Evaluation part 2

An example of a stereotypical "Sight and Sound" magazine.



With my magazine front cover, I knew straight away that I wanted to create the cover of the film magazine "Sight and Sound". This is because, as my film would be very low budget, and there would be hardly any advertisement or release (appart from probably DVD) they would be the magazine most likely to have my film on the cover. "Sight and Sound" tries to encompass,and review, most films from massive budget Hollywood thrillers, to underground swedish movies. They do not worry about having to grab readers attention by putting a highly advertised, big budget film on the cover, they instead go for "quality over quantity".

I closely studied many covers for the magazine, and quickly realised that there isn't any set type of image that they use; there are covers with abstract images that you can only discover what it represent when you read the titles, and there are also simply images of an actor or directors face. Therefore I went for an image which I felt encompassed most of the themes within my film. There is an interesting image of a girl in a bed, taken from a birds eye perspective. This is obviously meant to represent the sleep/dream/nightmare aspect of the film, while also showing one of the films main characters. I then superimposed a distorted, black and white image of the same girl in a looming horrific pose, coming up from behind the bed. I used the contrast in colour to further push the idea of nighmares coming true, as well as to add a creepy, scary feel to the cover. I made sure that the girl in the bed does not seem to realise that there is a "monster" behind her, which shows that the film is clearly a horror. As well as this I didn't use a fancy bed, or use a heavily made up actor, I just used my girlfriend how she usually looks befor going to bed. This was used to represent the realistic, British nature to my film.

Although there is no set guidlines for the image used, the magazine does almost always use the same layout for the title of the film, and the other features that are being advertised . Therefore I studied a few "Sight and Sound's" and quickly gathered the way it was layed out. I used a big, bold font for the title of my film, which became the focal point on the cover. I then used a quick tagline for the film underneath, smaller but in the same colour. This is used to grab potential readers attention, and I feel that the contrast of the red with he background image does this very effectively. Also on this title I places a shadow underneath it, almost as if it's coming off the page; this again helps attract readers attention, as it again contrasts from the image. Underneath this I placed a block of text showing some of the other features inside the magazine, with alternating colours to show the different articles. This I think is used by the magazine to show the sheer amount of information that is going to be inside, again helping to attract readers. Finally It has a section beneath that under the big title "plus+" and then a list of new film that the magazine has reviewed. This stands out on the cover almost as much as the title of my film, as this section is where the items that the magazine feels will attract the audience the most (appart from the main article on my film). It is in the second largest font and again is in alternating black and red with a subtle white stroke around the edge to really make it jump out of the page.