Magazine cover research

As a group we researched in to the different types of film review magazines on the market. We found that magazines such as 'Empire' and 'Sight and sound' were not appropriate for the type of magazine we were looking to create. Reasons for this were that Empire realistically wouldn't have our genre of film on the front of their magazine as they usually focus on blockbusters, rather than an independent romantic comedy.

One of the magazines we considered doing our cover in the style of was 'Studio' (a female based magazine) which is aimed at women through the use of the articles and focus upon female actresses. Their website informs us that all articles are written by women, for women. Along with content being inspired by fashion & beauty which are stereotypically appealing to the female market. We found that each of the covers for Studio magazine focused upon the beauty of the actresses with the use of posed shots of women both in character and out of character. Due to the dominance of women throughout the magazine we would be forced in to using 'Cindy' on the cover. In this case our target audience would be for the female market, ruling out men reading the magazine unless they were female enthusiasts. 

The other magazine we considered using was 'Little white lies'. Little white lies focuses upon the creative design of each issue which is followed throughout the content of the magazine. From the cover examples of the magazine we can see that the predominant focus is of the leading role within the independent films it displays in the magazine. The actor/actress on the cover of the magazine is usually edited in order to be perceived as comical and appear more graphical than other film magazines. The individuality of the style of Little white lies appealed to us as a group as it does not follow the usual conventions of other magazines. We decided that following the style of the magazine would be a good idea. But, we decided to change the form of the front cover as we would like the focus to be on both 'Cindy' and 'Chase', but the style would be kept the same.