2013 Post 40- Chosen film magazine conventions

Film magazine review pages usually follow a series of conventions in order to advocate films being released, and let the audience know what they think is worth watching. In order to create our own double-page spread review for our short film, I will need to follow these conventions and attract an audience.

Image: Needs to reflect audience, and act as a teaser usually featuring the main protagonist. Often a mid-shot to present a character and their environment to notify the audience of the film’s genre, time period and where it is set. Usually a photograph directly from a scene of the film.

 

Fonts: Minimum of 3 different fonts varying in size, colour and style. This highlights different aspects of the review, such as an editor’s name or credits in bold or italics to stand out. Varied fonts keeps an article exciting.

 

Anchorage text: Usually in the form of a quote that is designed to stand out and inform the reader about the review, providing snippets of information that might interest them.

 

Page number/Magazine date: Usually situated near the bottom of the review page, so that the reader is not distracted from the main review but can refer to where they are in the magazine and what issue it is.

 

Release date: To reassure the date of release to the reader so that they are more likely to remember to go and see the film.

 

Rating system: Ranking  the film out of 10 or 5 stars, it is a concept that is easy for the audience to understand but they must trust the reviewer's decision.

 

Sight and Sound features main character as key image, they are male to reflect target audience.  The film's serious tone is inferred through the business suit and slick and neat style. Black adds a professional and mysterious look.

 The page number and magazine date is in italics at the bottom, designed to be a source of reference and not a key part of the review. This is in a different font style to the rest of the main text, just as the anchorage text is to add some excitement to the otherwise minimally coloured page.

Sight and Sound use left hand text to draw the viewer's eye into the complex articles, these are arranged to follow where the eye normally travels, left and down to the right side. Text written in columns gives a less daunting appearance and a clear structure and organization reflected in their higher-class, sophisticated target audience.

Sight and Sound have a synopsis and opinions are intergrated into the main articles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little White Lies article above features a dark-lit image of the film's main character, also a male to relate to the target audience. It adds suspense and mystery as the face is not visible, but the reader recognizes the film through the well-known superhero costume.

Cover of Little White Lies issue

The article is styled after the cover film which is in black and white, thus the font and page reflects this but the template stays the same.

Little White Lies does not include anchorage text, probably because they expect their target readers would be trusted to read the review without a prompt once they see the title of the film, image or rating. Also, the magazine's reviews are significantly smaller than those in Sight and Sound as the page size is smaller, thus it would take up unnecessary space.

Little White Lies situate the title and release date at the top, which is the first thing a reader may see. Their 5 star rating system is at the bottom on the right; where the reader will end up once they have read the review, thus leaving a lasting impression on them of how good the reviewer thought the film was.

 Overall: Film reviews can greatly vary in length, some can be as short as 300 words. Reviewers working under this constraints have to be skilled self-editors to write the basics of the film and their opinion whilst telling the story. For our short film review, we will be modelling it after the Little White Lies review pages, so the article will not be too long and we will have to be careful how we fit these in. The number one guideline that we will have to follow is to never give away the ending of our film, this has been known to anger film fans and editors the most.