The purpose of a magazine cover is to attract an audience to consume the product on offer and will entice the audience through a range of devices. These include things such as the title and print type, layout of image and design of image, design and layout of sell-lines and style of model image.
RESEARCH
Research Task 1 - Conventions of a magazine poster
Research Task 2 - Front cover analysis
To get a greater understanding of film magazine covers, I am going to analyze two magazine front covers on a deeper level. This is so I can grasp a more thorough understanding to what makes a successful film magazine front cover and how to successfully target an audience. The film magazines I have chosen to analyse are 'Empire' and 'Entertainment Weekly'. This is because both are successful and highly rated media magazines and anaylsing others successes will help me to identify the appropriate colours, language, details and images needed to replicate and challenge in order to appeal to my own target audience.
References to sources:
References to sources:
Research Task 3 - Style File
For this task I am going to select and analyse a number of magazine front covers that appeal to a similar target audience to my own. This is so I can gain inspiration as to what is appropriate to include in my own cover. I am then going to pick out details that I would like to consider to include in my own product such as fonts, layouts, images, language etc.
Above is a mood board of different magazine front covers with a similar target audience to my own. All of which appeal to my target audience in a unique way. One of the techniques I like on the majority of front covers in the diverse range of fonts used on each cover. This means that the front cover attracts attention from all areas of the magazine, causing an individuals eye to be taken through the cover with its various font styles - allowing them to read all of the cover lines and flashes. The colours on each of these covers vary depending on the messages the magazine wants to convey. Many include subtle and natural colours giving a soothing tone to the cover. This would attract predominately females which is effective and would be a useful technique when targeting my own audience, connoting simpleness and classiness. However, I especially like the colours included on the front cover of 'Vanity Fair'. This is because it has a great sense of elegance - appealing to a female audience, but also includes a husky use of darker colours (warm grey and deep red). I think this would effective in my own product as it would be effective at sending and connoting messages of tragedy and romance.
The magazine cover for 'Vogue' contrasts the main image on each of the other covers. This is because it includes a close up of the person instead of a medium shot or long shot. This would be effective in my own magazine cover as it would allow the audience to get a sense of my characters emotions by using a close up - this would cause thought-provoking behavior within my audience and create a sense of mystery, interesting my audience into wanting to watch my film.
Cover lines are frequently included on magazine front covers and and include language which attracts the audience and entices them to want to read the print product. Magazines such as 'Company Magazine' include cover-lines in a modern and bold font. The colours for this magazine are also stand-out colours, attracting a youthful audience. This would be helpful when promoting my own film, however I think neutral colours would be more effective and suited to my film genre more closely - using neutral colours (which connote themes in my genre) would also enable me to reach and attract my secondary audience of males as they would be less attracted to bold and girly colours and font styles.
Task 4 - Mock up
Below is a mock-up of a front cover. My own front cover will include a masthead, main image, cover lines, main cover-lines, flashes along with anchorage text similar to the mock-up below. It will also include conventions such as dates, prices etc.
PLANNING
Planning Task 1 - Idea mind map
Planning Task 2 - Draft written content
After conducting research into film magazines, I have decided to include the key conventions of magazine cover.
- I will include the title of the magazine, which I have named 'Majestic Film'
- I will include 'The HOT issue 2014 must-see movie guide'
- I will mention the oscar nominations to attract film fans
- I will incude a conventional quote to on my front page from the cover girl
- I will include the name of the cover girl (actress Libby Shambrook) but I will use repetition as these linguistic features are also conventional of front covers to attract and audience - 'Sassy Shambrook' are play-on words
- I will include the term 'WORLD EXCLUSIVE' in caps
- I will use a hashtag feature to entice a youthful audience who are twitter users '#majesticfilm'
- I will include other well-known star names to appeal to fans e.g. Jennifer Lawrence
Post-Production Ancillary Task
After choosing my image I manipulated it on Photoshop. Firstly I adjusted the brightness and colours.
My image already had a warm tone to it as I used the lighting equiptment and green screen during the photoshoot. Despite this advantage already I increased the contrast and brightness of the image. I created a new layer on photoshop and added a very small blue tone to the image. This lowered the warmth of the image, making it look more natural and less 'yellow' The next stage of manipulation was air-brushing her skin. To do this I created another layer and added a surface blur. I then needed to add a high pass and invert this using 'hard light'. I then merged these two layers together I used the paint brush tool to cover her skin using the opacity '50%'. The next thing I did was used the 'quick select' tool to select her dress and lips. I could then use the colour tool to enhance the colours or add to them. This then helps the red to stand out from her dark features and light backgroud. The red colour also connotes aspects of my film and the inner presence of the character herself (passionate/dangerous). I also wanted to highlight oter features such as her eye colour and eye make up. This was fairly simple. I created a layer and chose 'soft light' I then selected the paint brush tool and zoomed into each element and chose my required colour. I then went over the features increasing or decreasing the opacity as required. The eye make up was dark black and her eye colour was enhanced to look lighter brown to stand out contrasting her make up. The two images show the before and after of the image manipulation. The images to the right show before and after image manipulation. After manipulating the image I cropped it so she filled up more of the page. I then placed it to an InDesign file where I could then start adding my convetional text. I realised that I wanted Libby infront of the text but the background she was standing against behind. This meant I needed to copy and past the text to photoshop and on the original image. Below is a screenshot where I erased the text where she was placed so it looks like she is placed infront of the text. To do this I used the eraser tool on photoshop. When this was dont I then placed this image onto the InDesign file.
One of the main conventions of a magazine cover is the barcode. This is needed for every magazine in order for the audience to purchase the magazine. The issue number, date and price are usually placed around the barcode in very small font. I placed a barcode onto my file and entered a text box onto the file to add the surrounding pieces of text.
I wanted to add conventional flashes onto my cover to attract audiences. The language used in these flashes also helped to attract an audience using youthful lexis such as 'hot' - appealing to my target audience. The colours of these flashes followed my housestyle (red, black, grey and white) - creating a mainstreem audience of both males and females. To do this I needed to create a circle using the 'ellipsis' tool on InDesign and colour the cirlce accordingly. I chose to colour this red to give it a very stand-out presence on my front cover.
I then added a text box using the 'text box' feature where I could place the words and sentances I want to put into my 'flash'. I used two different fonts creating juxtraposition between the text - conventionally of magazine covers so my magazine cover doesn't look boring and the audiences eyes are attracted to many parts of it.
The screenshot below my final 'flash' placed onto my magazine cover.
I overlapped parts of the film magazine name which is conventionally of a front cover. This is because it helps my magazine cover to look full of information and crammed with detail. The opacity of the overlapping text was very small because I wanted bold text to overlap the feathered edges of the text behind it.
The rest of the text I added was placed mainly in the bottom left hand side of my magazine cover. Each of the font styles vary to make my magazine stand out and to ensure my magazine cover doesn't bore my audience. Other flashes were used to stand out against the key image in the backgroup - showing key information about what the magazine includes.
Now that my magazine cover is completed it can be viewed on my 'Final Products' section on my blog.
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