Moving on to Empire, my personal preference out of the two I have chosen to analyse, there are many trends that are noticeable across both of the magazines, showing that there are universal conventions of film magazines that need to be adopted in order for them to convey enough information to the audience. However, a distinguishing factor of Empire's magazine is how it conspicuously identifies the change of section. Much like a book may be divided into chapters, the Empire magazine devotes a whole double page to tell the reader that they are about to enter the 'In Cinemas' section. As well as the large text, the page is also covered with a large image which bleeds across both pages and usually focuses on the film that is given the most attention in the issue.
What I thought is particularly helpful is the key as to what each star rating means underneath. So before readers continue, they are aware what each rating is comparable to in terms of quality.
Empire, like Total Film, devotes double-pages to review individual films. What is slightly more apparent in Empire is an increase in visual variation, using 1 main image but also including others to show the readers more about the visual content of the film. I think that this is a sensible choice because it recognises the acknowledgement that readers need to be engaged, and so using multiple images allows them to differ not just between text and photo, but also between photos. There is also an increase in the use of colours. While it is sparse here, the yellow used as a border for some of the page gives it a vibrant and immersive appearance. Total Film used thin traces of colour, which I think worked well, but this technique is also effective, where the colour doesn't fill the page but occupies a fragmented part of it.
The photo above should draw attention to the overview of the film and its information. The title, release date, certification, running time, director, cast and plot summary are all included in the first box, segmented from the main article to show that they are providing different information. Empire uses the star rating system too, but they print the stars in black and only reserve a special colour for films deserving 5 stars (5 stars are printed in red) which helps to emphasise the acclaim and special accolade of perfection. Printing this information at the start allows readers to be aware of the necessary facts regarding the film's plot, cast and rating, which provides contextual information that can then be skipped during the review itself.
However, what is absent here but present in Total Film is a tagline to the review, allowing journalists to bring their own wit and style to the review with a headline that often relies on wider film knowledge to be understood. By not including one it is as though Empire is adopting a more serious approach to their reviews, but I know that a tagline is used on their digital reviews, suggesting that it works more effectively on digital mediums, since these are accessed by younger and more contextually aware readers. That being said I would definitely want to use a tagline for my own reviews because I feel like it sets a more inviting tone to the article by trying to be entertaining.
Printed in bold at the end of the review, the 'Verdict' is less well defined in the Empire magazine than it was in Total Film. Rather than separate the verdict into its own distinctive section, Empire opts to use it as a continuation of the review, making it stand out but not boxing it off at the end. I think that this is a better technique because this way the verdict acts as the conclusion to the review, whereas in Total Film it suggests that the verdict is a completely separate piece of information.
Furthermore, the month and year of the issue is printed along the bottom, along with the magazine logo. This is a convention shared with Total Film, where the absence of a page number on the right side of every double-page is substituted for a different piece of information.
It can be noted that this post is slightly shorter than my analysis of the Total Film review page, and this is because I would largely be rewriting the same post. What I have tried to do is point out features which vary slightly and also point out the features that both of them share, so this is more of a comparison post.
My next post will be comparing the second styles of the review pages, and by this I am referring to review pages which feature a lot of different films rather than just covering one film across a double page spread.
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