Detailed Analysis of Two Film Magazine Front Covers

In this post I am going to analyse two different film magazine front covers - one being the 'Total Film' magazine featuring the set film 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two', and the other being the 'Entertainment Weekly' film magazine front cover featuring a film from the same genre of which I will be creating, for this I have chosen 'Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street'. I will be analysing the two front covers by looking at the various codes and conventions which I have outlined in a previous post, to see whether both adhere to them.

Both of the film magazine front covers which I have chosen to analyse adhere to the various codes and conventions which are generally found on all film magazine front covers. Both the Sweeney Todd front cover created by 'Entertainment Weekly' and the Harry Potter front cover created by 'Total Film' feature an image on the cover which relates to the film by showing the main character(s); on the Harry Potter front cover this being Harry Potter himself and Voldemort, and on the Sweeney Todd front cover it being Sweeney Todd. This is a standard practice of the majority of film magazines when a blockbuster is released into the cinemas; it is done to advertise the actor to the general public, and target audience for the purpose of attracting the fan base of the advertised actor. Another feature which is similar on both front covers and a code and convention of magazine front covers is the use of the title in the masthead. The masthead is the area towards the top of the magazine's front cover which shows the title and logo in a specialised font which the reader can instantly identify. Even when magazines are running specials which feature an upcoming blockbuster, the masthead will nearly always stay the same, although it is common for the colour of the masthead to change to fit in line with the colour scheme of the marketing campaign of the advertised film. The first magazine has done this with the 'Harry Potter' special by turning the 3D masthead into a glowing masthead which falls into line with the text on the official trailer for the film; this being a practice of synergy which the marketing campaign have deliberately created so the public can link the various media practices which have been created for the purpose of advertising 'Harry Potter'. The second magazine however does not use this practice and instead sticks to their own colour scheme, although it is possible that this is because their layout does not follow the standard norm of other film magazines, as they include the title of the featured film's name in brackets below the name of the film; normally, film magazines place the title in larger text for the purpose of advertising, appealing to the film's target audience to buy the magazine, and creating synergy with the other media products which have been created by the film's marketing department. Another difference between the two magazines is that Total Film places more features for other items in the magazine on its front cover, whilst the Entertainment Weekly front cover places the features in small lettering under the main feature for the advertised film 'Sweeney Todd' and only one large feature on top of the image. I do not believe this is due to Sweeney Todd being more popular than Harry Potter and allow it to sell more copies of their magazine, but rather the two magazines have different sets of practices for what they place on their front covers. Personally, I like the minimalistic approach of Entertainment Weekly, but believe that the front cover of Total Film would attract more readers. This is what I would like to create for my own media product which I will creating and documenting the progress of on this blog.