In terms of establishing conventions of magazine review pages, I am going to look at examples from Total Film and Empire, because I believe that these are the biggest and best film magazines, particularly in the UK. Obviously, film magazines include coverage on all the latest film news and updates, offering exclusive interviews and behind the scenes details on films currently in production. I am going to exclude all of this from my blog because none of these other aspects are relevant to my own task, so I am just going to focus on the pages devoted to reviewing the films currently or soon to be released. My personal favourite, both in terms of layout and writing, is Empire, so I am going to analyse Total Film first and save my preferred magazine for my next posts.
What should be apparent from the first 3 photographs here is that the layout of film review pages differs significantly. This is mainly done to add creativity and variation, because if the magazine was structured in exactly the same way on every page, the layout would become repetitive and monotonous. It is also relevant to notice that these double page spreads are all focused on reviewing one film, and this is normally the most anticipated release of that particular issue. These reviews are very thorough and due to their larger word count, go into more depth about the film and its quality, allowing reviewers to elaborate on their observations and opinions. The top photo reviewing Independence Day: Resurgence is quite a typical structure of a magazine or book in general. The shot of the film is a large part of the review, even bleeding over one page to the next. This is to disrupt the observation that the page is overwhelmed with text and make the reader feel visually engaged to read.
The other two reviews seem to form around their photos, creating a border. The text is structured in columns and so it looks more engaging to read lots of small columns of writing rather than two full length ones.
I took this photo to draw attention to the individually important pieces of text on the big reviews. Firstly, the title is the biggest and boldest piece of text because it rather predictably has to identify the film and help the reader to associate the big image with its title. Next is the critic's tagline for the film, often hinting at whether the review will be good or bad. In the example above, the common saying 'Born on the 4th of July' is replaced with the pun 'Corn on the 4th of July' to suggest that the film is unsatisfying, whereas if it had been 'Reborn on the 4th of July' it would have more positive connotations on how this belated sequel has reenergised and built on the success of the original. These witty slogans are intended to be entertaining jabs at the film and rely on the reader's wider understanding of the film industry.
The next thing to comment on is the small print above the title, providing the factual information about the film in a simple list format. It provides institutional information such as the certification and distributors, credits the cast, director and screenwriters, whilst also telling the reader the running time. The reason this is not as enlarged is because this information is simple and concise to understand.
As with any reviews, critics seem to universally accept the star rating system, opting to give a film a rating of between 1 and 5 stars. This is usually portrayed visually rather than textually. In the photo above the star rating is displayed using actual stars, which tends to be the standard way of displaying them. Film magazines tend to come up with their own definitions as to how the stars correlate with their opinions. Printed next to this are the word 'OUT NOW', informing the reader that this film is currently in cinemas. If this wasn't the case, the writing would display the upcoming date of the film's release.
There is always a photo to accompany a film review, since film is a visual medium and so readers need a visual reference point to make the magazine more interesting at an aesthetic level. For big reviews these photos tend to bleed across the page to provide a balance against the amount of text, thus allowing the picture to take up most of the space. The title is printed over the picture to give the page more depth and make the magazine more three-dimensional.
The main focus of this image is the bold introductory paragraph that leads into the main review. The first letter of the article is significantly bigger (this is a trend across many forms of print) in order to show where the review starts and also show a bit of variation in the graphology. It is notably red as a way of being a continuation of the colour scheme, using subtle but dispersed moments of red to brighten up the white and black of the article.
A trend that is unique to Total Film is shown in the screenshot above. The 'See this if you liked...' section shows off the magazine's knowledge of film by comparing the one being reviewed to others. It also helps the audience to get an understanding of what the film will be like by having a comparison point.
Again this is another unique convention of Total Film, where they use a visual graph to trace the film over its running time and analyse the level of engagement over each section. This way the readers can pinpoint whether the film is thrilling or entertaining and also whether this is maintained over the course of the length. I really like this because it helps to distinguish Total Film from other magazines by using a visual strategy to review the film as well as words. It also enables humorous comments to be made, as shown in the Screenshot above, providing both entertainment and ambiguous hints about what happens in the film.
The 'verdict' of a film review is essentially its conclusion. It summarises the main critical points made during the review, and when the review is over a double paged spread, this helps readers to skim but still finish with a simplified understanding of the film's quality. The verdict of a review is often separated from the main article and given its own area in bold.
Also worth noting is the bottom corner of the page, which prints the title and the issue of the magazine, in this case 'August 2016', which means that the page number is only printed on the left page. This helps to keep each page slightly discontinuous and unique, carrying its own information.
There are two things to talk about in the photo above. The first is the headline dedicated to this section of the magazine, which acts as a bookmark distinguishing it from the rest of the content. 'Big Screen: The World's Most Trusted Reviews' is a challenging and authoritative claim that reassures its readers about the quality and lack of bias in their film reviews. By printing this on each page of the review section it also brainwashes readers into trusting Total Film over other competitors.
And the second point I wanted to make is the photo caption used to address the image on the review. Like with the graph that traced the interest level over the course of the film, the tagline is an opportunity to add comedic flair by making a comment that isn't just a label of what is happening in the photo, but a witty expansion of the context. This is common in most of the film magazines.
The institutional presence behind the magazine is always located along the top of the page, normally including a website that encourages readers to subscribe. Additionally in Total Film is another weblink, this time rather than WWW.TOTALFILM it refers readers to GAMESRADAR.COM, the company that own Total Film. So there is a clear display of media ownership since it promotes both the individual product and the corporation that own the product.
Film reviews tend to vary. There are the big reviews like the ones I have deconstructed above. Or, as you'll see in my next post, there are lots of smaller reviews that cram onto the same double page with less depth and analysis.
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