In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

(Movie Magazine)

Conventions of a magazine

I began researching media products that could be sold along side my trailer to produce ancillary sales. I started by looking at most popular modern movie magazine conventions and how their layout is used to entice its audience. The main conventions that I have noticed through my researches are:• Mast Head – making the magazine instantly recognisable to the audience.• Variety of fonts – will be used to make the cover more appealing and interesting to look at.• Central image – showing a celebrity/actor directly GAZING at the ready creating a bond, making

the audience feel connected to whoever they may be reading about.• Address the article – within the magazine, TAG LINES or COVER LINES will be used.• Colour palette – most magazine covers include a specific colour palette that is recognisable to

the magazines audience.• Strap lines – are also added to the magazine covers, usually highlighting the main

actors/celebrities that are announced within the magazine.

Research into “Total Film”I have begun by looking at some random Total Film cover magazines and looked at the conventions of cover magazine making present on these.

• Mast head - in each cover the mast head is presented roughly in the same way. In this way allows the audience to get used and familiar with the logo and e able to recognize the magazine quickly.

• Fonts – the fonts displayed in each cover comply to the conventions of magazines by following the use of variety of different fonts per page.

• Central Image – although the images used range in size from mid-shot to close-up, the layout, stance and gaze of the characters are all very similar.

• Colour Palette – the majority of magazines companies tend ti stick fairly closely to the idea of using the same colour palette for each of their designs in order to make them recognisable to their audience however, ‘Total Film’ designs each of their covers to specific colour palettes but each individual cover is different, even the mast head changes colour. This idea challenge the conventions.

• Tag Lines and Strap Lines – when comparing these magazine cover designs I noticed that they all incorporated strap lines to promote the actors and celebrities featured in their articles, but only few of them promote the articles within by using tag lines with details of the cast of the movie. As we can see from the bottom right image the cover is left basically completely empty, a part of the image and the tag line which relates to the image, but at the same time it made up by just few words, and this challenge the magazine covers conventions.

Designing my Movie Magazine Cover

When I started to layout my magazine cover I looked at some ‘Total Film’ cover and chose the one that most captured my attention and I tried to replicate it as much as possible so that it would look as professional as it could.

Personally I believe that I made a good job on my movie cover magazine. It not only mirror the design of modern movie magazine covers, but it includes all the key conventions that should be within the design.

For example I have fitted a mast head, recreating the ‘Total Film’ logo so that my cover would fit in with today market. I have also included cover stories, taglines and tried to keep to a subtle colour palette throughout. I am very pleased with the fact that I have been able to reproduce the ‘Total Film’ logo, even though it is not exactly the same, the very few differences are not very noticeable and I think that on the shelf along side the others it would not be out of place.

My Final DesignAfter constructing my cover to include the character shot I was able to step away from the computer and begin gaining feedbacks for my product.

The writing was design like most of the ‘Total Film’ designs to frame the cover image which I feel has been successful, it fits in with the magazines I have researched even though it does challenge some of their designs.