitchfilm.com

From studying both interviews, I can see that the conventions of interviews from Twitchfilm.com are as follows:

• The title will first include "INTERVIEW:" and then the rest of the title will include the name of the film, name of the interviewee, and other key words that will relate to the audience that the writer is trying to attract.
• The writer of the interview speaks very casually of the directors: ie, "met for a chat" "I spoke with", makes the writer and directors sound like they're personally acquainted, so the audience will feel like they're getting 'insider infomation'
• The writer speaks in a first person pronoun - this makes the interview much more casual, and means that the audience can relate better - and almost feels as though they were there. 
• The questions are short, and multiple questions are asked that are related to each other. It keeps the reader interested, and makes questions interesting because the interviewee has lots of things to talk about. 
• Twitchfilm uses exciting images to grab attention back in case the audience gets a little disinterested and starts to skim the text.
• The questions will entice certain types of audience: eg: sci fi fans. If a film is a hybrid, the questions will alternate between each genre. 
• Twitchfilm assumes a active audience: they know that there are serious film fans that understand media and film making properly, so some questions are catered towards them and technical elements for example character development and design, etc. 
• The directors name drop into the interview things like successful films and successful film makers/producers to entice fans of those films/directors. 

Twitchfilm.com FD5 Interview Deconstruction

I decided to research further into interview/journalism techniques, to further my own interview. Because the feature article I will create will be mainly with the Final Destination 5 director Steven Quale, I looked at an interview from Twitch (twitchfilm.com) written by Charles Webb. 

In particular, I studied the conventions, the areas covered in the interview, and the use of language. Since I had already deconstructed so much graphical content, it was time to focus on the content of the interview itself. 

The Interview on Twitchfilm.com

Analysis of Empire Magazine - Feature Article

I also deconstructed another feature article from Empire Magazine, to check out more conventions. In this deconstruction, I studied the level of formality, ratio of fact/opinion, areas of content, and the writer's voice. There is a focus on language in this deconstruction, because in the Dark Knight Rises one, I focused on graphic design and language generally. 

View Page 1 larger

View Page 2 larger

View Page 3 larger

View Page 4 larger

View Page 5 larger

The language of the interview is informal: the journalist makes jokes about the director and uses a lot of language for humerous effect. 

The ratio of fact/opinion is something like 70% fact and 30% opinion. There are lots of facts and figures relating to the film, for example, how many puppets there are, how many hours it takes to do an animation, etc. There is a little bit of opinion where the journalist describes one film as 'magnificent' and another as 'lukewarm'. The opinion is sprinkled around the article, and is not really relied upon. 

There are also lots of little box-outs where the facts and figures are, which are placed in the middle of the images to create a really interesting visual and factual guide to the film for the audience.