Tuesday 7 April 2015

Empire, The Hobbit Edition - Magazine Cover Analysis


The master head takes up a quarter of the page, this immediately makes it stand out and draws the audience in. Another element of the master head which could draw the audience in is the that the master head is in a shiny gold colour, which reflects and easily catches the audience attention. The gold text also fits in with the idea of the poster being a promotion of the Hobbit movie, the ring which is featured in the movie is gold and therefore the text may be a reflection of this. This helps tie image and text together, instead of them appearing segregated on the page. Even though the master head is slightly obscured by the feature character, we can still easily distinguish the brand as it is a very well known and publicised film magazine. The typography  that is featured around the mast head are play on words, and jokes which are associated with Lord of the Rings and any fan would recognise. Examples of these are words such as "Precious" which is one of the most well known words associated with the film. Another example could include "shires biggest movie magazine"  as the Shire is a setting within the movies. I believe that the magazine has done this to make it stand out from any other magazine doing coverage of this film, it also attracts and very specific audience of those who are fans of the Lord of the Ring films. The text above the master head, as well as containing a Lord of the Rings reference contains with word "exclusive" which is a buzzword. This makes the audience believe that there is something unique about the coverage of this film within this specific magazine, thus making it stand out from the competition.

Despite the fact that this magazine features only The Hobbit, image wise, on the front cover there is other typography displayed to the left which tells us that it features other insides in to films such as "Dredd" and "Taken 2". These are placed in a bold font which makes them standout, however, they are not placed large enough for it to detract from the overall magazine cover. The promotion of other films and other articles is very important for a magazine, although there is a main feature, there needs to be other films promoted. This is something I will take into account when creating my own magazine cover. This section is often title something like "Plus" or "Also inside". This reveals hardly any information about the other articles which are inside, making it a requirement to buy the magazine so that they can read the articles and find out what is written on these pages.

Above the master head, and the 'M' of 'Empire' is the price and website, this information is placed in a small font to make sure it does not distract from the overall magazine cover but is placed somewhere where it can be easily viewed. The use of a website being featured on the magazine cover tells the audience that there is also more content available online. Which also contributes to the fact that more people are interested in online articles. This is something we will have to take into account when creating our own magazine cover. 

Apart from the image and the mast head, the other thing which really stood out is a gold badge which reads: "The Dark Knight Rises: The Verdict". This is promotion for yet another film. By placing it in this circle shaped, gold and therefore stands out and highlights this information for the audience to read. 

The final piece of text is on the bottom which contains the name of the film being promoted and "The finest middle earth coverage continues inside". The latter reached out to a fandom, again anyone who likes Lord of the Rings will definitely want to read this magazine using genre specific language to have a positive effect. For example, the word 'Finest' so obviously, people will want to read the best quality stuff around and therefore pick this one if they are not interest in the Hobbit film. 

The image contains the main characters and another vital character within the film. It sets out conflict already for the film as we can clearly see that there is a good guy and a bad guy which is summing up the film up as a whole just using one image. We can tell that Bilbo is going to be a hero in the film as he is presented as the big feature, he is standing in the like holding a sword which suggests he is the hero as he looking like he is going to fight away evil. Swords also connote the idea of knights in shining armour which are a convention of heroes. He plays a positive role in the film as he is defending himself and the rest of the Lord of the Rings community. The next thing that the audience noticed in the image is Golum lurking in the shadows, in the cave. He is half in shadow and half in light, showing that he has the mixed personality that he does, the light side represents his "good side" and the shadow his "evil side". 

In terms of mise en scene and costume, Bilbo's red jacket connotes to the audience to the danger that he is having to face by going in to the carve there Gollum is discovered. The white scarf tired around his neck shows a sense of innocent as Bilbo came from a small cottage in the Shire, living in what was like a bubble of innocence. 

The background of this photograph is a stage scene, which is most likely a lot of photoshop, it is a cave which suggests that parts of the movie will subsequently set in caves. By seeing this image, we are instantly able to sum up the movie as a whole as it is set out for us.

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