Movie Magazine Reflection

Conventions of a film magazine

When looking to make a movie magazine cover, the first step you should take is to research the conventions of other magazines so that you know what a typical magazine would look like so that you’re not an individual in the market. However you want to have individual qualities so that the customer will purchase your magazine.

Film magazines have many items which are similar in all their copies and are a template for all the magazines the company makes, so that they do not have to spend time designing each cover differently. The similar aspects of each magazine cover would be:

·         A large title which stands out from the rest of the writing on the cover.

·         They will always have a price and a date with the price varying depending on how often the magazine is printed e.g. if it is a monthly magazine it is likely to be more expensive than a weekly mag.

·         There may be the company’s website name on the magazine to advertise the firm some more.

·         All magazines will have a barcode on the cover or on the back at some point simply for the convenience of the shop selling the mag.

·         There will then be a small paragraph about the main film which is featuring in this issue of the magazine.

·         There will always be an image of the most important story featuring in the magazine

·         They may also write about the magazine being the best in the UK for example empire.

·         A background colour which is evident of the movie which is featuring in that magazine

Movie Magazine Reflection

In my first session of creating the magazine I made sure that all the research was carried out and I had a good idea of the typical horror magazines and what mine should look like compared to the top selling movie magazines like “Total Film” and “Empire.” I then done some personal research and found a more unconventional magazine called "little white lies" and i compared it with "Total Film" and combined them both using both conventions when looking to create my own ideas. As can be seen they are very different on one hand total film has a lot going on and contains alot of information whereas the little white lies magazine is a lot less subdued and therefore has a different effect on the reader, this will then lead to it appealing to a different niche in the market and therefore incapturing their own unique brand. I therefore felt it would be a good idea to use both ideas as one for my magazine to incorporate both markets.

 

As can be seen above all the magazine covers have a main image in the centre of the page to catch the attention of the audience and most contain peices about what else will be seen inside the magazine some of the images overlay the masthead and some go underneath the masthead depending on the type and size of the image. They also tend to keep the featured film with the same text and colour on the page so that the audience can distinguish between both.

Once I had completed all of the research and sketched what I wanted the magazine to look like and what it would involve I then opened an Adobe Photoshop page where I started with a blank canvas, which was the scale of an A4 sheet of paper. This isn’t the typical convention of a magazine as they vary but I felt it was a good set figure that would be good for the sort of magazine I am looking to make. After setting the scale of the page I looked at a background and a common background for a horror magazine was typically black, therefore I based my decision of using black on the regular occurrence of it in the horror film market. Therefore the measurements for the cover itself will be 23.01cm wide by 30 cm in height. Which is just larger than A4 so that it wouldn’t look odd compared to other magazines, some people say it does not make a difference on the size however it would look odd being slightly smaller than the others.

My second lesson started with a recap of the last lesson and looking at what I had already created in the first session so that I knew exactly where I was and planned out what I was going to do in this session so that I was organised and had a clear aim for the lesson.

I then had a grey canvas with which I could work to create the look I had sketched up earlier in my research. I could not settle on a name however I came to the conclusion that HORROR FILMS would be suitable for a horror magazine as it says what it does basically. Once I had created a name of the magazine I had to design the heading so that is was different to the rest on the market. Firstly I placed the masthead 2cm from the top of the page so that when being purchased the Masthead is above the other magazines so that the customer knows the magazine they are buying and it is easy to identify when purchasing. I then made the masthead I used size 135pt for the horror part so that it would stand out at the top of the page and the film half was size 35pt so that it could still be seen as part of the masthead but was not too large as to take the eye away from horror. I used the colour red however I used the saturation mask so that it was not bright red more of a brown/red colour so that it is a strong mast head but was still not over the top.

For all the other pieces of text I wrote I used the same font Lucida Fax as I thought using the same font made the magazine cover look professional as it doesn’t keep changing around the page. However I did change the colour of some of the texts, for example when writing about my film I used orange as this depicts the fire which is a key part of the film well and it made the text stand out, whereas the other text was in white so that it was still readable to the customer. Apart from the accolade at the bottom of the page about it being the UKs best horror magazine. Whenever I mentioned Flashback on the magazine cover I made sure that it was a much larger font than the rest so that the audience knew what the film was that was being shown in that magazine.

In my third lesson all I had to do was to add all the small pieces which makes the magazine a typical magazine and makes it what it is therefore before I started entering the pieces to the page I made sure they were the right scale and colour so that they didn’t look odd on the front page of the magazine. The page dimensions were an issue when first printing as the page would be cropped to fit this is because magazine covers are not A4 they are typically slightly larger so that they do not match the A4 sheets.

I then placed a provided barcode from the media department onto the page; I chose to place it in the bottom left corner so that it was out of the way and didn’t interfere with the front page and all the images and text. However when I came to print I realised it looked to big therefore I transformed the scale so it looked small on screen however really it was the correct size when printing.

I then placed the date and the price on the right hand side and under the title so that that was out of the way but was also viewable to the customer when looking to purchase. I used white text for this also however I did deliberate using another colour so that it would stand out however this was too much trouble as the right colour to use was a struggle to find as typical colours just didn’t suit the page.

My main image is of a murderer in the film it Is a very enticing image which will catch the eyes of the audience instinctively and will make them want to read more about the film and would be a good marketing tool for the film. The image gives the connotation of evil and easily depicts horror. With such a striking image the audience of the genre category would immediately be enticed to look at the magazine some more. These types of images have been used for Freddie vs. Jason and Friday 13^th as they show the main character and give the audience an early relationship with the character.

However when i came about doing this the images were not of great quality therefore i changed my idea quite drastically i used a small image of the murderer and darkened it so that it made it more realistic and then used an image of the main charecter ad the main image looking into the darkness not knowing the murderer was behing him this gave the effect that he was shocked and was hearing scary noises around the house.

When reviewing my peice i felt a black background would best suit this magazine as firstly it gives a greater influence on darkness and secondly the image of the muderer stand out more therefore giving the audience a very eye catching peice that would stick in their memory rather than not remembering which film it was from. This was also evident from audience feedback they felt the grey background made everything too light and did not emphasise the darkness therefore when it came to using the black background everything became alot more subtle.