Magazine Cover Analysis
There are four different types of film magazine covers, which can all create a different effect and can attract different audiences. These different types are actor, character, action shot and staged action shot.
Actor
This type of magazine cover is where an image, usually a headshot, of the main actor or actress of the featured film. In the image, they appear to dressed as themselves rather than their character from the film. This can be effective as it can draw in the attention of people who are interested in the actor/actress rather than the film they are appearing in.
Action Shot
This is a typically used magazine cover and usually features a screenshot from a scene from the movie. The image usually includes action which allows readers to get a small glimpse of the movie and draws in their interest. It leaves the reader to question what happened in order for that scene to occur.
Character
On this type of magazine cover it usually features an image of the actor portraying their character. The character shown is normally one of the most prominent character in the movie. For example Ghostface is the main anatagonist in Scream.
Staged Action Shot
Staged action shots shows the actors hold a pose as their respective characters from the film.
Our Analysis's
The 'Scream' magazine front cover would be a very interesting thing to try and copy. This front cover shows the most recent Evil Dead re-make. With this, they also involve the background picture as a shot from the re-make of the Evil Dead film but also include a shot of the original at the bottom. At the side, it includes the famous horror director Eli Roth, another famous film director Micheal J Bassett and Elijah Wood, more famously known for being in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The cover uses dark colours which creates a dark feel to it and urges towards the fact that it is most likely about darker things such as horror films involving gore and death.
The 'Total Film' magazine cover would be very effective to base a template on if we were to create a generic cover for a movie magazine rather than a magazine targeted at a certain niche audience such as 'Scream' or 'Neo'. This cover features several movies from several different genres. The main headline on the cover is for 'Skyfall' meaning that at the time of publication the most popular film would receive the most promotion prior to release.
The cover for this issue of 'Empire' features a close of Heath Ledger portraying The Joker in 'The Dark Knight'. Once again the most critically acclaimed film has taken the limelight of the front cover. Additionally it can be noted that short sub headings have been used to tease articles featured within the magazine. Very little text is located in the mid section of the cover it is mainly located in the heading and side of the cover, this is most likely done so the promotional image of the film can be seen clearly. Initially, it appears that this cover is for a horror oriented magazine due to The Joker appearing on the cover however mentions movies from other genre such as 'The Hobbit' and 'Hancock' meaning that similarly to 'Total Film' this magazine targets a mass audience.
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The cover for this issue of 'Entertainment Weekly' features Keanu Reeves. This is mostly due this issue of the magazine being from the early 90s. By featuring an extremely famous actor would draw the attention of customers in a store to pick up the magazine. The text mentions a brief review of 'Speed' stating that it is an "excellent adventure' meaning that it is promoting the film and advertising it to convince audiences to go and watch the film as in those times film reviews couldn't be found online so people relied on reviews in magazines to influence what they want to see in the cinema.
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The idea for our own magazine cover
Th plan for our magazine cover is that we are going to solely involve the killer and not any victim. This is because in the magazines we have analysed that have any connotation of horror, have the antagonist as the prominent figure. So basically, we are going for a character shot of the killer alone to be similar to the ways in which magazines like Entertainment did to infamous horror films like Scream.
In this mock design of a magazine cover we could produce I have drawn attention to this main aspects that make up a magazine cover. By clearly identifying these features when it comes to produce our final cover we can clearly see which aspects we have included and which features we could improve on including in order to make the final product look more aesthetically pleasing.