Due to the hardship of finding specific film magazine covers that show the type of genre of film I want to make, I have had to use more general examples of what a film magazine front cover looks like "Empire" and "Total Film".
When looking at the film magazines covers, we can see they are dominated by the lead story of the biggest film at the time, the most talked about or unusual film like when we look at the "Constantine" one as it wasn't the well talked about and only achieved moderate success but gained a somewhat cult following and not to forget the magazine was out before the film's release. But the point still stands about its not always the most hyped film, smaller films sometimes get mentioned. In the cover to the left, it has "Twilight New Moon" which is an example of my chosen genre but leans more towards the Teen side while mine has elements but more horror/thriller orientated. Naturally the majority of the page is dedicated to an image of the respective film along with a title in the typography of the film, coupled with the related story the magazine has about the film. Yet the title of the magazine is still bigger then the actual headline film as it doesn't want to be overshadowed by the cover story and be easily identifiable to its usual audience.
In this example of "Empire" magazine, the picture takes up even more of the cover due to the obvious popularity of the film at the time, "The Dark Knight" was unanimously praised for the performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker who was awarded for his performance with an Oscar posthumously since he died shortly after filming. Also the subtitles of the other stories are much less intrusive like the "Total Film" one above, not caring about if the image is too large as the title is still in large letters but with the black colour it helps convey the mood created by the image as the chaotic scene of destruction and desaturated blue make the image much more powerful to look at while retaining the magazine look through the rather awful chose of lime green for the limited titles of the other stories and the tagline relating to the main story, showing how their main pulling point of the magazine is this story.
We begin to see this recurring theme of "Empire" using the image more then "Total Film" as in this example, the film "Watchmen" is the front cover story and has the usual title in line with the film in terms of typography and other limited titles to ensure full use of the main cover story image but we something new. It says the magazine has got the exclusive of the "Watchmen" story so this is also a marketing tool as since they are the only ones to have the story then people would buy the magazine due it being the only source that has the story. While this less clutter style ensures greater use of the image, it has the drawback of making it look less value for money compared to the "Total Film" examples which pack the front cover with stories so potential buyers can look through them all and are likely to find something that interests them while "Empire" has limited options and banks heavily on the main story.
In this example, we see the point mentioned above about a wider variety of stories to ensure it entices the buyers but while its more safe in terms of monetary returns, it makes the page look slightly more cluttered and less focused, making it look less professional in terms of presentation compared to "Empire" as the page takes focus off the central image which is meant to be the selling point but not the only one when comparing them so it seems the perfect balance is required so the page doesn't look to cluttered but not bare and risking losing buyers due to the perceived lack of content. Also when setting up the front cover, there must be a colour scheme present so attention is not drawn from the image but makes it able for the other titles to be seen with the main cover story having typography in style with the original film like the "Twilight" cover.
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