Friday, 26 February 2010

Magazine Front Cover Analysis


Film Magazines are another tool used by film companies to promote their films. Total Film is a popular film magazine that usually features a 'cover movie' on its front cover, this featured movie often has a prestige's actor, director or have recently won an award. If the film is featured on the front of a popular film magazine then the readers will more then likely think of this film as important, combine this with a good review and the reader will therefore be more likely to go and see the film. However if the film receives a bad review from a magazine or in fact any medium then the opposite effect could come into play and the reader may be put of seeing the film in question.

This particular front cover features the movie 'Shutter Island'. The focal point of the magazine is fought out between the big, bold, bright red text, in the eeire San serif font stating the name of the film, 'Shutter Island', and the main image of the popular actor Leonardo Di Caprio. The big bright red coloured text acts as a motief, symbolising danger, the way it overlaps over the image of Leonardo Di Caprio interlinks the two features and suggests that Leonardo Di Caprio, within the film is going to be in dangerous situations. This ideology of eeriness and danger portrayed in the colour scheme is again evident in the background image and colour, blue mist and dark sky's are shown, these colours & images again, give the idea that something is wrong. However the lighthouse image in the top right corner projects a small amount of light into the dark mist of night, symbolising that there is also an element of hope within the film.
All of the normal conventions typically found on a film magazine front cover are found on Total Film. It has a big, bold masthead proclaiming which magazine the reader is looking at, it has puffs located down either side of the cover and has tag lines running across the top and the bottom of the page, a barcode is also included. The only other feature of this cover that is relevant to the main film that it is advertising, apart from the central image + name of the film is the two puffs in white coloured text on top of and below the title "Shutter Island". These puff's give a small hint to the reader of what the films basic plot/location, while at the same time providing a small amount of humour and intrigue in the way that the puffs have been worded into puns relevent to the plot line.

The final point i wish to make about the cover is synergy. Synergy is the idea of making all things related to an idea you wish to portray follow the same set of ideals or same style of image, with the objective of improving its effectiveness. In terms of the Shutter Island promotional campaign allot of the Mise En Scene is the same for example the the clothes the main character wares are the same on the film magazine cover and the trailer in some parts. The colour scheme of the poster, cover and trailer are in allot of places the same, in terms of the red motief and the dark eerie colours.
Overall I think that this magazine front cover is effective in both selling the actual magazine and also promoting the "Shutter Island" film to potential customers.

In an attempt to keep my research of promotional campaigns consistent i tried to find a magazine cover featuring the film "Cloverfield", unfortunately i was unable to find such a cover, therefore i chose to analyse a front cover from the popular (2.5m circulation) American 'Mans Mag' "Maxim" featuring the 2006 summer blockbuster "Snakes on a Plane". I chose this film because it is relevant to Cloverfield in terms of its promotional campaign, starting Virally, also the fact that Maxim is targeted at young men it will hopefully provide an interesting contrast to the conventional 'film review' magazines, therefore increasing my knowledge of different mediums within the media.


The main image for this cover is clearly designed to attract the male gaze. It includes an attractive woman and an exotic animal. The exotic animal in the form of a snake has been included to make the cover more exotic and also to promote the film snakes on a plane because snakes are highly featured in the film itself. One of the other main features of this cover is the puff displaying the critically acclaimed act Samuel L Jackson, this further more promotes the film as 'Star Theory' suggests that people are allot more likely to buy a piece of media if a celebrity with a good relative reputation is shown in the advertisement.

Seeing how MAXIM is a 'man's mag' the attractive female is included to gain the target audience's attension, other conventions of this genre of magazine are shown in the colour scheme, puffs, tag lines and masthead. The puffs and tag lines carry innuendo's, the masthead is clear and the colour scheme fits in the exotic 'Latino' feel of bauge pottery type colours and bright red.

Typical conventions found in nearly all magazines are also found on these particular one. For example a bar code can be found on the bottom right corner and puffs are found parallel down each side of the main central image. .

Overall I believe this cover of Maxim magazine does a good job in targeting its audience as well as promote the film Snakes on a Plan. The main advantage of Snakes on the Plane being advertised on this genre of magazine is that it promotes the image that the film is 'sexy' which plays into the idea of 'sex sells'. This tied in with the relevant target audience of young male for each product (film + magazine) and typical conventions being used to their full potential makes, in my opinion this particular cover a success in terms of raising the films profile and selling magazine copy's.


This film magazine front cover is another cover from the company Total Film, the difference with this cover however is its that it is the cover of a special edition. This idea is a very interesting to me because it is an edition that follows typical conventions of other covers while also containing unique special edition conventions. One of the most notisable conventions found on this 10 year special ediction of the Total Film magazine is colour scheme, alot of the puffs are colour bronze which is the steriotypical colour to sybolise 10 years of mariage, which gives of a positive imagary and at the same time gives the cover more 'prestiege'.

The tabs sown the side of the cover are another interesting convention used as they tell the reader/potensial reader, in a clear way what roughly is going to feature in the magazine without them ahving to flik through the product.

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