Magazine Research

A list of all the Film magazines.

Boxoffice
Box office results, top ten, movie reviews.

Bright Lights
One of the best film magazines online that examines classic, commercial, and independent films from a wide range of vantage points from the aesthetic to the political.

Cineaste
Selected articles from the magazine on the art and politics of the cinema.

Close Up
Online UK film magazine. Find reviews, features and interviews for new cinema and dvd releases, articles on independent, low-budget and regional filmmaking, more.

eFilmCritic.com
Australian movie magazine offering film reviews by visitors to the site.

Empire
Features news, reviews, top movies, upcoming releases, box office results (UK), forum, and more.

Errata
Presents collection of essays, reviews, commentary, and discussion about cinema.

Eye For Film
UK site with movie reviews, news, critique and festival coverage.

Film Comment
Quality magazine providing articles on films old and new, foreign and domestic, narrative and documentary.

Film Journal
Movie reviews, news, and interviews for Hollywood, indie, and foreign films.

Film Threat
Covers cult films, underground shorts, alternative films and independent features.

Filmink Magazine
Provides film news and gossip, movie reviews, video and DVD releases, Australian and international film industry information.

Filmmaker Magazine
Presents an insider's perspective on the world of independent filmmaking, including: interviews, case studies, financing and distribution information, festival reports, technical and production updates, and more.

Films in Review
Online version of the oldest film magazine in the US. Find reviews, interviews and feature articles.

Future Movies
British movie review guide features profiles of new movies, cinema releases and latest DVD reviews.

Guardian Unlimited Film
Film news and reviews from the Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Hollywood Reporter
Newspaper providing movie reviews, box office info, entertainment and celebrity news, more.

iF Magazine
US magazine on indie filmmaking.

Images Journal
Quality reviews and analytical articles on old and recent movies, and popular culture.

Inside Film
Provides news and information on the world's film festivals.

Kamera
Intelligent UK magazine that mainly concentrates on arthouse and independent films.

MovieJuice
Hollywood's movie satire site.

movieScope
Magazine explores the various aspects of filmmaking from the perspective of the filmmakers themselves.

MovieMaker
Guide to independent film and filmmaking from around the world.

Premiere
Features Hollywood movie news, reviews and previews, celebrity interviews and inside stories.

Preview
International magazine packed with information on the latest big screen movies.

Rotten Tomatoes
Reviews and previews of Hollywood movies and videos from the nation's critics.

Screen
Online edition of the bollywood weekly magazine offering Indian movie news and interviews with stars.

Screendaily
Daily film industry news from around the globe, reviews from the world's leading festivals and box office comment from every major territory.

Senses of Cinema
Online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema.

Sight and Sound
Well-known magazine from the British Film Institute. Features top ten movies, the best film music, in-depth interviews, retrospective articles and news.

Strictly Film School
Online journal offering a collection of short essays featuring the respective filmmaker's notable films.

Uncut
Popular UK music and film magazine. Features hundreds of music and movie reviews, interviews and news. 

Total Film Magazine front cover deconstruction. 

This magazine front cover is an extremely busy cover with something in every corner to attract an audience to read it.  The main image is a group of four with the picture of them taken from looking up to give the effect of the group being of greater/higher authority than the individuals reading the magazine.  The individuals on the cover are in character giving the other effect that it is not the actor/actress that is of greater importance than the audience and that it is in fact the character itself. The characters shown on the cover are relevant to what is inside the magazine. For an example in this issues case the main film being written about is the ‘x-men’ so the characters are from the film and the audience can make that connection.

The colour scheme of the magazine cover in this case is very dark. I have looked at many other front covers from the same ‘Total Film’ company and have discovered that the title of the magazine displayed at the back of the cover in block, full capital text is usually in white which is a good contrast with the usual bright colours of the cover. However in this case the title of the magazine is in the metal effect fonts with a grey/metallic colour to connect and match the rest of the colour scheme on the cover which are also mostly misty greys and blues. The way the picture of the characters are positioned slightly over lapping the title shows that the magazine is well known and the audience/ readers it already has will recognise the magazine cover by the font or another feature so wouldn’t automatically look out for the stereotypical white title.  

The rest of the text on the covers are following the normal colour white and have added another eye catching colour to then be using the rule of three. This would be the grey, white and orange that would all act to catch new reader’s eyes. Because the whole theme of the magazine cover is quite dark, the white text lights the whole feel of the cover up a little and unlike the normal ‘Total Film’ magazine covers, this issue does not have a bright coloured background with a picture on top, in fact this covers picture is the background.

The usual magazine necessities are included such as the barcode and the ‘puff lines’ which indicate about other features inside of the magazine itself. Competitions are mentioned on the cover slightly highlighting other things which are inside.

New feature films which are released would be on the front of a film magazine which is another great way for advertisement. Not only would the film be advertised to the less enthusiastic members of the population via bus posters, bill boards and television but also to the members of the population who do love film and would by the magazine. The fact the film would be mentioned and talked about inside the magazine would entice the audience who have already seen it but would also attract the people who yet were to still see the film but just want to know the facts about it already and maybe see what other people thought of the film and what the critics had said more importantly.

The other text around the magazine balances out the darkness of the image and lets the reader know what is inside the magazine without having to actually open to the contents page to finds out. The cover has a mixture of bold text and smaller less noticeable text on it to make the reader read around.

The name of the film is first noticeable but the boldness and the way the title has been centred on the cover just underneath the image which relates to the text. There is another group of writing at the bottom of the cover which has been split into three using an orange chequered block which also balances out the white and orange because the text is in white.      

The way in which the Title of the featured film is set out with the tag lines under and so on gives the impression on a skull but the way the magazine has added a simple ‘+’ shape in the same chequered pattern as the separators on the bottom of the cover. This gives the impression that death is featured in the film and that the darkness is to do with death along with the colours of the cover. With the white text at the bottom also shown looks like the skull has teeth.


Deconstruction of empire magazine.

This magazine front cover is for the company called ‘empire’.

This magazine issue was focused on the new feature film called ‘Hellboy’.

The main image is of a character from the featured film. The audience would portray the character on the cover as being the main character as they are the only image on the cover. The fact that the main image takes up most of the space on the cover also shows that the character is quite important as a character in the film. The images main colour is red which is made to stand out by the dark black background. Like the other magazine covers the character on the front is looking straight at the camera. It is extremely rare to find a magazine cover where the person on the front is looking away.  The fact the character is looking straight at the camera adds a personal feel to the audience because of the fact the readers will feel like the character is looking at them.

 The title of the magazine ‘Empire’ is slightly covered by the image which means that the audience would recognise the covers set out/title font to be able to know what the magazine is. The title is written in the same recognisable font and size but for the special featured film the title has taken the effect of being on fire to be in the same theme as the image. For people who have already seen the first of the ‘hellboy’ films would understand that fire is a major part of the film and even if it wasn’t, fire is a connotation of Hell and red. As well as the title being in red there are a few other sections of text which are also in red, for example the date and issue number however apart from that the rest of the text on the cover are in white which balances the black. Along with the white text as ‘puff lines’ underneath them there is a small description of what the page is about. This is the same font as the white text but is a smaller text size which shows the importance of it is quite small. The way the text size goes down shows the order in which the text is most important for an example the title is the biggest and then the ‘puff lines’ or headings are next in size and so on.

There are three colours which are on the front cover which are red, white and beige. This is another rule of three which is used. The use of the three colours was also used on the other covers I have seen like ‘Total film’ which used grey, orange and white. The title of the main featured film in the magazine is centred and is a larger text size than the other text apart from the title. The title of the film is over lapping the picture of the main character but stands out more as the text is white and has good contrast between the red. 

The magazine cover also includes all the normal and stereotypical information such as the barcode, the publisher, issue number and the date.

This cover would work along with the trailer being shown on television. There would be other ways of advertising the film for example on the side of buses and on bill boards. If they all had the same image the audience would make the connection themselves. Seeing as the main character is all red the connection can be easily made as just the character would be an advertisement in itself.  

My Film magazine Drafts 

This is my first draft of my film magazine front cover:

This is the first draft of my magazine cover which was to feature my film. I wanted to keep one feature the same through out all three of my products. I decided that one thing which was quite important was the police notice board. This one image could give a lot away to the audience. On my first draft i took individual parts of the board and over lapped them differently to the poster and how they were on the board in the trailer. This gave a good change from the poster and although looking the same and being recognised as the same film, the layout was different. I took out some of the headlines from the poster which wernt needed because it made the magazine look too full of text. 


For the title of my film i wanted to chose a font where the capital letters would stand out and be considerably larger than the lower case letters. This would make the F, O and other F stand out allowing the readers of my magazine to recognise just the letters/word FOF. I wanted to chose a font that also looked fun and not tied down to one genre for example text that looks scary would be for a horror magazine, therefore because my magazine talks about all genres i needed a broad font type. For this reason i picked a text which looks fun, neat and plain but still gives a good recognisable title.The text and font styles for the tag lines around the magazine i kept the same to keep it consistant through out the cover. This on the otherhand made it look boring and plain which didnt make the rest of the magazine look eye catching.


The one main set of images i had used only covered a third of the magazine so most of the colour was the one background colour coming through. This made the purple background a very dominant colour which wasnt balanced by any other colour on the cover. As i have seen from other magazine front covers, on most they have three main colours which are used all over the front cover. 


I chose my three colours as being purple, black and white. I have the purple as the back ground and then i have the black and white as opposites for all the text on the cover.I put some of the tag lines in capitals and some tag lines in lower case this gave variation to the text on my cover. 

I also added another picture of a pair of 3D glasses which went with a tagline i have included on my cover which is about a competition about winning tickets to watch 3D movies in the best cinemas around. 


I also included a barcode which added a sense of realisum to my magazine cover. 




My second Draft of My magazine cover: 

This is the second draft of my magazine cover. I decided to keep the title font the same because i think it works well with the all round genre of my magazine. As well as keeping the title the same font and colour i used the same colour background. I liked the background colour and the two together were eye catching.


For the image of the featured film on this draft, i used the films poster itself and not other photos. This gave a section of the trailer which could be associated with the poster and the magazine. Using the poster also filled a bit more space on the cover and showed less of the background colour which was visable a bit too much on the first draft. 


I changed more of the text tag lines to being more of a black and white range and not mostly white with black highlighted words. 


As well as this, i added another picture to one of the taglines which covered more of the background. 


I used a block strip of a darker purple to seperate the title from the poster on the cover. As well as seperating the cover up into sections the darker purple strip gave a bit more detail to the magazine cover.I changed a label of text to the same colour as the darker strip so it didnt look out of the blue there just being a strip of darker purple for seperation purposes.


I decided to keep the layout of my magazine cover the same as all of the magazine covers i had researched into had the main title at the very top of the magazine and sometimes the title were partially covered by the image used.


I kept the layout of the image and text the same as well. This is mainly the same layout for all magazines. It is a simple layout which leads the readers eye around the page so they do not miss anything on the cover. 


This is the third and final draft of my Magazine cover:  

 

This is the final draft of my magazine cover. 
I decided to keep the layout the same as usual. Behind the title i added a white box to make the title stand out even more. I also did this to add more of another colour to the cover. I kept the seperation strip of the darker purple colour because it worked well. The white block behind the title also covered more of the background colour.

 I also kept the position of the image the same but made the image/ my film poster slightly larger to cover a littlebit more of the background colour.

the main change i made on my final draft was to make each and every tag line on my cover a different style of writting to give my poster a bit more of an interesting look. Each different font style has been matched to the tagline it is being used for. For an example the font used for the tagline about having a competition is fun and funky but this font style would not have been used for a more serious matter for an example the interviews.