Alex Matthews A2 Advanced Portfolio

Sunday, 25 November 2012

What would you read a film magazine for?
Entertainment (characters, plot lines)
~~||||~~
Information (history of film, actors)
0

Would you read it for information about:
Actors/directors
0
New/upcoming films
~~||||~~
Older films
0
Characters
0

What would you like to see on the cover:
Character (in costume)
~~||||~~
Actor (not in costume)
0

How many people would you like to see on the cover
one
0
two
0
More
||
Irrelevant- all main characters
|||

Should the cover reflect the storyline of the film it shows
Yes
|||
No
||

From this I have I gathered my magazine cover should have:

articles about the content of other new and upcoming films
both main actors in costume as the main feature photo
be able to tell the film is a romantic comedy

Thursday, 22 November 2012

Romantic Comedies on Magazines

Bibliography, cover archives
Entertainment Weekly
Total Film
Empire

Magazine Layout

Using all my research on magazine cover formats, I decided this was a good representation of the conventions showed. Things like the 'more inviting articles names and themes' are both subject to move, but would roughly be on the sides, and take up a small amount of space.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Ancillary 1- Magazine cover

For my first ancillary task, I am going to do a magazine front cover with my film as a feature in the magazine.

These are screen shots of the front covers of some film magazines. Empire, Total Film and Sight&Sound.

Sight&Sound is distributed and owned by the BFI, the British Film institute.
Empire is owned by Bauer Media who make other magazines such as Grazia, Kerrang and MCN.
Total Film is owned by Future Publishing Ltd who also publish other magazines about cars, games consoles and other technology based things.
Entertainment Weekly (EW) is owned by Time Inc. which is the print media brack of Time Warner. Time Inc. also own: Sports Illustrated, Fortune, People and InStyle,

Total Film and Empire and EW have their own websites for extra information and to serve as marketing and another media platform.
However, Sight&Sound doesn't have its own website, but has its own part of the BFI website but still fulfils the same purpose as Empire's and Total Film's website.

As you can see, all the images have the following aspects:

magazine title
feature photo of one film/actor
date and issue number and bar code
name of the film corresponding to feature photo
names of some articles inside
names of films mentioned inside

Sight&Sound is different to Empire and Total Film, it focuses more on the history of film and seems more of an informative magazine, opposed to the other two, which I would class as entertainment magazine.

The articles in Sight&Sound are more niche and focus on older, classic films and appreciating the British talent of film making. However the other two are more of an update of what's new in the cinemas or being released with a much less strong emphasis on older, classic films. EW is a mixture of both, it focuses on the actors of the films, and the entertainment aspect, but has a more simple cover similar to Sight&Sound.

Source here

Also, from the appearance of the front cover of Sight&Sound, it looks more informative, with less bright colours and a more of a house style which they have matched to the actors wardrobe.
On the other two there is a house style or colour theme present on the front cover, however, on Empire, it is much more subtle, with many shades of that colour, opposed to Sight&Sound's one shade of orange.
On Total Films, there is less of a colour theme, besides the fact that the majority of the text is white or grey. This however may be because their feature film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005, dir. Tim Burton) is a film connoted with bright colours and being slightly eccentric, therefore if they are to give the correct idea from this film, going with contrasting colours, is appropriate. To the left there is an image of another Total Film magazine cover, one of a more serious film and it is obvious here that there is a house style individual to each issue, Charlie and the Chocolate factory is just an exception to having a colour theme to reflect the film.

Also, in most of the magazine covers I have seen, a bit of the feature photo overlaps the title. This makes the film look more important than the magazine, making audiences buy it for the film featured and not for the magazine. An exception to this is again, the Charlie and the Chocolate factory cover of Total Film. This may be because an close-up is used therefore the image would cover the majority of the magazine title, making people unable to read it, which is useless in marketing a magazine. Also the character's top hat is what is obstructing the text, however this is an iconic part of the character, and therefore in removing it, may make the character less recognisable. Also, in EW, although the characters head doesn't directly overlap the title, his ear does, showing they are using this alyering technique, just more subtly.

The text in the Bourne Legacy cover of Empire is slightly translucent, which makes the cover look less cluttered. In comparison to the other covers, I think Total Films has the most text and looks very busy. Empire have combated this by making some font translucent so the image can still be seen. Empire's Tintin cover is the least cluttered, this may be because Tintin was such a huge film, Empire expected readers to be drawn in just by the image and would not need any extra infomation. Sight&Sound and EW both use more simple covers and focus mainly on the content.

All images have the image source above the cover except the Bourne cover which is from
http://www.empireonline.com/gallery/image.asp?id=61792&caption=&gallery=3819

Monday, 19 November 2012

BBFC (British Board of Film Classification)

A green screen is shown at the beginning of a trailer (and film) to show parents whether the film is suitable for their children or not. I went to the BBFC website to find out more about this.

Below are the specifications for the main classifications, I didn't include 18 as it was obvious to me I did not meet the criteria.

By looking at these specifications, I have decided my trailer is rated U. However; I think if this was to become a full length film, some milder aspects which are barely touched on in the trailer, would be elaborated more and making the film a PG or 12.

I then looked at 12A or higher films, and compared their film rating with the one given on the trailer. I found, most romantic comedies have a U rated trailer, when the film is rated 12. They may have another, higher rated trailer to give a more insightful look into the film, but if they have used a U band trailer, they can approach the largest audience. An example of this is....

On the BBFC website it states
'All theatrical advertisements, regardless of time duration, will need to be submitted for classification.
Adverts shown theatrically must display the symbol of the category awarded for a minimum of five seconds, before the work begins, or burnt into the bottom left or right corner of the frame itself.'

This is the rating screen that I shall show for 5 seconds before my work.

Although BBFC rates the films, often the screen shown is rated by MPAA ( This is shown by Submarine (2010, dir. Richard Ayoade) which is a British film, and only has limited release in the USA. However, as seen below, has the rating approved by the MPAA.