Film Magazine Review Page - Research

One of the ancillary pieces required for our media project was a film magazine review page, supporting the film. Research was required as no one in our group were readers of any film magazines. To start with, we knew of Empire Magazine, a well known magazine that publishes film reviews, so that was a good place to start in our research as to how a magazine spread should look. It also gave us a rough idea as to what the layout of the poster should consist of.

Above are two examples of magazine reviews of two films - The Kite Runer and Due Date.

After looking over these two reviews amongst others, we realised that they followed similar trends in terms of format and layout. Both posters included:

• large images from the film that can be seen at first glance.
• bold text for the title.
• a section in which the details of the film are told, such a runtime, director, plot etc.
• a main body of text where the film is reviewed.
• and finally, a section at the end to which the verdict and the rating is revealed.

After obtaining this information, we now had the basis of what our film magazine article should include and also the general structure. This was useful to us because it meant we knew the conventions of a film review article, giving us headway.