2. Magazine Cover To begin research for my film magazine cover, I looked on google at magazines such as ‘Empire’ and ‘Total Film’. I started looking at the title, colours, images and layout of each cover and started laying it out individually into my own. I used the ‘total film’ idea as the title because I preferred it to ‘empire’ as it’s a lot more clear to what type of magazine it is as it clearly states ‘film’. I didn’t full use ‘total film’ because I wanted to make it my own, so I just stuck to ‘film’. I placed it behind Chris’ head because I wanted to be able to see the image clearer than the title, as Chris is the main character in my trailer and if the title was arranged before his head, then it wouldn’t be clear what the magazine was about. I used this picture because it shows off Chris’ character’s personality. He’s supposed to be a typical teenage boy that plays a lot of girls, and I asked him to act cocky and ‘hero-like’ so he pulled this pose. He’s wearing uniform because the ‘film’ is set in school like John Tucker Must Die, as I followed the typical conventions of that trailer, and I used the basic story line but tweaked it a little. I wrote the film title ‘Something About Hiles’ in bigger writing than the rest because the typical magazine covers have the main features in bigger writing to capture attention. If you had a main article on a celebrity and had the bigger writing stating the diet page (for example) you wouldn’t buy it, plainly because you want the magazine for the celebrity. I used a lot of different fonts and sizes because I thought it would look a lot better in a range of texts. I used Empire magazine as my influence for the text and subtitles etc and what to write for them. I wrote about some new upcoming films from IMBD, including Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II, Scream 4 etc. All the films featured are upcoming movies for 2011 which I think made it a lot more authentic. I put a banner in because I wanted to fill the space on his shirt, I think usually I’d of put a photograph of an upcoming movie but that meant I’d of had to use another student’s trailer because I’d have to take my own photos and then that would contrast with the authenticity of using real films that are actually in the cinema, rather than made up films. I added in a barcode to make it look real and authentic, along with the date, price and the film magazine website. For the Spy Kids reference, the names ‘Alexa Vega and Darryl Sabara’ are the real actors that play the spy kids characters. Bradley Cooper is also mentioned for the ‘gossip’ section, which I like because it makes Chris’ name stand out and look like a real celebrity.

3. These are the two magazine covers that I used as influence to create my cover. The title was mainly looking at Total Film because I think Empire isn’t obvious enough as a title, to me, as a film magazine. I only realised it was a film magazine because of Harry Potter’s face on the cover then the ‘massive preview special’ beside it. I changed the font to a slightly relaxed one because I didn’t want it looking really serious as the image on the front is quite laid back and non-formal. I have the film’s title purposely bigger than the rest of the text because it’s the main feature of the magazine, even though the ‘total film’ cover has put ‘Ultimate Summer Preview’ the biggest because reading that, you want to know WHAT the ultimate summer preview is. The same with Empire; ‘Massive Preview Special!’ which I also used in my cover underneath ‘Something About Hiles’, to attract the audience into what the article about the film is actually about. When you see the word ‘Special’ on a magazine cover, it’s automatically going to be all about one certain celebrity/film/band etc therefore it makes the fans want to buy it. The yellow stripes at the bottom was taken from the Empire cover. I noticed that they’re in grey, but I wanted to change the colour a little bit and you wouldn’t have been able to see them very clearly if they were grey, due to the darkness of the image behind. I put an upcoming film name on top of the yellow stripes just like Empire did, but only with one and the release date in a different font beneath. I put a barcode into the corner to make it look authentic and like an actual magazine cover that’s sold in the stores, along with the date, price and film magazine website. The slogan beneath the major title is also ‘copied’ from Empire. I tweaked it a little bit to make it ‘England’s Biggest Movie Magazine’ rather than the World’s, because my film trailer is British etc.

4. Choice of image: I chose this image because it shows his character off really well. In the trailer, Chris’ character is meant to be stuck up, cocky and very flirtatious. This ‘super hero’ pose shows that off quite well I thought, the way he has a cheeky smirk across his face is quite obnoxious. I kept it as the background because the wall was a suitable background to write on with different colours etc. I put a black rectangle shape into the side, but cut it out and lowered the opacity because on the Empire magazine there is a small grey block that just looks like a tab leaking into the next page which makes you want to read on. Also I took the asterisk idea which makes you want to read on. I put it by Chris’ name because he’s the star of ‘Something About Hiles’ and looking at that, it’s clear that there is a lot more to read. I took this idea because it’s a good idea to fill up the page with lots of film names. I purposely changed the ‘45’ to ‘50’ because I wanted to make it my own and not as if I’d totally copied it. I put ‘Summer 2011!’ because I wanted it to be up to date, which is why I used IMBD for the upcoming movies of summer 2011. The barcode makes the magazine cover look authentic and like a genuine magazine cover. I took this image off Google. Choice of colours: Chris’ hair was the starting point of this cover. (not in a mick take way). I used this to start using other colours to contrast with it, such as blue, red and pink, and then used different colour texts and boxes like green and yellow. I purposely put a lot of colours in so it looks busy and full. I like that it looks busy, there’s a lot going on in the magazine and I like the idea that they’re real films included in a false magazine cover. I used two different shades of blue because I didn’t want it to look to same-ish and boring because it’s the same font. I tried linking all the colours with a font- eg ‘England’s best movie magazine’ is linked with the red movie titles at the bottom. Choice of fonts: I used a variety of eight fonts in total on my magazine cover. I did this purposely because I didn’t want it to look all the same and boring. The subtitles that are the same font are linked some how. Like the two subtitles that are ‘ talks girls ’ and ‘ March 18th ’ are written in Lucida Console and they’re both adding to the title above. March 18 th is the release date for ‘Desert Flower’ and ‘talks girls’ is linked with Bradley Cooper’s feature page.

5. Putting this magazine cover together in Adobe Photoshop was quite a simple task. I have learned skills with Photoshop and I researched into the magazine covers a lot with my AS magazine work. I enjoyed this task the most because of the skills I have with the software, and the ideas behind putting together a cover. It challenges conventions of real magazine covers because I have a lot more fonts and texts included in mine. I did this because it’s a lot more unusual to see a magazine cover that’s ‘swamped’ in writing. I think the fact that there’s so many new upcoming movies featured in the subtitles that it would be a good unique selling point because people that are into films want to know everything about every movie, not just one. Although the cover is obviously featuring Chris who plays my main character in my trailer, I included a total of eight other films and four different people with interviews: Chris Weare, Bradley Cooper, Alexa Vega and Darryl Sabara. I think the more you let the audience know that’s actually in the magazine, the more buyers you’ll receive. But then again, it’s like a trailer. You don’t want to reveal the funniest parts of a comedy trailer so you reveal the averagely funny parts before getting to the climax. I could argue both sides of having all of the text on my cover. Looking at it from one point of view, it looks ridiculously busy and overcrowded, however seeing all the upcoming film names, interviews and the massive preview special of Something About Hiles shows that the cover is showing off the amount it has inside it and that could also make ‘fans’ want to buy it. Usually on magazine covers, you only get one celebrity name in a larger font on the side to attract the audience, then if others are featured they get a small mention in the centre or in small print beneath the subtitles. I decided to make my film title the biggest of all the fonts and have Chris Weare and Bradley Cooper about the same size. ‘Chris Weare’ is written a little bit smaller but it’s in bold so it’s still as noticeable as ‘Bradley Cooper’. I wanted to include two main interviews because it’s a ‘massive preview special’ which means it’s a special issue of the magazine, so why not make it a little out of the ordinary? The two other mentions of actors in this cover are the two stars of ‘Spy Kids’. They get a small mention in the centre on the pink strip, because they’re not the main feature of the magazine, yet I still wanted to show off that there is more to read than just Bradley Cooper’s love interest and Chris Weare’s perspective of the new film he’s starring in. I used real celebrities names because I wanted it to be authentic rather than obviously false. I purposely didn’t involve photos/print screens of other movies because I’d of had to use other student’s work to put in, and because I wanted it to look authentic and real, I decided against it as it would of made it clear that the whole ‘Something About Hiles’ phenomenon was completely made up. I didn’t write anything other than film titles on the cover because it makes the audience want to read on about what the magazine has to say about that film. For example, I wrote the release date and title of the new film ‘Desert Flower’. March 18 th wasn’t the actual release date, but I wanted to put it as March because I’d previously put the date ‘March 2011’ at the top by the price and it just made sense to put a recent or upcoming date by the movie title. This is where I placed the yellow stripes underneath. I lowered the opacity of each stripe so the ‘Desert Flower’ and release date were clearly readable and still looked good. I think the idea of the stripes is just to catch attention which works on mine, it’s one of the first places that I look. I like that it’s kind of surrounded by the film titles and the barcode. It’s tucked underneath ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II’ and it just fills the space perfectly. Without that I think it’d look too empty. I also purposely fitted the text around the image. Some of the writing overlaps onto his jacket or shirt but it’s okay because his tie is in full view which shows he’s a high school student and the film is a high school romantic comedy so it all works out.

6. Feedback I asked Laura and Eden to analyse carefully and talk about my magazine cover. I videoed it so here is the link to the audio of them speaking. Please look at this version of my magazine cover whilst listening as Youtube has made the picture quite fuzzy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUhngNrWdn4

7. Conventional Magazine Covers I looked at a variety of other covers and I noticed that they’re all very similar. I didn’t want to change mine too much but I tweaked it tiny amounts so that it was my own and a little bit unique. I have mostly followed the typical conventions of magazine covers and kept it quite similar due to influence and authenticity. I didn’t want it to look more like a poster than a magazine cover so I did my best to keep to the conventions of a real film cover. I stuck mostly with ‘Empire’ magazine as stated previously, but I also used the influence of the music magazines that we created last year for AS as a starting point. Most covers traditionally have the title in big, bold and clear writing with a celebrity/star of a film overlapped across the front. Each subheading is usually fitted around the person on the cover, and there is usually an advert for an upcoming movie, previous movie special or a competition to do with a certain film. I noticed that ‘Total Film’ tend to have their subheadings for the feature magazine in the centre of the page, underneath the photo but still overlapping. A lot of the bigger titles are generally in the centre of the magazine. I gathered that this is to grab attention as well as advertise the film/celebrity/special issue that the magazine is featuring. I still stuck to having my main feature on the side in bigger writing because it’s a lot more traditional in which sense I challenged this convention because it’s different to a real film magazine. However; I did involve something in the lower centre of my magazine- I put a clear, pink banner leaking in from the right side stating that the magazine features an interview with the Spy Kids stars, which is in averagely big writing so it does capture attention of the audience I’m aiming for. This cover wasn’t specifically aimed at just the audience of my film trailer, as I contained other films such as Final Destination 5 and Scream 4 which are not suitable for the age range I chose for my film. So it’s aimed at all ages, but it’s obviously a special issue as it states below the film title. I also noticed how all of the images featured on Total Film magazine are in the centre of each cover. I did use this convention in my cover because I wanted to fit the writing around it and make it look authentic and like an actual cover. I saw that Total Film don’t really use an awful lot of text, so each issue must be a feature on that particular celebrity/film whereas mine’s a lot more versatile.