2. Codes and Conventions.
The codes and coventions are key in the process of making a magazine cover, and a successful one at that. This mixed with a
target audience, which in my case is going to be, young adults, 16-20 as its a film about growing up, and finding yourself, so
with would appeal to this age group because at some point I think every adolescent has been though this and can relate well
to the story line.
• Codes and conventions are split into three main groups, technical, symbolic and text.
• Technical-This is the use of images. Photo techniques used, the shots, the models, characters and where it is placed on the
page. For example if it was a gossip magazine, like ‘heat’ or ‘hello’, it would be a large picture of the main story in the
magazine, maybe of a celebrity crying, this would entice the audience, as they would want to know why they was crying ,
the image would most probably be centre of the page. The target audience would be women and they would be late 20’s to
early 30’s. The production team also place the picture in the centre of the page so it is the first thing that the reader looks at.
The picture itself can relate to the audience for the magazine, this will be important when choosing the picture for the front
cover of my film magazine as it will show the audience of the magazine what the type of audience for the film.
• Symbolic - The symbolic side to the code and conventions for a magazine front cover would be made up will be made up of
the models costume, colours and who is in the pictures e.g. a celebrity. Colours and costume can affect the whole look of
the front cover for example red can mean love or lust etc.
• Text - The text part of a film magazine front cover would be the font, font size, colour, amount and location of text.
3. Masthead
Main image
Button Dateline
Main cover line
Model
credit
Cover stories
4. My Plan
The rough draw up of my magazine cover, is to
help me organise what I need to put on the
magazine cover, as a reminder but its also here
so I can see where I'm going to put everything.
I've looked at codes and conventions of what
Dateline normally goes onto a magazine and i plan to
and use as many of the techniques professional
Barcode magazine uses to enable mine to look at
professional as the published magazine’s.
This is just a skeleton as to where everything
will go, so it may change. I want to keep the
Main cover line magazine cover simple and not to crammed
like the major ones like ‘Total Film’ I want it to
Model look like more of an independent magazine,
credit slightly wider than an more A4 magazine and
Main image
without as much going on, on the front of the
magazine, this will make it look unique and
appeal to my target audience, young people,
trying to find them selves.
Cover
stories
Button
5. Image editing
The images that I have taken were all at a train station, but this image actually has a train in it, and it clear to see that its at a station, were
as the image for the poster it wasn't as clear it was at a train station. But this will anchor the text to the image on the page. First I had
to decide what clothes I wanted the model to wear, the main character of the film had to be the model, so the audience could
recognises that it was ‘open return’ by the image. I decided that the model would be wearing the same coat she did on the poster, as
you find on many film magazine cover they put the actors character on the front cover as the character they play in the film rather
than themselves.
When taking the pictures i though about the shot I was going to use, I decided to use a wide shot so I could get all of the model in and
some of the background and scenery and most importantly the train. The day that we took the pictures at the train station was a very
horrible rainy day, so the images look a bit dull, but that didn't worry me and I new I could edit them to say differently. When it came
to editing the images I found that I quite like the dull tone of the images, but because it was overcast it made the images quite bright
(Not in a nice sunny way, just a grey way)
So the first thing I did with the image was to change the colours of it, so I added a Filter on the top and the bottom of the image, to make it
look vintage. I duplicated the layer, and altered the hue on the second layer to make it positive. Then on the second layer I masked it
all out bar on the coat to change the colour of it. As you can see on ‘Image 1’ in the next slide (I have numbered the images) I print
screened the image, whilst being edited.
I changed all the colours of the image to make it look warmer but still so the tones of the image were quite dull, I think it completely
transforms the image and makes it look really professional. The only problem I had was with her hair as I found it very difficult to
colourise her hair back to the normally colour and change the coat to its new colour, as you can see on ‘ Image 2’ as the detail of doing
that was beyond my skills. But I came up with a solution to this ‘image 3’ and added the cover line over the top of the image to cover
up the small amount of hair and coat that I could adjust, but I think that it works well and I have done it in the same Style as I did the
poster title with.
To start creating the magazine cover I cropped the image down from the left so the edge of the magazine was a few centimetres away from
her right hand. This left the magazine look quite wide, and not a standard A4 size but as I said earlier in my plan I wanted the magazine
cover slightly wider to make it look unique.
8. Draft copy
Here is the draft copy of my film magazine.
I have followed the codes and conventions have used all of
the conventions that should be on the front of a film
magazine cover. Firstly with the masthead I have made is
so the words look like they've been cut out of the black
and the background of the picture is filling in the
words, I think this is really important that it stands out
because on mist film magazine they title is one of the
biggest things as the company wants to recognised as
well as promoting the feature on the front of the
magazine. So the use of the large font and on black
writing makes it really stand out. The image that I have
used for the front cover draws the readers attention as
its quite a detailed image and the reader would want to
look closer if they saw it on the shelf. The main cover
line is the films title, I've done it in the same font and
style as the actual title of the film on the poster so that
people can make an immediate connection with the
film, I've made the models credits smaller but still
readable. I've put cover stories down the right hand side
so that they are not covering up any of the main part of
the image. I’ve wrote them in white boxes with grey
writing so it all goes in with the colour scheme, and also
to divide the cover stories I have used orange
lines, which also goes with the colour scheme I have
used, and looks neat and classic. Iv’e added a few extra
picture in at the bottom that could be stills from films
that they are going to feature in the magazine, this
would gain entice people to read the magazine.
