Magazine Review Page

As part of the ancillary tasks we are asked to create a magazine review page. In order to gather a feel for what magazines reviews are doing to address films to readers, I needed to do research into other products that are on the market today. There are big institutions such as Empire Magazine, BFI Sight & Sound and Total Film that promote large, box office films that is the ideal starting point for the research. It will help me gather information on layout, font, images and the content that is used throughout, to help create a professional finish.

On the Empire website the company have added example pages from the magazines that they print. It has helped me gather the necessary information on how magazine reviews are made up.

Image sourced - http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/

While gathering research into my genre I had gained some difficulty in finding magazine reviews for a romantic drama as challenging as our topic. However I have found a number of magazine reviews for large Hollywood blockbusters. Although the genres are different to ours, magazine conventions are very similar in their layout which is the key for the success of the magazine review that I am going to create.

Existing magazine reviews. 

For demonstration purposes I have used this particular example for my magazine review page. The magazine review page uses a number of conventions that are generally used in the industry to give a professional, informative and easy of use spread in production and in terms of view ability for the audience.

Immediately apparent is the image used on the two page spread here that is used. Showing emphasis of the two main characters portrayed in the film. An image in the review generally helps sell the product as a unique selling point (USP) is the actors starring in the film. If a famous actor is used in a film people may want to watch it because of this very reason. However as our actors are unknown (as are actors in most independent films) adding an image will certainly show Mise En Scene (costume) and an actual introduction of our actor (Liam Philpott).

My Magazine Review - Rejected. 
In the production of my magazine review ive decided to stick to the general conventions of films review pages.  As this is an independent film I have decided that the film review should be held over one page rather than the two page spread that would generally be seen with larger, blockbuster films.