Influence of real media texts on the production of my magazine

THE INFLUENCE OF REAL MEDIA TEXTS ON THE PRODUCTION OF MY MAGAZINE COVER

Magazine research consisted of analysing  film magazines (ie Empire, Film) and women’s magazines (ie Hello, Celebs magazine) as the target audience for the magazine covering my film was women.  The secondary research helped me produce a basic flat plan sketch showing initial ideas and influenced my creative decision making in the following ways:

-  A single image was selected and overlaid with text which is a convention of magazines.  The same image was used on the film poster creating intertextuality and image association in the audience.

-  It was apparent that different genres of magazines have different colour schemes and pink was a common feature of magazines targeting women. Semiotics in the form of colour symbolism was applied to my cover (and poster) to create a soft, feminine appeal particularly through the use of the stereotypical “chick flick” pink.  Hence, the text on the cover which related directly to the film was produced in pink font creating intertextuality through colour association with the pink tennis court on the film poster.

-  Softer, summery colours were used to reflect the seasonality of the summer edition magazine and to indicate that it is a contemporary edition to the purchaser.  My use of sensationalised language also reflected the seasonality ie hottest stars, sizzling etc as is conventional in summer editions.  

-  Conventionally a limited number of fonts and colours were used in the real texts in order to create a clear house style – this is a feature that I replicated on my cover using 4 main colours for specific purposes eg red for main headings, pink for text related to the film.

-  The title of the magazine was changed to follow the convention of many film magazines which use a single word as a title so Film in Focus became “Flicks”.  This change also allowed me to increase the size of the font of the  masthead making it more prominent and eye catching to a prospective purchaser.  Flicks also relates to the female target audience having connotations of chick flick, is also an old fashioned word for the cinema giving the magazine a nostalgic feel and also creates brand awareness of the production company, Sport Flick Pictures, who also own the magazine. In conventional fashion a company logo was designed that branded the media product across all 3 platforms.

-  Other standard features were also evident on the real text such as: barcode; date of issue; issue number; price; giveaways; competition offers; mastheads and taglines -  all of which were replicated on my cover to add to the realism of the product.   

On reflection, the front cover and poster involved creative activity in that it involved a lot of “playing with ideas and trying out possibilities” (Carl Jung) in relation to titles, colours, fonts, formats and layout before the final versions were acceptable in their appeal to my target audiences.  In hindsight, I think that if I had ensured that the predominant target markets for my trailer (ie teenage girls then tennis fans) and film magazine (women) had been clearer in my mind from the outset the creative process and application of relevant conventions would have been speedier and more effective.