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.