MY FILM MAGAZINE COVER

Research

For our final A level production, we needed to make a magazine  cover. For this, I primarily decided to research magazines such as Empire and Total Film in order to get inspiration. Above is the Total Film cover for  Shutter Island. Usually, it will tend to have a promotional shot from the film. The cover will also display other films that are being advertised within the magazine itself. In terms of font, the largest will be for the title for the magazine and the film on the front cover, as seen here from Shutter Island. There will also be a bar code at the bottom and articles that will perhaps cover smaller sections of the magazine e.g. Plus Iron Man  etc.

I also constructed analysis for magazine covers in order to give me some idea on how to develop one of my own. Here is my slideshare below 

Magazine cover analysis from olliemacnaughton

Planning  

After constructing research, I decided what my magazine cover was actually going to look like. The photos I was planning to use was either to take one of Adam, Eve or Ular. Behind them for the background, I was going to insert a drawing from John Milton's Paradise Lost. My teacher happened to have both volumes of the poem with the illustrations.  Through this, I decided to look into the poem and pick out any one of the drawings I liked. Below are the six I used which could be considered as possible contenders.
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I ultimately choose this picture as I felt that it would help to create clear visual connotations within my magazine cover. I would have the character of Ular presented as the angel on the top of the hill and then have Adam as the one sitting down. This would help give symbolic codes, showing that Ular is almost summoning Adam. 
The position of where the characters are helps to demonstrate this. Ular is much higher up and is also standing, showing that he has more power and a more physical presence. On the other hand, Adam is sitting down and is almost in awe by the power of Ular, symbolizing that he is the weaker character in the situation. 






Construction 

Afterwards, I started to develop my magazine cover. Firstly, I scanned in the picture from Paradise Lost that I wanted to use so I could develop it in Photoshop. I then took photos of both myself as Ular as well as Adam. After taking these pictures, I then started to edit them. In order for them to fit the "black and white" colour scheme of the drawings, I also decided to remove the colour from these pictures. I did this through removing all the colour saturation on Windows Photo Editor.  I originally had planned not to remove the colour as I thought I could give it the same stylistic approach that a film like Sin City had. However, ultimately I felt this would've distracted from the rest of the main image. Below are the pictures I used both with before and after the colour was removed.

 

 Afterwards, I took out the characters from the original in order to make room for the pictures that I had taken.This was much harder than I had originally planned for as I had to be extremely precise in how I cut out my photos. I obviously didn't want all the needless background space of the previous photos but I also didn't want to cut out any of the characters. As a result, I had to be extra careful and whilst it was time consuming, it ultimately paid off. I also needed to find a suitable name and font for the name of my magazine cover. I ultimately went with Prime Flicks as I felt that it was a catchy title but also clearly showed that it was a magazine to do with movies through the title. 

For the font, I decided to use AR Delany Regular as it was a font that both stood out but also had a somewhat futuristic look to it that would help attract people.I used a more regular font for the rest of the subheadings and used different colours. This is because I wanted them to stand out but not from the title of the magazine cover of the "Welcome to Eden part.

  I also had to make sure where to put each of the individual sub headings, bar code  and other text such as the price tag. As a result, I always had an old Empire magazine of Prometheus which helped establish where I should put each of the individual parts of the magazine cover.