Researching film magazine cover (annotation and analysis)

Annotation (you may want to expand the image by clicking on it to read the text easier)

This is my analysis of a film magazine cover for 'EMPIRE'. All of these comments above are based on the visual and verbal techniques, as well as the persuasive techniques and the institutional information. Blow I will give my 'critical evaluation'...

This is a good cover for a film magazine as it meets all the expectations of a film magazine cover in order to attract the correct target audience. It's visual techniques in particular (connotations, symbolism, fonts, main images, strapline, genre, puffs and what is represented) are all mentioned in my annotation above and they are all used successfully in order to represent what the magazine is featuring and attract the target audience, it is a good cover for these reasons. It meets all the visual expectations of the potential buyer too as the cover is very colourful and features images that will immediately appeal to the target audience (like the robotic sci-fi image taken from Transformers, a film largely popular with a 16-24 year old target audience on a global stage). It also presents features of the magazine on the front that will influence the audience to purchase the magazine, like their 'annual review of the year' which is something the magazine audience will look forwrd to reading, and this is a persuasive technique. The magazine also featuers star power with Mark Wahlberg who is in other popular action / adventure films such as Italian Job which will appeal to the target audience as this is the genre most heavily featured in 'EMPIRE' magazine. 

This example of  'Total Film' magazine uses
more frequent and effective coverlines

The magazine communicates effectively with the audience with the use of coverlines, however this magazine doesn't use coverlines as frequently or efectively as other film magazines do. Certain coverlines that are present include 'Plus! Our annual review of the year!' which is used as a communicating feature in order to appeal to the target audience and persuade them to read the magazine as they will be interseted in reading about the magazine's annual review as it is clearly a popular feature if it is presented on the front of the magazine. Other coverlines such as 'OSCARS SPECIAL!' and the three movie titles in the top right of the magazine cover are used for the same effect, they influence the reader to buy the magazine in order to read about what is being featured inside - as these things are popular witht he target audience of this magazine. They use the main actors' surnames e.g. 'BAY' and 'WAHLBERG' to appeal to the target audience of 16-24 year old males as it seems more 'cool' by adressing th actors by their second name, and this will also appeal to them. The connotation of the tagline 'The worlds biggest movie magazine' is that it is the most popular and favoured film magazine in the world, and therefore this will appeal to the targe audience as movie lovers will want to buy magazines of the highest quality.

There isn't  any alternative readings on this film cover however, as all of the text is focused on the same thing which is influencing the audience through persuasive techniques and featuring popular Hollyood films on the film cover. All of the text on the cover is for the same purpose and therefore this cover doesn't use any alternative techniques in order to persuade the audience. Instead, this cover focuses more on preferred reading, it trusts that people who will be readnig the magazine cover will be those who are interested in the genres presented on the cover, therefore they don;t need to use certain alternative readings in order to attract other audiences, they aim for appealing their target audience specifically.

The cover is a good one for another reason in that it isn't offensive in any way to any potential buyer of the magazine. The cover includes both male and female characters in an action / adventure / sci-fi movie 'Transformers to avoid being sexist as usually only male characters are presented as being more important in this genre of film, and are therefore usually always presented on the front of the magazine as opposed to women who aren't. There also isn;t any language used that could potentially cause offense to any race, gender, culture etc.

Researching film magazine covers

For my research, I have been studying front covers of film magazines in order to enhance my understanding of how they are presented and what features are present on these magazines, in order to give me a better understanding of the topic for when I produce my piece later in the year. This post is used to annotate two examples of film magazines called 'EMPIRE' and 'Total Film' in how they are laid out, what is on each example, who the target audience is and how I know this. Here is the example of a film magazine cover I have looked at:

Example 1

This example of 'EMPIRE' (as with all of the EMPIRE magazines) has the magazine masthead at the top of the page in a 'EF Kaffeesatz Schwarz' font, and in this example the masthead is in red.. The sub-heading 'MASSIVE PREVIEW SPECIAL' is in a sans serif font and they use capitalisation for the whole sub-heading for emphasis. Other text on the page is also in various fonts and colours, and there is also use of embodiment on key text, like 'Harry Potter 6' - which is emboldened as Harry Potter is a world wide famous franchise and this will attract a global audience. The magazine also contains a tag line 'THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MOVIE MAGAZINE' and a magazine website 'empireonline.com'. This magazine has listed 7 popular film releases down the left side of the magazine for attracting audiences interested in the same genre (action adventure & fantasy / sci-fi) and they have done this to attract a specific target audience. 

There are two images on this example, the main large image of Harry Potter and a smaller image of three other popular protagonists in the bottom-left of the front cover. These protagonists are used for the same reason as the listing of the popular film releases, to attract a specific target adueince (which is 16-24 year old males) and this is clear due to the films that all of these protagonists are featured in. Action adventure as well as fantasy / sci-fi are two of the most common genres that appeal to the target audience of 16-24 year old males, therefore they use these images / movie listings in order to attract them, as they are most likely to purchase the magazine. They also have a quote 'BLOODY HELL!' and the caption 'Harry comes out fighting' in the mid-right of this film cover, next to the large image of Harry Potter. The caption is used to attract the target audience as fighting / battle is something that will appeal to a 16-24 year old male audience more than most. The quote 'BLOODY HELL!' is used more than once by the star Daniel Radcliffe throughout the franchise and therefore this is something the audience will recognise, which will also attract them. Particularly as Daniel Radcliffe is a great example of use of star power as he is one of the most well-known movie stars on a global stage. This represents their intention to include a lot of action / adventure as well as fantasy / sci-fi films which target a specific audience (16-24 year old males).

Example 2

The masthead of this example of 'TOTAL FILM' is also at the top of the page and is layed out in a similar way to the previous example of 'EMPIRE'. It also has a large image of a popular protagonist in the centre of the magazine, with smaller images from other films located elsewhere. The masthead is in the font 'Eagle Bold' and this is also pretty similar to the font used on 'EMPIRE'. There is also a date of when the movie was released ynder the masthead, as well as the magazine website 'totalfilm.com'. There is less variety of font colour on this magazine, however, this one only uses white and blue for all of the key text and then uses a small amount of black text too. It has a '10 coolest movies being made right now' collection of pictures at the top of the page which gives the audience an idea of what is included on the inside of the magazine. This is simialr to the technique used by 'EMPIRE' on the first exmaple, when they listed popular film releases. It is used to attract the correct audience, which again in this magazine is 16-24 year old males.

They also use certain key words such as 'BASTERDS!' 'SNEAKY!' 'EXTRA!' as subheadings to present certain information around the magazine on what will be included on the inside. These are all features I would have to replicate when attempting my magazine front cover.This is apparent as the protagnoist in the centre of the magazine is Sherlock Holmes, played by Robert Downey Jr. who is a very famous Hollywood actor who also plays the lead role in Iron Man, which is another one of the films being presented at the head of the magazine. Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man are two popular films with 16-24 year old males as they also come under the action / adventure genre as well as the sci-fi genre. Iron Man is also a Marvel product, and Marvel produce some of the most recognised movie franchises globally and this is another feature that will massively attract this specific audience as they are the main audience for this film type. The words 'WORLD EXCLUSIVE' are also used to appeal to this target audience and represent that the film is top quality, and this will attract the target audience.

My AS Film Magazine Cover

In this post I will be creating a film magazine front cover featuring my teen angst product. The reason for doing this is to gain practice for when I come to create my film magazine cover as a part of my A2 course. Below is my attempt:

• The masthead of my movie magazine is 'MORE FILM'. I used this masthead as it connotes that my movie magazine offers more than others, and that it is the best with movie previews or exclusives. I used cooltext.com to make the masthead which is made of text that looks like it's being broken, giving a powerful 'groundbreaking' effect.
• On the cover I include three different movies and each of them are of different genre. 'High Expectations' is a teen angst, 'Star Wars Swede' is comedy / sci-fi and 'Night Of Fright' is a horror. This represents this magazine's intentions to offer exclusive movie previews from all different genres, meaning it is able to attract a wider target (global) audience range.
• Star power is also used with Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman and Daniel Craig and these are images I took, these are all globally known Hollywood actors that are found in a variety of different film genres, meaning that this magazine is again attracting a wider global audience. 
• I have promoted the importance of High Expectations by making the image of the girls very large, and the image of the lockers is layered over the masthead which connotes it's importance and high quality of the film.
• I used capitalisation for my masthead and for the titles of all of the films I included on the magazine cover. This connotes the importance of the key information, and the text that will appeal most to the audience, hence why it is in capitals to make the text more noticeable. I also used capitalisation for 'INTERVIEWS WITH COLIN FIRTH, MORGAN FREEMAN AND DANIEL CRAIG' as for most audiences, they would be the main attraction of this magazine as they are globally recognised Hollywood actors. Capitalisation was also used with 'SPECIAL MOVIE PREVIEW AND INTERVIEWS INSIDE' for displaying the inclusion of High Expectations which again connotes it'simportance.
• I uncluded a barcode on the top right of the maagzine cover and a price of £2.99 which is roughly a similar price to most movie magazines availible in England, if not a little cheaper, which will also ppeal to the audience as they're getting more for their money.
•  I created a strip that looks similar to a movie reel. As we're only aloud to use our own images, I had to create this movie reel using text boxes on photoshop and then filling them with the colours to make a film reel image. I did this as I thought it would be useful to include the main images of the things I am including in each of the white boxes in the reel. Also, the film reel is obviously something else on the magazine that represents it is a movie magazine and this is important for audience recognition.
• The target audience for my magazine would be 13-21 year old male and females. This is connoted with the variety of movie genres i.e. teen angst, comedy and horror (which are the three most popular genres with this age range). The characters displayed are both male and female and therefore there is no specific gender audience that I want to appeal to.

My AS teen angst film poster

I created a film poster for the product I made in AS media 'High Expectations'. The reason I did this was as practice for when I come to complete a poster for my A2 product.
Here is the attempt I made to create a poster for my teen angst:

• I have included a large bold title of my film in a sans serif font, which i created on cooltext.com. I gave this title a pink font colour as it connotes the genre of this film and it is also used as iconography as the title in my actual film is also in pink text, and this feature is used throughout the poster in order to appeal to the predominantly female audience (as my target audience is 12-18 year old girls, and this colour appeals to them most. 
• I also included a fairly large image of the two main characters (played by Alice and Giorgia). This is to enhance the audience's understanding so they know that this is a teen angst film as the main characters are both female. This image along with the large amount of pink text should make the genre of this film easy to identify.
•  I included the names of both the main actors (Alive Willard and Giorgia Barker) at the top-mid section of the poster, just above the image of both of their characters in a shot taken from the film. This presents their importance and relevance in the film and also allows the audience to identify who is playing the two main characters.
• I have included the age certificate of the film in the bottom left of the poster, jsut above the production company for this film. I made this a fairly small image and put it at the bottom of the poster as it isn't that important and I don't want it getting in the way of the main focuses on the poster. This is generally where age certificates are presented on posters. The age certificate for this film is 12A and this is justifiable as my target audience is 12-18 year old girls.
• I included an image of the production company logo in the bottom left of the poster, this is so the audience can recognise the quality of the film as the production company that produced this film is of high quality, this is connoted with the gold text and the word 'victory'. I also used the name of the production logo at the top of the poster to introduce this film.
• I created a film website 'www.highexpectationsfilm.co.uk' and included this at the bottom of the film poster so the audience can identify this after reading about it's main review, and this should influence them to visit the website and become more interacted.
• I included the award that this film won, which was BAFTAS Best British Film, and I included this at the very top of the poster to immediately appeal to the audience. This is to attarct a wider audience as if they see the evidence of the success of this film then they will be persuaded to buy the film, and this will increase it's popularity and success, as the BAFTA awards are a very prestigous event.
• Names of the film porducer and director are included in the small print at the bottom of the page, along with the music and sound and editing team in order to enhance the recognistion of these people. If the audience recognise these people from other products then they will be further persuaded to buy the film.
• I included the release date of this film which was August 15th, and this is because this is a peak time to release our film on DVD as it is when the British summer holidays are occuring. This means that teenage girls of the age of 12-18 (which is my target audience) are not in school and therefore are availible to buy the film. This will influence them to buy it as they will not have a large amount of other things happening during this stage of the summer holiday, as people tend to go on holiday during the first two weeks of the summer break (end of July - begining of August).
• I included a 5-star rating and a quote "An amazing story portraying the lives of two very different girls stuck in the same world." from the magazine 'HEAT' which is a very popular magazine among this target audience as the main buyers of this particular magazine is teenage - early adult women.