A medium close up shot was used for the main image. Typical conventions of a magazine cover are: Main image, masthead, barcode, slogans, colour scheme, dateline , website, cover lines, variety of fonts on the cover and sell lines.
The main image is showing direct address and engaging with an audience. Her face really stands out because of the blood and bruising created by using makeup. Her appearance is meant to look quite deathly as she is a ghost and she's representing death. She's the villain so she needs to look menacing to an audience. The makeup was enhanced on Photoshop but all the makeup was done before hand. If the blood needed to be darkened then we would change the contrast or exposure levels in Photoshop. A close up shot is used so the audience can actually see her face, the sole focus is the main image. It's the first thing you see on a magazine cover. I wanted the magazine cover to have a close up shot so that the main focus was on her blooded makeup and on the film poster, the shot type was a medium close up shot so that the costume and props could be displayed as well as still being able to see the face quite close up. The two different shot types illustrated her being the villain and her expressions looked menacing.
The masthead is always featured on a magazine front cover. It is telling the audience what magazine it is; 'Empire' is the masthead. Empire was the chosen magazine as it's the most popular film magazine. I also did research into the magazine's history and I found that for the 18th Birthday issue in 2007 for Empire, they picked the top 50 rated 18-rated movies. This showed me that Empire magazine took an interest into the horror genre, knowing that they've had an interest in the horror genre made it easier for my group and I to decide to have them be the company we chose for the magazine cover. On the masthead we put a blood splatter on it. As blood is a typical iconography that shows up in horror movies, we wanted to emphasise this on the magazine cover. Our production company is called 'cut throat productions' and the cutting of the throat in horror movies usually sees blood splattering out of the neck. The production name links in with the blood splatter on the masthead. It made the masthead stand out more as well because usually the Empire magazine isn't covered in blood and is left plain. To a reader, it will still be easy to establish that Empire is the magazine name as the blood isn't covering that much of it. Whilst I was researching horror film posters, I came across the Boogeyman 2 movie poster and it gave me inspiration to have the blood coming off of the 'M' in Empire. On the Boogeyman 2, blood is dripping just from the M and I felt it looked effective. It stood out to me as a reader and I wanted the masthead to stand out to my audience as well.
The barcode is conventional on a magazine cover. It makes the magazine more legit and makes it sellable; it shows how it could be a real magazine as it would be distributed. On a typical magazine cover, a barcode is used as the barcode is the thing that needs to be scanned in shops in order for a customer to buy it. The slogan is conventional on a magazine cover as it reels the reader in. In this case the slogan could be passed off as 'evil never dies' which is the tagline associated with my movie. It's the only text in the colour black because the colour black is associated with such negative things. It reiterates what the slogan is saying that evil is black, someone who is evil never sees anything positively. The colour scheme is black, white and red which is a colour scheme that has been kept consistent for both the magazine and poster and even the trailer. A colour scheme is conventional for a magazine cover. It helps allow the readers to know what issue of the magazine it is. If it was a summer issue, you'd expect to see a lot of bright colours such as pink and yellow but with a horror issue, an audience wouldn't expect to see bright colours but instead expect to see dark colours such as the black and red which is evident on my magazine cover. The red and white colours really stick out on a black background and draws attention to all the texts on the cover and also highlights the image.
A dateline is conventional to have on a magazine cover as it tells the readers when the issue will be coming out and also lets the readers know the price of the magazine. The issue date is February 2015 as this is the month and year that we finished creating the magazine cover. Magazines are usually quite expensive so we wanted to put a realistic price of £3.99 on it instead of something cheap which wouldn't of been realistic to a reader at all. My group and I tried to make the magazine cover and film poster look as realistic as possible. Conventionally a website is featured on the magazine but with my magazine cover, the website wasn't put on it. The website wasn't featured on the magazine cover but was featured on the film poster, so it was better to have the website on one of the ancillary texts rather than none. The cover lines are all the features on the magazine. They are normally placed on either the left or right. "Cooking for cannibals" cover line came from an Empire issue in March 2001 when it said "What's cooking?". We decided to spin the cover line and change it by not asking a question but making a statement instead. A cannibal is a person who eats the flesh of other human beings. Cannibals can be found in horror films such as The Descent (2005), The Cave (2005) and Catacombs (2007). It's ironic cooking for cannibals as they're normally the ones feeding off of raw human flesh and they never cook. 'How Psycho are you?' makes reference to the horror film Psycho (1960), it's seeing if the reader will be on a level of psycho like Norman Bates. A reader who hasn't seen the film may not know what it means, it looks just like a simple question but it links in with the real film. 'Top 5 villains' is showing the villains that have proved most popular over the years. As a villain is the main protagonist in a horror movie and they cause the most conflict, essentially they make a horror movie as without a villain, a horror movie is nothing. It's good to give recognition to villains as although they're the evil ones, the horror genre depends on them; they drive a story forward. The word 'special' in the cover lines makes it seem as though you can only get the interview exclusive to this Empire issue. Dawn Gallant is the person who played the villain in my trailer so divulging into her fears is effective as playing a villain, the villain normally doesn't fear anything.
A variety of fonts are usually seen on a magazine cover to keep it interesting. It would look rather bland and dull if there was only one font. The font used for the title of the film and the slogan are the same fonts which were used on the poster and in the trailer; it keeps a reoccurring theme, it makes them stand out amongst the other fonts. The font was found on the website called da font whereas the other fonts were taken from the fonts list in Photoshop. The fonts chosen are simple and don't draw too much attention away from the things that should be the most important: the main image, masthead and title of the film. The sell line is the introductory headline, on my magazine cover it says 'the world's biggest movie magazine', this just emphasises how Empire is well known and the most popular movie magazine, it's rated higher than any other movie magazine. It's put directly underneath the masthead as 'Empire' is the masthead and that's the magazine the sell line is talking about. It's put in small print so that it can be seen by readers and to show it's just not the main text on the magazine cover.
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