Website Front Page Research

I carried out research into the websites of five current media products when I started the initial planning for my website front page. There has however been a significant period of time between this research and actually designing the page which is the point that I am at now. Due to this I have carried out further research into one new film ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (Samuel Bayer, 2010) which is yet to be released and one film from my original research ‘Saw VI’ (Kevin Greutert, 2009) which has already been released. This is mainly in order to refresh my memory on the codes and conventions of movie websites and thriller film websites in particular. Now I am at the stage of actually planning to design my website front page I also have some more specific ideas about what I need to research.

Since my initial research some of the films whose websites I looked at have now been released and so their website front pages have changed and now focus on the DVD release. As my website front page is for a film which is yet to be released I felt it was essential that my main research focused on the website for a film that was also yet to be released which in this case is ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’.

Textual Analysis

A Nightmare on Elm Street


The main thing I noticed both during this research and my previous research is that nearly all thriller website backgrounds were black. ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ uses a seemingly ‘more is less’ approach with their website. There is a clearly predominantly black background which is used to promote fear. The close-up of the lower part of the antagonist’s face and hand is the only direct visual reference from the film on the page. The colour scheme of this picture is very dark with just a mixture of black and a deep red. This colour scheme is used consistently throughout the website front page with the range of colours being limited to black, red, white and gray. I’d associate this strategy with the act of branding to an extent. In the same way that Cadbury’s just have to put purple in their adverts and everyone knows which company’s product it is advertising by using a set colour scheme throughout the audience will begin to associate the image of the antagonist and the black and red writing with the film.

There is one part of this website’s layout which seems to go against the normal codes and conventions which is that of the title being in the top right portion of the screen and the picture top left. This almost seems to show that the image of the antagonist is, as far as the producers of the film are concerned a more important part of the marketing of the film than the film’s title. Using the rule of thirds the most powerful place on the screen is the top left portion as we are trained to read a page from the top left to bottom right. Due to this most film’s place the film name in the top left section of the film as the name is generally the most important marketing tool.

The title uses the largest font size of any text on the screen emphasising its importance on the page. It is also consistent with the colour scheme of the website as it is red on the black background. By extending the red beyond the letters and spraying it around them it almost gives the effect of blood being splattered. As this is a thriller this was clearly an intentional act used to promote fear and the idea of pain as some of the main features of the film. By revealing this sort of detail about the narrative on the website they are more likely to attract their target audience and thus the website advertising could be deemed effective.

Another important feature to note not just about this website but all websites for films which are yet to be released is that the date is normally next to the title and is always very noticeable. This is a very important part of the marketing as if the public don’t know when the film is coming out this could cost the production company a great deal upon release due to reduced ticket sales.

The average size of a website page is approximately 800 x 600 pixels as this is the size of the average computer screen. Something I have noticed throughout my research however is that film websites are more like 800 x 1000 pixels. This extra space on the bottom of the page is used for the credits and legal blurb. For the actual advertising of the film this is the least important text on the screen which is why according to the rule of thirds it is placed at the bottom, and it is also why it is in the smallest writing, particularly the legal blurb. The font of the credits is a seemingly important feature of movie websites and in fact posters that have the credits. It is very thin writing in grey and includes the main people involved with the production including the actors and also the name of the film. This style is universal across all the film websites and seems to be an accepted convention of the film industry.

Saw IV


With regards to my research on ‘Saw VI’ most of it confirms that of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’. The colour scheme is very dark and the sizing and placing of the text is similar. The main extra details that I picked up from the Saw VI website was the use of links to social networking sites such as ‘Facebook’, ‘MySpace’ and ‘Twitter’ and also ‘YouTube’. This has become a common feature on movie websites recently as they understand the below-the-line marketing power these websites have. By making their own pages on them they get lots of free advertising which can only be a good thing when trying to promote a film.

Magazine Cover - Draft 1

In the advanced production we have to create a viral campaign with four elements consisting of a trailer, radio ad, magazine cover and website front page. As there are a number of projects time management has been key. Near the beginning of the coursework whilst carrying out the research and pre-production for the film in general and the trailer I drew a couple of drafts for the magazine cover.

Draft 1


This first draft was also accompanied by another draft with the models facing away from each other which I re-drafted below on A4 size paper later. This first draft was drawn with the original title for our film on it as by this point we hadn't changed it. I was looking to establish what the characters would be doing on the page as well as the type and placing of text on the page. From my research into Empire there were a few key things I focused on. The first was that the actors are always looking straight at the camera in order to create a gaze between themselves and the potential consumer. Gaze theory is one that is well established in the media industry as they understand that when the audience and character's gaze meets a couple of things happen. Firstly a power relationship is formed between the two and secondly a personal connection is formed. I made sure in my drafts that I stuck to this convention of Empire's and had the characters looking directly at the camera.

As for the text on the page the first and most important piece is the title of the magazine. I drew it in the font Empire always use and placed it top centre as they also do. Using the rule of thirds it is easy to see why the title is top and centre as this is one of the most powerful locations on the page. The title also has the largest font size of any piece of text on the page again in order to make it the most powerful text on the page. For these reasons I made the title in their style and made sure all other text on the page was smaller. The other pieces of text Empire place on their magazine covers advertise some of what is in that issue of the magazine. I spent some time thinking about these and researching films that will be released later this year in order to try and create articles they might actually have on their magazines. I also created one specifically about my film and one about cinema beyond 3-D. I felt it was essential that my articles were as realistic as possible and that they were about issues Empire would actually deal with. Finally to make it look truly authentic I placed the issue date and price in the dip of the 'M' of 'Empire' as is the custom for this magazine and placed the website address just below the last 'E' of 'Empire'.

The final pieces of text were the film title and slogan. As I am trying to promote our film the title was written in the second largest font on the page, only surpassed by that of the title. This is common for Empire who generally advertise a paricular new film on the front of each issue of their magazine and the title is always in the second largest font. Where it was placed on the page was also important as on the line of the bottom third and in the centre is the most common place for Empire to place the title of the film on the cover. The size of the text and this central position usually covering the lower half of the character(s) on the page puts in prime position for the consumer to notice it and take it in. I created the slogan early on as the last piece of dialogue for the trailer. I again stuck with Empire's conventions and placed it just below the title in order to show the connection between the slogan and the film. The title and slogan have been changed since this first draft was created but most other things stayed the same.

Progress report - Production

With all the planning, research and other pre-preduction tasks completed it finally came time for the production of the trailer. During this period my job was to make sure that all parts of the production came together as planned and on schedule as I am the director and screen writer. My time management and planning skills ended up being put to the test early on. To begin with our actress had to reschedule and we ended up only having her for an hour and a half to shoot all her scenes. After shuffling the production time table around abit we managed to get this to work however.

The production stage of the trailer was split over three days. The first part of the production we covered was the dialogue. We used the sound room at college which has all the professional equipment we could have hoped for in order to get a good result.



We took numerous takes of our actress reading the script in order to make sure we had the best chance of getting it right. Some takes for example had distractions such as noises from outside and even the signal from our mobile phones interfering with the quality of the recording. As the script is going to be used in a fairly fragmented manner throughout the trailer we were able to effectively record each line separately so that when it comes to editing we can choose the best version of each line and cut them together.

On the first day of shooting we all met at 3:00pm ready for the planned start at 3:30. I had assigned a certain amount of time for each location as we had to let the college know which parts of the college we were going to be filming in and when. This plan was very helpful in keeping things flowing and turned out to be quite accurate. The early shots took up quite alot of time as we had to get used to the equipment again after a year since last using it. We also had to set the lighting correctly with a lamp in order to get the right ambience for the scene.



Throughout the day we began to get more efficient at setting up the equipment which helped keep things on track. Having detailed storyboards and floor plans of the locations also allowed things to flow smoothly as we new exactly what we were doing when we got to our locations. I used the storyboards throughout the shoot, each time checking that we had filmed what we had planned.



There were a few problems we encountered. The first being the shot in the main college square in which we were tracking around the actors. We did this by using a wheelchair and laying out a rope in a circle in order to keep the camera a constant distance from them.



There were people walking past every now and then which meant we had to wait at times but this wasn't a major problem.

We had scheduled certain particular scenes for later on in the day as we needed these to be shot in the dark.



One of the rooms we had arranged to be opened by the college at 6:15pm was not but thankfully we had the caretakers number at hand and he came and opened it for us which meant we could go ahead with this part of the shoot. The problem we had with some of the later scenes was lighting. We were using a neon torch in order to try and light the areas we needed to film as the neon gives a fairly realistic effect. However it was still hard to get it to not look like a torch, but after a number of takes I feel we managed to get the lighting to a good quality. And this day wrapped up precisely on schedule at 8:00pm.

The second day of filming wasn't as long as we only had four shots to take. We again started on schedule this time at 3:00pm and had very few problems. It did begin to drizzle a very small amount when filming one of the outside shots at one point but we overcame this by sheltering the camera with A4 size writing books. We had arranged certain shots to be filmed later on both days when we needed normally busy locations to be empty and this also worked out as planned. On the whole the shoot was successful and the group was happy with the results.

Backgrounds for magazine cover

When it came to choosing the background I had a number of ideas. I wasn’t sure whether to use a photograph of one of the main locations from the trailer or not. Whilst shooting the trailer I also took some photos of a couple of locations which I thought would best advertise the film’s narrative and/or genre. I always planned to superimpose a photo of the two main characters onto the background rather than have them in front of the background when I took the photo. This allowed for a lot more creativity as I could essentially place them wherever I wanted.

Background 1


The first place I took photographs of for a background was the front of the Lulworth building at Weymouth College where the trailer was shot. This is one of the main college buildings and the two main characters are shown to be looking at it in the trailer from the middle of the college square at the front. I felt this would give an establishment of the setting for the audience and would link in well with the characters.

Background 2


This is the room in which the female protagonist (Amy) is shown to be tied to a chair in the trailer. The dim lighting plays on the codes and conventions of thrillers and so does the rest of the mise-en-scene. I placed the chair tilted up against the cupboard in order to imply some kind of struggle or activity having taken place in this room. Having emergency exit door in the frame with a fire alarm to the right also promotes danger.

Part 2

After reviewing my magazine research and looking through a few more Empire covers I noticed that very few of them actually used a picture as a background. Most used either a plain colour or some kind of design. Because of this I decided against using photos and started looking into creating my own designs.

Background 3


I hadn’t used Photoshop for a few months before beginning on the magazine cover and as such was a bit rusty. I spent a good few hours just messing around and trying to learn what I could actually do with it. My first effort at creating a background was merely an interesting version of the paintbrush tool in colour red used on a black background. Red and black are the two colours most associated with thrillers as the dominant ideologies held in this country for these colours are red = blood and black = fear, death etc. I couldn’t however get a consistent finish over the whole page and decided to look at other effects.


Background 4


After a bit more time practising I eventually found the filters on Photoshop. There are a number of effects in the filters and after trying a number out I finally came across this one above called ‘Bas Relief’. For a good few days I fully intended to use this as my background as it was simple yet interesting. The gradual shift from light to dark provided a binary opposite effect between good and evil. With the two main characters on the cover and their heads in the light this showed they were the protagonists. The fact that they would almost be sinking in to the darkness also implies the ‘evil’ nature of the film and that these two characters are somehow entangled in it. Overall this background provided a professional feel and worked with the codes and conventions for a thriller with the light and dark contrast.

Main background


After carrying out some further research into Empire magazine covers I felt the previous background which I had intended to use was inadequate. Though on a few occasions Empire will use a plain white background they generally use some kind of theme. For example, on the 'Spider Man' issue (January, 2007, Issue #211) there is a 'web' effect and on the 'Iron Man' issue (January, 2010, Issue #247) there is an 'electric storm' effect. In order to try and fully comply with these codes and conventions I used an effect on Photoshopo within the 'filters' called 'difference clouds'. I then decided to a black foreground and red background which provided a very effective contrast.

I made these decisions so that I could comply with both Empire's codes and conventions and those of the thriller genre. Speaking ideologically, black denotes fear, red denotes blood and therefore pain and the clouds denote a storm, turbulance and unrest. I hoped that by using this ideologically loaded background I would be able to instill the kind of emotion that would interest the target market by helping to reveal the film's genre more and thus successfully promote the film.

Photographs of actors for magazine cover

When I conducted my analysis of Empire magazine front covers I gained some basic ideas on how to compose mine. Whilst my group was shooting the trailer I took some photos which I could use for the magazine and website front page. There were two options with regards to the pose which I had developed from the research. One was with the two main characters facing away from each other, back-to-back. And the other was with them facing towards each other. I got the two actors to pose against a white wall so that I could easily cut them out using the magic wand tool on Photoshop and then superimpose them into another scene or onto a plain background.

Photo 1

This was the first photo I took and I went for a whole body shot with the two actors back-to-back. My first thoughts were that I liked the back-to-back look but based on Empire’s conventions using a full body shot is rare. This is because with a medium close-up (MCU) which Empire generally use the audience can identify more strongly with the characters as their facial expressions and other non-verbal communication are more defined.

Photo 2

This was my second photo in which I went for a MCU framing as a result of the first photo. This one looked a lot better and actually ended up being my favourite photo. The actors touching each other shows unity between them and promotes an ‘I’ve got your back’ attitude. This establishes a relationship between the characters for the audience. The MCU framing also provides a little more intimacy between the audience and the characters which should result in a desire to know more about them.

Photo 3

Photo 3 is the same framing as photo 2 but I decided to try it without the flash. I had a couple of ideas for the background of the magazine cover and so I needed a slightly darker hue just incase I used an inside or darker location for the background. Doing this allowed me more choice when it came to choosing the background.

Photo 4

This is the last style of photo I took which was with the characters facing each other. My feeling on this one was that it showed the wrong kind of relationship between the characters. Facing each other implies a more romantic relationship whereas back-to-back implies a ‘partnership’ which is what their relationship in the film is. For this reason I decided not to use the characters facing each other on my magazine cover.

Progress report - final planning for the shoot

Over the past couple of weeks my group has been putting the final touches to the pre-production in preparation for our shoot. Firstly we had to choose the locations we were going to use for our shoot and so spent some time out of class on a recce looking at possible locations. We also took photographs in order to see whether it matched the storyboard and so that we could get an idea on how the shot would look. Once we had chosen the locations we then had to draw floor plans for each. We tried to make the floor plans as detailed as possible including lights, light switches, doors, power points, fire extinguishers etc. From this we were able to more accurately plan the best and safest places to film our shots from and do a risk assessment on each location.

We also had to find an actor and actress which have caused a few problems along the way. Our first actor pulled out 5 days before the shoot and so we had to find a new actor. We did find someone but also asked another person if they could act as a standby incase anything went wrong. This turned out to be a very good move as our second actor also pulled out 3 days before the shoot so we turned to our standby. The actress was quite easy to find as she was a member of our media class and I had used her in one of my productions last year and so knew her abilities would meet our requirements. However we found out the day before the shoot that she had double booked herself. With a quick shuffle of the production schedule we worked out a way that we could film her scenes first which solved the problem.

After choosing the locations we had to inform the college through our lecturer of which rooms we would be using and when so that we could be sure they were free, unlocked for us and that the college staff new what we were doing. Whilst creating the production schedule we decided we would need to shoot over two days as we needed some night shots and wouldn’t have time before the college closed to get everything in. Our actress could only do the first day of shooting so we had to make sure her scenes were shot that day. However, as was mentioned above she had double booked herself and didn’t realise until the day before the shoot so I pulled her scenes right to the front of the production schedule and then informed the college again through my lecturer of the revisions that needed to be made in as far as when some of the rooms needed to be open. Though these problems were inconvenient we managed to overcome them competently due to good planning, clear schedules and identifiable lines of communication.

I made a list of the resources we’ll need for the shoot and then we worked out where each of these items were going to come from. In terms of props for example we needed a camera, torch, chair, rope and lamp. We also attained a wheelchair in order to help with tracking and dolly shots. The final things were the camera equipment which was available to borrow from the college once appropriate notice had been given. Each item has been accounted for and so this aspect of the shoot is also ready to go.

During the last week or so we have also made our final copies of the script, dual column script, and storyboards. With these in place all the visual and audio aspects of the film are planned and merely need to be obtained now during the shoot. Having the trailer mapped out so clearly should help the shoot to run smoothly and efficiently with no time wasting. It should also mean that we end up with a finished product that looks professional and that the group is happy with.

Progress report part 2

In the last couple of weeks my group has mainly focused on the script and storyboards. It was essential we got these finished as soon as possible so that we could get on with booking rooms and finding actors and props. After numerous drafts and around 4 meetings out of class as well as the work done in class a storyboard was finally agreed on. This process has taken up the most time of any part of the pre-production process and with the rough draft completed and agreed on we have been able to get on with other things.

Each member of the group did a chracter analysis for each of the characters in the trailer. From a practical sense this was mainly done to inform some of the visual aspects such as dress codes and non-verbal communication for the characters. I researched the male antagonist and used the character Jack Torrence from The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)as an example. This revealed some interesting information about the relationship between the power held by the antagonist compared to that of the protagonist(s) and the fear produced in the audience.

The next week will be spent organising the shoot for the film and finishing off the textual analysis of current media forms. I will finish my audience analysis and draw up a schedule for the shoot soon as well but we'll need to book the rooms annd equipment and find the actors first. The final drafts of the dual column script and storyboards must also be drawn up.