Film Magazine Overview

All of the above front covers are unique and individual; they all look very different to one another, however, there are many common features between them; not only does the image fill the frame for each cover, but each cover has it’s own colour scheme, reflecting the movie it is promoting.

Firstly, all of the magazine front covers feature a masthead, which is placed at the top of the page. Each masthead we see is either red, white or black (with red being most common as it is on two issues of Empire, and an issue of Total Film). The red makes the masthead stand out, showing the magazine is important, and is also a primary colour, appealing to the predominantly male audience of film magazines. The white, again, helps the masthead stand out, but also helps to connote a sense of innocence to the audience; since the Total Film issue which features a white masthead is promoting a children’s film, it reflects this – people who may have seen the main image and initially thought the movie would be quite scary, will be likely to think again. On each cover (although the majority of the movies being promoted aren’t horror), the character featuring within the main image is always the antagonist/the scariest character within the film - for example, although ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is not seen as a scary film, the character of The Mad Hatter has scary/creepy qualities in his appearance. As well as this, on the issue of Empire, although Hellboy is seen as the “goodie” within the ‘Hellboy’ films, he could be said to be bad, since he is from hell (he is a generally scary character on appearance, much like The Mad Hatter).  Each front cover also follows general magazine conventions through the use and placement of sell-lines, which are typically placed on the left and right on magazines. It is also common for films to be listed and used as sell-lines on magazine front covers, and the six covers demonstrate this perfectly. Although, they also break conventions; only three of the six front covers have a puff on them (two issues of Empire and an issue of Total Film). The settings within each image are also somewhat similar; they are all very plain, and aren’t an important piece within the image. Four of the six posters have a plain background (two black, two white) whilst the other two feature backgrounds that the audience can’t really see (Total Film promoting ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and the first Empire cover promoting ‘The Dark Knight’), however, they both feature dark colours in the background, similar to two of the other covers. Amongst the main images on each cover, the shots which tend to be used are long shots, medium close ups and medium shots. The limited edition cover of Empire which is promoting The Dark Knight is a high angle shot, breaking conventions (shots tend to be at normal eye-level). Usually this angle is used in order to make someone look less powerful, and more vulnerable, however, it is used here in order to see the true evil within the character of The Joker.