Primary Research of Film Magazine Covers

As with the posters of films, I looked at a selection of film magazine covers, from a variety of magazines, and did analyses of each one. I looked at Empire, Sight and Sound and Little White Lies. From doing this I am able to draw a list of codes and conventions for covers of film magazines and therefore put these into my magazine cover for my film.

Analysis of Sight and Sound magazine cover, June 2009 issue

The main focus of the cover is the picture of actress Penelope Cruz, dressed in costume, hair and make up for her character in her new film Broken Empbraces of which is a top story in this issue of the magazine, with a preview of Cannes Fetival, of which it is promoting in red capitals in a hand written style font above her head. To the left of her piture in large bold black font is her name and then beneath are lines of text about people and films featured in the magazine. The title, issue date etc of the magzine are at the top of the page, although not a main focus.

 Analysis of Empire magazine cover, May 2010 issue

 The cover of the magazine is akll in bright colours, with the amin focus being the three films characters, staggered on the page. From left to right they are, Iron Man, Robin Hood and the Prince of Persia. Bold font across the chests of each of the characters tells us this. The text to the right of the names says, "Three world beating on set exclusives", this indicates that the magazine contains three interviews from the sets of each of these three films which are set to be blockbusters this summer. At the bottom of the page are extra notes of other contents of the magazine. The title, logo and issue date ofthe magazine are at the top of the page, although slightly obscured by the heads of the three characters.

Analysis of Little White Lies magazine cover, April/May 2010 issue

The background of the cover is a bright eye catching pink and the rest of the page is a head and shoulder hand drawn image of the main character, in costume, from the film Kick Ass. The same pink which is used as the background colour of the cover is also used on the characters face, coming from his forhead and lip, but representing blood from wounds. His left shoulder has white hand written font saying The Kick Ass Issue, implying that this film is going to have a lot of attention in this issue. Unlike the other magazines the logo, title, issue date etc of the magazine is over the top of the image in a circle containing the text in the forehead of the characters image.




Analysis of Sight and Sound magazine cover, March 2010 issue

Once again there is a character from a major film as the main focus of the cover, in costume for the character, this month it is Colin Firth from the film A Single Man. The background of the cpover is not a black colour but a black and white faded image of an eye. Down the left of the page is handwritten font with the films and poeple who are featured in this issue, with A Single Man and Colin Firth being in larger font than the others, indicating that this film is a main focus of the magazine. The title, logo and issue date of the magazine are on the top two corners of the magazine in bright yellow boxes.







Codes and conventions of magazine covers

• Main charater(s) from an anticipated film as main image
• Simple background colour or image, so as not to detract attention from the image
• Text about the film is larger than other text about magzine contents
• Title of the magazine is at the top of the page