UNIT01-A01

How Genres Have Developed?

Film Magazines

Firstly I will be looking at ʻTradeʼ magazines, these are magazines which are sold and targeted towards people what are working within a particular industry whether its film or mechanics.

Kine Weekly is a UK based film magazine that run from 1889 until 1971. It was originally called ʻOptical Magic Lantern Photographic Enlargerʼ and was changed to Kine Weekly in 1907. The magazine was own by Odhams. Inside it has new adverts for films, exhibitions that were specially for trade organizations. One other thing that Kine Weekly included was it had a index of all box office records, this made the magazine very popular.

Todays Cinema was created in 1957 (called Daily Cinema then), was is the US rival to Kine Weekly. It was designed not for consumer and was 100% a trade magazine only.

In 1975, Kine Weekly and Todays Cinema came together to create Screen International. It started out just focusing on the UK film market but soon expanded to cover global films. Today it is owned by EMAP and comes out weekly, it also has a popular website called www.screendaily.com.

Its biggest rivals are Variety and Hollywood Reporter.

Lucy Taylor

Next I am going to look at ʻfan and consumer magazinesʼ, these are magazines which are targeted at film viewers, they tend to have more consumer and entertainment content rather than informational content.

Motion Picture Story Magazine, was created in 1913 and ran throughout the ʻsilent eraʼ of films. This magazine included news and reviews but most importantly it used to run the entire plots of films, as it felt it was helping the audience not miss out on the content of the films that they unable to go watch. During its run, it became more of a star magazine, by focusing on the stars life and the glamor of films rather than the films themselves.

Next we have Picturegoer, this was created in the 1940ʼs, it started a serious film magazine however soon started focusing on the glamour of both the television and film industry. It was aimed hugely at women who would want that lifestyle. In the 1950ʼs television became a huge part of everyones life and because of this Picturegoer became more Television based content. Later on it merged with the pop magazine ʻDisc Dateʼ, in order to draw in a larger readership. In 1960 the magazine closed.

Empire magazine started in 1989, and set out to stay focused on the films themselves. It has stayed this way, and is very review driven, with both independent and multiplex films. Today it stands as one of, if not the most popular film magazine along with Total Film, it has a ABC of 194,00 and a strong and respected online presence.

Lucy Taylor

Thirdly I am looking at intellectual film magazines, these view film as a art from and feel it should be respected like a portrait or sculpture.

The Monthly Film Bulletin ran from 1934 until 1991 and was aimed at cinema owners so they could see what films to book. At first it was primarily used as a listings magazine as it showed the films, dates, times and places of showing. In the 50ʼs it changed when David Robertson became the editor, it started to take a critical stance on the film industry. In the 70ʼs

it started to get a very artsy reputation because of its Marxist views on films and the industry.

Sight & Sound magazine was published by the British Film Institute (BFI), It was created to promote and document the UK film industry. In 1991 it merged with The Monthly Film bulletin. Today it is a very serious, critical and dry magazine with mostly made up of synopsis's and full credits.

Little White Lies is a independent British film magazine which is bi-monthly. The magazine includes 6 different sections to it, a lead review, an editorial introduction, a series of articles

inspired my the feature film, theatrical reviews. the back section and future releases. The way Little White Liars reviews films is very unique because they use a tripartite ranking system. They use 3 categories, these are marked out of 5 and explained. The categories are anticipation, enjoyment and in retrospect) The magazine is published by a Creative Agency called Church Of London. It was first issue was published in 2005, however the first edition which is called Edition Zero was created my co-founder Danny Miller for his final project at university in 2001. The magazine is very well recognized within the UK and is sold is various leading stores such as WHSmith and Urban outfitters. It has won Best Designed Consumer Magazine of the Year at the Magazine Design & Journalism Awards and is know being sold also is many of Britons leading independent cinemas such as picture house. The covers of the all editions are created around the feature film which is selected for that certain issue. However they don't just put the films promotional poster and the cover, they create new images using ideas from the posters, stars or the film itself.  This gives and creative and stylish effect to the cover because it makes it stand out and look bold. “film is art but far more design led”.

Lucy Taylor

Sub-genres - Culture

Fangoria is a US magazine that was started in 1978, and created to focus on science fiction films. However after Dawn Of The dead. In the 80ʼs because of the huge home video and video nasties, the magazine became a huge success. Since then its continued to grow and develop, it has now expanded to have themed festivals, film productions and even a radio brand.

Supernatural is a independent magazine created in Devon, England and was created to tap into the success of hammer horror genre. The coverage is mostly of monsters, supernatural and with creative practitioners. Today is hugely based on the behind the scenes of science fiction and really looking at how the films are made.

SFX started in 1995 by future publishing and became by just covering science fiction films, however today it also looks into cult, TV, novels, comics and web culture. It is a popular magazine and has a huge ʻnerd cultureʼ following.

TV Media

The Film Programme was created by the BBC in 1972 and is still running today. It has had a variety of presenters and they have really altered the style of the show with their personal tastes and opinions on the TV industry. It includes reviews and interviews and is mostly studio based.

Lucy Taylor

Key Trends

Industry magazines have developed either to be exclusively about the industry and so are B2B and not available on newsstands, OR have evolved into high brow critical evaluations of film.Consumer magazines have grown from being aimed primarily at a female audience to being more fan-boy male orientated. Looking at Empire and Total Film these are both consumer magazines with a focus on Blockbuster, multi-plex titles rather than art house indy.The written word is still the most popular medium to express critical views, however, the popularity of the Kermode and Mayo podcast shows that verbal responses on radio (or podcast) are being to grow in popularity.The niche magazines that focus on one sub-genre tend to be focused on horror and Sci-fi - both genres that are flexible enough to allow for new and interesting content, but also are aimed at a hardcore fan-base.

Lucy Taylor