Life of a film - Avatar

Synopsis

When Jake Sully a paraplegic marines twin brother is killed. He steps in to take his brothers place on a mission on another world called Pandora. This world has its own people called the Na’vi they have their own language and culture which is very different to what Jake is used to. By using futuristic technology Jake uses a Na’vi identity to collect information for the military whilst simultaneously learning the way of the Na’vi. With the information he has provided to the military, they invade in search of wealthy goods. Jake has to decide whether to side with his new Na’vi family or his own race which he personally disagrees with. He chooses the Na’vi and finds himself in a fight for the future of Pandora

Box office takings
Worldwide so far: $2,638,270,443 (14th March 2010)
Opening weekend: £77,025,481

Cast List
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/fullcredits#cast

Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVdO-cx-McA

Cast and Director Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1jlEnPPw4

Behind the Scenes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2_vB7zx_SQ

Theme Song: Leona Lewis – I See You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igjSxrCXsMo

Budget – $237 million
Directed by – James Cameron
Produced by - James Cameron and Jon Landau
Written by - James Cameron
Music by – James Horner
Cinematography – Mauro
Editing - James Cameron, John Refoua and Stephen E. Rivkin
Studio - Lightstorm Entertainment (Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic)
- Dune Entertainment (The Hills have Eyes 1+2, Jumper, The Happening, Jennifer’s Body)
- Ingenious Film Partners (Eragon, Hot Fuzz, Hairspray, X Men Origins, I Love You Beth Cooper)
Distributed by – 20th Century Fox
Distributed In – UK, United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Egypt, France, South Korea, Switzerland, USA, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Columbia, Croatia, Czech republic, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Panama, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Japan, Poland, Pakistan, China, Italy, Georgia.
Home Exhibition – DVD, Blu-Ray, IPod, PSP Disk.

Movie Posters from different countries

bibliography

http://www.hiscifi.com/files/images/avatar_movie_poster.thumbnail.jpg

http://blogs.spokenword.ac.uk/emmalangman/files/2010/02/avatar-movie-poster3.jpg

http://www.shockya.com/news/wp-content/uploads/avatar_french_poster1.jpg

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avatar.htm

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/fullcredits#cast

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/Avatar-movie-poster.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)

Music Magazine Evaluation

My Music magazine uses the conventions of Blender Magazines January 2009 edition. Blender is a existing music magazine, although they do not follow these conventions each edition, I believe My magazine could use a similar layout and use it as their house style. However I have decided to have my masthead layout differently to the way they do. They have their across the whole top of the cover, behind their cover image, I wanted my masthead to be in front of my cover image and not go as far across the top. Another thing I wanted to make different to blender was the image, the one they used could be said to be provocative and cuts their target audience off to only older music fans. I wanted to have a variety of music fans, so I choose to use a more age appropriate image.

My magazine represents the music industry as a whole. I tried not to base my magazines content around only 1 style of music, I have tried to make sure theirs content on all areas of the music industry, for example I have included content on a acoustic guitar star, a rock group, an alternative Indy band, a pop singer ect.

My target audience for my music magazine are musical fans in general, the layout design has been made with people aged 14-25 in mind, however the content and images could interest a wide variety of people. By making my magazine have content on all styles of music, I make my target audience larger. For example if I only showed rock band content, I would only attract rock band fans, but by making it include lots of music styles, It will attract lots of different fans.

I attracted my audience by having stories and interviews with top and interesting musicians that are popular now. Another way I attracted my audience was by making the text very bold and colourful so it stands out off the page. When on stands in shops the magazine will stand out and draw people to it without them even seeing the images or reading the text.

As my magazine is on a topic which is popular at the moment, it has lots of opportunities to work with different media institutions. As it’s a Music magazine it will sell lots of units on a regular monthly basis, so it would be involved with a printing, producing and distributing institution. Also it could be a success when working in partnership with an internet institution, the magazine could have a website which features photographs, video interview, album and concert reviews and online subscriptions ect. As the magazine is music related it could have a connection with a television institution and work with a music channel which shows the music videos of the people featured in the magazine. Also as the magazine is targeted at music fans, most people interested in music use electrical devices such as ipods and laptops to listen to it. The magazine could have a connection with a distribution institution which distributes it electronically to the devices that people actually listen to their music on.

For my music magazine I wanted the front cover to have more images so that it had a very different layout to the college magazine front cover. However I found it hard to use many images with text and still keep the layout looking neat and tidy. So I decided to compromise and have the front cover using only 1 key image and using more than 1 image on the contents page.

Similarly to my college magazines draft layouts, I made very detailed plans of how I wanted my music magazine to look and address my audience. So my final products were very similar to the plans I had made. However in my draft layouts I wasn’t very precise with the colours, so this is something that was worked on during production.

Time management wasn’t as much as an issue for my music magazine as it was for my college magazine. I spent a fair amount of time researching existing magazines, and planning my own. I left myself enough time to produce and develop my magazine with time to perfect the layout and such things.

Completed Music Magazine Double Page Spread

I am happy with the finished double page spread. The design is simple and generally nice to look at. The fonts are easy to read, even though they are in a small pt size. In my opinion I have used just the right amount of images with out overflowing the page. The quote isn’t really revealing or scandalous in the way quotes are normally used in magazines. But I found that my magazine was about music and didn’t need to have scandalous texts.

If I had to do my double page spread again, I would look more closely at my text. The text at the moment is good, but it could be improved and made more interesting. The text tells the reader about himself and his music, but what does the reader really want to read about? Next time I would spend more time researching what people actually want to read about.

Completed Music Magazine Double Page Spread

Double Page Spread Progress

This week I have been working on my double page spread. I have 3 text boxes which I have linked together so that the text flows from each. I have also used a circle image over text so I had to use text wrap, also to make the image stand out more I have used a red outline. I wanted to make the quickfire round answers to look like they were hand written, the font I used is quite realistic in my opinion. The colour of the fonts and lines on the page are similar to the ones on the other work, I think this worked out in my favour. In magazines not every page has the same fonts and colours, so this shows this in my magazine.

Decisions

Today I have written the text for my music magazine double page spread. I have made it as a question and answer interview, as in my research I found that readers prefer this. I have also included a quick fire round of short and simple questions to show some text that isn’t necessarily music related.

Here is the text

Stepping out from his big brothers shadow, Craig Mayor is here to stay! With his brothers band: The Reckless Rockers dominating the music charts for the past 7 weeks, with 5 years experience behind them, Craig’s first single knocked them off the top spot just weeks after it was released. In the past Craig has been known as the little brother of a rocker, but now he’s proved himself as an excellent musician who’s here to stay.
Wow, you’ve had a great introduction to the music industry, how does it feel to knock your brother off the top spot? Well tbh it’s brilliant that people like my music and have got it to the top spot, but there’s no competition with myself and my brothers band. We have completely different sounds, we support each other completely. I mean I’ve learnt everything I know about music from lee so it’s like something we share and have in common.
For people who haven’t heard your music, how are you different to The Reckless Rockers? I think we have a completely different sound. They [the reckless rockers] are more rock and loud, whereas I tend to make more mellow acoustic music, there songs are mostly written for them, but I write my own from my life experiences.
Are you surprised how quickly your fan base has built up? Yeah definitely, it was only last year I was a kid in college making YouTube covers in my spare time. Now I get to make music full time and get paid for it which is a plus. It makes it just so more fun when you no people are enjoying your music to.
Wow, things have moved fast for you then. How did you get recognised? Well I have my brother to thank for that, I was visiting him at one of his recording sessions, and there was an acoustic guitar sat there, so obviously I started playing and my brother’s manager walked in with some of his friends. Turns out his friend was starting a new label and was looking for new artists, he invited me to come play for him, and I was signed within 3 meetings.
Your sound is different to what we normally see in the charts, who are your musical influences? I have a lot of respect for many musicians, but I think artists who play a lot of acoustic music inspire me. Artists such as John Mayer, James Morrison and James Blunt. Their lyrics are meaningful and have a purpose where some singers are just in it to sell records.
Since the success youve had from your single, do you plan on releasing and album? Yeah, I’ve been working really hard getting some songs down. I’m actually recording a couple of the tracks later this week, were lucky to be working with some great producers so hopefully the fans will really like it, and have the success of the single.
Quick Fire round for the fans to get to know you
Favourite colour: blue, no no umm green
Favourite food: everything, haha pasta
Favourite song: Who says - John Mayer
Best childhood memory: Ohh there’s so many, umm the summer family holidays down by the lake, camping and playing guitar under the sunset
Favourite country: I haven’t really travelled much, but I’ve been to LA and that was nice so, America

I have also chosen my images for the music magazine double page spread. I am going to use 3 images, some of them our music related, where others are not to keep it balanced. I am making my double page spread on the programme quark, there colours and text effects are different to that on Photoshop so it will be hard to carry on the conventions from the front cover and contents page, but I will try to make them as similar as possible.

Images i am going to use on my double page spread

Completed Music Magazine Contents Page

The past few days I have been making my contents page on Photoshop. Its taken me so long as each image, text and shapes are on separate layers. I have used the same font and colour scheme which I used of the front cover, this Is to carry on the conventions of the magazine and make the magazine flow more easy.

I am pleased with my music magazine contents page. Just by looking at the contents page the reader can tell that the magazine is connected to music as I have used a medium shot of a person holding a guitar, and also an extreme long shot of a concert. I also like that the contents is in numerical order, some contents I looked at during my research there was no order to the contents page, but my contents is in order, making it easy to follow and read. By using the same font and colour scheme you can really see the connection between my front cover and contents page, this is something I would like to happen with my double page spread.

Completed Music Magazine Contents Page

Image Choices for Contents Page

Today I designed my music magazine contents page. I have made the layout similar to the metal hammer magazines contents pages which I have looked at in my research, but am going to include more images. I have chosen to use 3 images in my contents page.

Contents Page Images