Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Magazine Cover Colour Palette

Here is the colour palette featuring all the colours that we used on our front cover. We chose the conventional horror colours black and red/maroon to be a part of our main colour theme to represent the theme and genre of the movie and of course, red portrays the bloodshed in the production. We felt that by adding the gold would incorporate and represent the exclusive 'horror review special' edition of the magazine and can attract Empire collectors into buying this magazine and then therefore watching our film. We decided to change the colour of the font according to the background colour so that visibility is at a good quality for the reader, plus highlighting or underline important elements that we feel should be noticed. We challenged conventions to a point where we used a grey scale image but we have researched and displayed that this has happened before, so we may be supporting the development of this particular convention. I feel that by sticking to only a few colours with black and white, creates a sense of professionalism and doesn't overwhelm the reader with too many elements and colours. 

Our Magazine Cover Production Process

Here are various steps that we took out to create our final magazine cover:

Here are the main elements that we built on to create our final magazine cover. By adding conventional elements to the magazine such as a barcode, price and date makes the cover look more professional and realistic. For the 'Empire' masthead we thought that incorporating the syringe would further help to link both our trailer and poster to the magazine cover. It also seems to develop the typical convention of the 'Empire' masthead, but with previous research I realised that many other films tend to manipulate this element: e.g. Tron Legacy:

We decided to chose the image of our main actor screaming, this reflects the open mouth  in our poster. I also feel that is is a modern day response to the image of Norman Bates in the iconic 'Psycho' by Alfred Hitchcock:

Norman Bates


As you can see we have imitated the black and white image and the actors glare is straight at the reader. I believe that not many Empire issues use a greyscale image on the front cover so this can be a way in which we are challenging conventions. We have also incorporated "INTRODUCING THE NEW NORMAN BATES OF HORROR" to help the reader identify this.

After some consideration, we decided to make our issue a 'special collectors edition' and used a colour palette involving a goldish colour to symbolise this along with the banner at the top stating '100 GREATEST HORROR FILMS OF ALL TIME'; as our film is of the horror genre I believe that whoever is interested in our film, will more than likely be interested in reading into other films from the same genre. We also added the same Logo for REDEMPTION alongside our tagline, which yet again links our poster and trailer to our magazine. We had to adjust the colour to suit the dark background, but by using the same font, the public should be able to identify us.

Here is our final magazine cover. We have developed our previous design by aligning our various plugs and pull quotes and by adding a 'sticker' stating that the magazine is a 'HORROR REVIEW SPECIAL'. We have tried to attract readers by including a free poster and other exclusive interviews and reviews, plus adding in a pull quote of the review 'Empire' has given to our film, which should indicate that it is worth watching. I feel that our magazine cover looks very professional and i feel that we have followed typical conventions.

Our main inspiration for our magazine cover was the issue on Heath Ledger:

As you can see the image is greyscale, but this should not have any effect on sales as 'Empire' already has an established reputation. The cover in itself is quite plain but as this is a tribute to a late actor I feel that this is enough to sell the magazine. I believe that we needed plugs and pull quotes as our actor is not established and we would need these to further support our film and help sell the magazine.

Final Images For Our Magazine Cover

We have now decided to use our main villain actor-Ryce Morgan who plays 'Balthazar' to be featured on the front cover of our magazine. We feel that as he is shown much more on our trailer than our final girl we should feature him as the main aspect of our film regarding what the public would see in the trailer. Here are the images we have to chose from:

Empire Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Here I have attempted to recognise the conventions of an Empire Magazine front cover so as to make the process of creating our own much easier and to also make it look more professional:

Mock Magazine Cover Photoshoot

We feel that portraying our final girl as a powerful, intimidating yet feminine and sensual character can bring a new style of convention to the stereotypical image of the final girl. We decided to use the image of our final girl as the main feature on our magazine cover, but as the actress, not necessarily in character . We found a couple of images that we would like to recreate in our own production:

As you can see their gaze is directly at the reader and it somewhat intimidating and powerful as well as attractive. The photographer has used a mid-close up/close up shot of the actress's focusing on the face. I feel this would be a good way to attract male audiences as well as female. The Total film magazine above displays the actress clenching her fists which is yet again a powerful image. It challenges the stereotypical views on women as they seem to be very dominantly displayed in both magazine covers.  

Here is a Mock of the style that we tried to re-create:

As you can see the final girl looks completely out of character and looks quite serious and intimidating. The prop has nothing to do with our plot, but we were just experimenting with different shots and props etc. The glasses do block her gaze but we assume that she is looking straight at the audience. Furthermore, the colour palette of this photograph reflects that of our poster, with the white background with red. 

Magazine Covers Research

As our horror film is to be marketed and featured on a major distributed film magazine, we felt that we would need to follow conventions of well known magazines to make our own front cover look professional and attractive. We personally feel that Empire Magazine would suit our film over Total Film even though they both feature mainstream films, research states that Empire continue to outsell Total Film magazine so I believe that our target audience are more likely going to by Empire over Total Film as it is widely distributed and advertised. We also like the idea of there being a transcript of REDEMPTION available to up and coming fans and film fanatics. Furthermore, Empire is distributed worldwide which I feel would be a good feature that can market our film to different cultures as well as audiences. I also like the idea of a 'spine quote' which could possibly be our tagline. We will now process into creating our own magazine cover.