Empire Magazine Cover Analysis - Hunger Games

AF

Sight and Sound Analysis

EJ

Magazine Cover Analysis - Little White Lies

One of the key themes within Little White Lies magazine covers is the use of a strong central image created in a style of an illustration. The colours generally carry connotations of the style and tone seen within the film, here the orange and yellow creating a sense of the colours used within the film. A mother defining factor is the use of very little or no text, often only the title of the film is seen, allowing for a minimalistic them and style which follows the overall artistic feel of the cover. The title being in a recreation of a puff style works really well, allowing for the strong central image to be the main focus, while all other text and details needed are viewable but not complicatedly distracting away from the image. The floral image with the outline image over the top works really well, being clear well still artistic and abstract. Another common feature in the way in which the magazine world is through the use of the illustration itself, where commonly the magazine will employ someone to create an illustration for the cover, which is something I may do myself, possibly drawing it on paper and then developing this on the computer suing Adobe illustrator as well as Adobe Photoshop. In terms of how other Little White Lies covers compare, this is definitely one of my personal favourites, as the colour, mixed with the black as well as the contrasting white for the title draws the viewers eye on and works around the page. There is little detail, but is just enough, and slightly abstract to keep the cover interesting and attention grabbing.     

EL

Empire Magazine Cover Analysis - Sherlock

I produced this booklet using simplebooklet.com simplebooklet.com

 AF

Little White Lies Magazine Research

For my magazine, I have been largely interested in the more arty, minimalist style such as Little White Lies or Sight and Sound, with the simple titles and clean layout of text. I particularly like the Little White Lies covers, which employ simplistic style through the illustration on the cover, and minimal text to create the overall minimalist style. The commonly employ an illustrator to create the covers, which is a concept I really like. The title itself sits in an variation of a Puff, with the white standing off the background making the title clear. The only text commonly viewable on the cover is the title of the featured movie, as seen above to be Attack the Block, and Drive. My favourite cover out of all three is the far right drive cover, and is something I will work closely with. The Sight and Sound magazines are not my favourite, however they employ a great technique allowing the text to sit on the page without being to distracting. The main central images are clear, and idea I might use in my cover, however I am thinking about merging the two styles to create an illustrated cover like Little White Lies, and laying minimalist, non varied colour text over the top in the style of Sight and Sound. In particular I like the Shame cover, where the text is all right alined and uses bold fonts and non bold fonts to create a form of sub headings and main text. This is something I want to use within my own cover. Noticeable things about all covers are that the title of the magazine is commonly at the top, a trope my magazine will conform to. As well as this, the title of the film the cover shows is at the bottom, something I will also follow. The text is commonly placed around the central image and rarely over it, which is again something I will do. As for the main image, the Little White Lies covers normally use colour and vary in colour, which is something I will use to help my cover stand out.

EL

Empire Magazine Research

As I'm targeting a mass market in my magazine, I researched Total Film and Empire. These two magazines are very similar in style and I will aim to adhere to these conventions. You can see many different conventions which are used throughout, notably the large title behind the central image and a tag line above the title. In these magazines, a lot of action is going on in the cover with a lot of different parts, given a cluttered but specific feel.

I extremely like the use of a bar to showcase other films, this gives the cover a professional feel that I hope to replicate. The title of the film is also shown centrally, and covers the whole page. I also hope to include a puff to showcase another film along with a bar at the bottom, giving a brief teaser to what's inside the magazine. 

AF

Sight and Sound Magazine Research

When researching into current magazines, I found the ways in which they present their content to the audience greatly varied. Magazines such as Empire and Total Film cater for a mass audience, making content easily visible on the front cover so the potential consumer is aware of the best features. Magazines such as these, vastly advertise their content, selling the magazine on the content rather than the name. Despite this, it could be suggested that film fanatics are also interested in these mainstream magazines, as the advertisement content at the back includes fan paraphernalia. 

In contrast, magazines such as Clash and Little White Lies aim at a niche audience, primarily featuring arthouse and indie films. As people buy these types of magazines for the name and reputation, minimal advertising is present on the front cover giving it a very professional and minimalist feel. Sight and Sound magazine strikes a contrast between mass audience and indie magazines, showing interest in both areas. For my own work, even though I prefer the design of magazines such as Clash, I want to create a cross between Sight and Sound and Empire. I believe that this will strike a balance between stylised design and practicality, testing my abilities to  produce a convincing magazine.

EJ 

Institutional Analysis - Empire

AF

Institutional Analysis - Little White Lies

EL

Institutional Analysis - Empire

EJ

Poster Research - Blue Ruin

EJ

Poster Research - Moon

EJ

Poster Research - Burning Man

EJ

Poster Research - The Revenant

EL

Poster Research - Enemy

EL

Poster Research - Looper

EL

Poster Analysis - Scarface

AF

Poster Analysis - 7 minutes

I produced a video to analyse the 7 minutes poster, when the video uploaded the colours in the video became much more muted, and therefore the red has turned into an orange shade. The original poster can be seen below.

AF

Poster Analysis - Ex Machina

AF

Poster Research

Here are some of my favourite posters, I particularly like both the use of red and black and think that they complement each other well. I also found that looking at different posters for the same film was particularly interesting and seeing the differences between them. All of these posters have a key central image and that is certainly something that I need to be looking at when producing my own.

AF