Magazine Introduction (Initial Research)

In today’s media lesson we were introduced to magazines and were told that we would have to make one of our own based on the trailer that we were producing. As you can see below are two magazines which were kindly provided to us by our teacher, these professional magazines will help give us an idea of what we would like are final magazines to look like. Magazine covers are a great way for films to gain advertising and promotion so they must make the cover eye-catching and colourful. The two film magazines provided were ‘Empire’ and ‘Total Film’.

EMPIRE:

‘Empire’ is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival ‘Total Film’ by over two-to-one and is also published in Australia, Turkey, Russia and Portugal. As you can see in this issue the primary focus has been on the new movie ‘Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol’. The magazine demonstrates this straightaway through the bold and bright title and the images of characters in the film such as Tom Cruise. The bright red title has also been the magazines trademark and is very eye-catching for audiences. At the bottom of the magazines you can see a sub-section which usually shows some of the other big films in cinema. This particular issue has focused on the 10^th birthday of the Lord of the Rings franchise and is also very eye-catching and appealing for audiences. Empire magazine at the moment is the magazine that we like the most and one that we will try to adapt into our own personal magazine cover.

TOTAL FILM:

‘Total Film’ is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features. It is the second-biggest selling film magazine in Britain behind ‘Empire’. The magazine cover has a very similar layout to ‘Empire’ film magazine. It uses one big film as its main selling point for the issue, in this case ‘Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows’. The cover shows a big image of the two stars in the film (Robert Downey JR. & Jude Law) and the title which again is very bold and eye-catching. By having huge pictures of the stars on the front of the cover this immediately draws the audience’s attention as they may be fans of the actors. The sub section is again used to present some of the other big films in the cinema and enhanced the colour and therefore makes the magazine cover more eye-catching.