ANALYSIS AND DESCONSTRUCTION OF MY HORROR MOVIE MAGAZINE FRONT COVER

The inspiration for my film magazine front cover came from the Total Film Magazine. The target audience for this magazine is keen film lovers and film fanatics. I also want to aim my magazine at people of this category so I chose to base my magazine based on this real media product. I in particular chose the above Total Film magazine because it is a character poster and reveals one of the main characters and this is what I planned to do for my magazine front cover. I also really liked the layout of this magazine front cover because it is simplistic, yet includes a lot of important and intriguing information.

EDITING THE MAIN IMAGE

The image I took is of a young girl who is one of the characters in our film. She is of the young age (relating to target audience of our film) and is wearing stereotypical, normal teenage clothes so that the target audience for our film feels that they can relate to the character.

I then decided to keep this image as the background of my magazine as the background she is against is plain. I used the blend tool to go over the photo frame and the football so that it matches the rest of the background and isn’t visible. I then decided that the image I have chosen looks fairly innocent and too sweet, so I chose to edit the brightness, contrast and saturation of my image. First of all, I changed the saturation of my image to black and white to give it an eerie effect and then I used the colour tool to edit the colour of my image to make it slightly bluer than usual to add to the psychological factors and to give it more of a chilling look. I also heightened the contrast and brightness to allow her to look more scary. As I see in most film character magazine front covers, the character is usually staring directly into the audience so that the audience automatically feel part of it. I decided to do this with my character to achieve the same effect as real media products on the audience. I also liked the fact that the lighting of my image was darker on the left than the right of her face which adds to the creepiness of it because it makes her look more sinister.

EDITING THE TITLE (MASTHEAD)

I noticed that on most magazines the title is placed so that it falls behind the main image. This is done so that the image stands out above the title because the image is generally more important than the title and it is what draws the readers in. To follow the conventions of real media products I also decided to bring my title behind my characters head so that she stands out. The colour scheme of my magazine front cover is black, white and bright orange (much like my horror movie poster) and therefore I chose to do the title in bright orange so that is grabs the attention of the audience because it is very dramatic and eye-catching. First of all I inserted the title and then after that I added a slight black outline to the masthead to further how much it stands out and also because I noticed that the titles on most magazines so therefore to follow the conventions, mine should too. After editing the main title, I then added in the word Total into the top of the letter F and then added the date, price and issue number underneath the letter F. I changed the colour of the word Total to white so that it matches my colour scheme but also contrasts with the rest of the masthead so that it is easy for the audience to read. And the date, price and issue number are very small because they aren’t of vital importance for the reader to know but they are placed somewhere that is easy to notice if they do need to read it. The website for the magazine is also placed on the right of the title underneath the letter M. This has been placed on the front cover to promote the magazine, but also for those keen readers who also want to visit the website. Much like other real film magazines, there is usually a website address to inform the readers of.

THE FILM NAME AND TAGLINE

The next thing I added in after adding in the masthead and other small details about the magazine. I then inserted the title of our film, the tagline and the promotion line. As I noticed from other magazines, these are usually placed in the centre of the magazine front cover because they are of high importance. I first of all inserted the title of the film Deactivate right in the centre of the page in large, bright orange writing (not as large as the masthead, however). I placed it in the centre because this is one of the first things that the audience will see and it is of vast importance that they are drawn to the title of the film because it is one of the main promotions of the magazine. After inserting the title of the film, I then added in the tagline (in white) directly underneath. The text for the tagline is smaller because it isn’t as important as the title, however I chose to do it in white so that it stands out against the name Deactivate. Most magazines I have looked at, also have the tagline to promote the film right next to the title of the film. I wanted to make sure that I followed the conventions of real media products so that the audience recognise and feel comfortable with what they are reading. After adding in our tagline, I felt it was necessary to add in a promotion line Film of the year! So that the readers will be drawn in and want to watch the film because it is stated that is the film of the year which adds to the excitement of wanting to watch it. Most magazines also have lines to promote the film such as this one.

EXTRA TEXT AND EDITING THE TEXT

Most magazines, apart from a few of them have extra text on their magazine to promote other things that are in the magazine. This further leads the readers to want to buy it because it gives an exciting preview of the content and it will make the reader to want to read more. The subtitles I did in bright orange so that they stand out and then the main body of text in white to contrast against the subtitle. Adding in this extra text follows the conventions of many film magazines and also attracts more of the film fanatics who will want to buy this magazine. The sub-titles said things such as Sneaky and Extra which will further engage with the readers because they will feel included in the magazine because they will feel that if they buy it then they will know things about different films such as Inception and Insidious which nobody else will know. I then looked at my product after I had inserted all of the features and decided that the text looked very uninteresting and too plain, also it didn’t stand out enough to catch the reader’s attention. After realising how unattractive the text was, I then decided to make the most of the benefits of Photoshop and edit the text to make it look more eye-catching. I added in a black outline to some of the white text so that it is clear to see and I also gave the title of the film a white outer glow and used the bevel and emboss tool to make it stand out. I definitely feel that the outer glow around the title of the film added to the sinister look of the magazine symbolising the psychological/slasher sub-genre of our horror movie trailer. It is important that the readers notice the sinister look when seeing this magazine front cover because that is one of the main features of our trailer. However, I didn’t want the text to be difficult to read, so I didn’t go too over the top, just subtly added effects to the text to make it more interesting but meaning that it is still very clear to read.