Magazine Conventions

By Jack Suddaby

SCARS – Magazine AnalysisThis is the main title and it shows conventions of horror with the static like red having connotations with blood and evil.

Here are the cover lines which highlight the main features that will appear in the magazine, they are followed by a conventional section of extra information, they both follow conventions of horror magazines because of the typography being red and sharp like, to give connotations of evil.

This is the main image and the focal point of the page, it will be the main character or a main iconic image of the film, which will be the iconic image to represent the film or just something to make the film stand out the most; there is also direct mode of address which lures the viewer in, as the character is looking directly at the audience.

This cover does not hold usual conventions of horror as the colours do not reflect horror, however the main focal image (again giving direct mode of address) looks suitable for a horror film, from the make-up etc.

They have also used the star system by promoting their major actor ‘Johnny Depp’, because this magazine promotes several films, they have tried to keep the cover more moderate so it doesn’t cancel out any other genre eg. Action Adventure

This also follows the conventional three part structure (shown by the red lines) : 1st section is the title of the magazine and the sub-title, the 2nd section is the main image and occasional cover lines, and the 3rd section is what is included in the magazine and the stars name or the movies name.

This is a British Magazine that publishes just movies, they have an extremely iconic style as they just have one main image and the there logo, which is the white circle at the conventionally placed top Little White Lies

Shows the title with conventional colours in contrast to the black background. The main image is using direct mode of address and is covered in convention red blood. The image is also extremely stylized giving a rather comic book, ‘posterised’ effect.

This again follows the conventions of the Little White Lies magazines, with the direct mode of address and the comic book style, it also involves the mane feature within the film, being the girl.

This is the original image uploaded on to my Photoshop, I took this image on a standard Panasonic camera with a flash, I also gave the person some make-up (some parts of white and black) and I put her hair over her face, to give a feel of horror.

This is the second image (horror) which I found on a royalty free website. I used ‘ctrl-t’ to scale it over the original and position it so the mouth and eyes are in line, I then clicked ‘enter’ to confirm changes.

I then selected the horror image and from the drop down box I selected ‘Multiply’ which blended the two images together.

I then needed to show the original more, so I double clicked the horror image and from ‘Blending Options’ I changed the ‘Opacity’ down to 63%, which made me see the original much clearer, but still not loose that horror like effect.

I then used the selection tool to move the image more over the eyes to correct the lining of both images to make it look smoother.

Here I selected the ‘circle’ tool and went round the subjects eyes, and then selected ‘Brightness/Contrast’ (Bottom right) to change the colour of her eyes to black.

This is what the eye looked like with the black over the eyes, but I decided it would be better to get the entire eye black including the white surrounding the pupil.

Here is the final looking eye were the entire eye is black, I also was sure to keep the reflection in the eye to make it look more realistic.

This is what the image looks like with the horror image ‘hidden’; so as you can see both eyes are fully black and the rest has been un-edited.

I then selected the rubber tool, and made the ‘Harness’ at ‘0’ which enabled a very smooth finish, this was to correct the outlines of the eyes, so it looked much smoother.

Once I merged the layers again, I wanted to change the actual original image colour, so I completely lowered the saturation, to give a black and white effect, and I also increased the lightness

I finally wanted to lower the mixture more from 63% down to 32%, which then showed more of the original in comparison to the horror image so that way it would have greater connections to my own film.

Finally I gained the Offset and gained the Gamma Correction, to give me my final image

Original Image Edited Image

I then needed to add the title and because I have researched into the ‘Little White Lies’ magazine collection, and because they are a British film magazine they would be ideal to hold my cover.