Research Excisting Product - The Truman Show Magazine Cover

This is an old Empire magazine front cover, feature The Truman Show movie on the front.

- This front cover fits the conventions of most magazines. It has a masthead, left side third, puffs and other pictures not just the main central picture advertising The Truman Show. The front cover is very crowded and covered in writing to do with various aspects of the magazine, this could be to do with, the nature of the film they have as the central image, as The Truman Show is a fictional reality show and so Empire maybe trying to emulate more gossip magazine conventions. The Masthead covers part of the main picture, so it stands out against the rest of the magazine which would then attract peoples eyes, due to the fact it is a very cluttered front cover this would balance it out and draw peoples eye instead of taking it away. all the text is placed neatly around the centeral image, which helps to organise the text on the front cover. The name of the show is in large font which almost matches the size of the Masthead, showing that it must be important, as this gives the film equal status to the magazine which it is being promoted on, this also means they eye my be attracted to the name of the magazine first and then drawn further down to the title of the film, which will help to advertise the film and may mean people buy the magazine for that fact.
- The main central image used for this magazine is a close up of the main actor and star Jim Carrey in character as Truman, you can tell he is in character as he is pulling a cheesie expression and it fits with the fake reality show film premis, it also fits the conventions of most film magazines to have their central image a shot from the film or a photo taken with the actors in character, as they are trying to put across the latest films and this is how they advertise to their audiences and it gives people an opurtinity to make a quick snap judement on a film, so the image must convey the genre and style that the film is, becasue then they will either decided it's not for them or want to find more out and buy the magazine. The use of this close up of such a famous star would also help attract people to reading the magazine to find out what Jim Carrey's latest film is. Down in the left hand corner there is the iconic image of Leonardo Dicapreo and Kate Winselt from titatnic, this film was also coming out around the same time and so shares some magazine space. This picture for the Titanic is much smaller because it isn't the main film, but it shows that the magazine has more content within and that it isn't just all about the Truman Show, also this picture used is very ionic of the film Titanic and so readers would recognise the image straight away and so may not need a larger picture, unlike The Truman Show a brand new film, with a unknown storyline.
- The use of colour on this front cover is very mixed, there isn't a colour scheme pattern really at all, apart from Empire's name which is iconically big and red, to catch peoples eyes on the shevles when they are shopping. The rest is a mix of blue, black, yellow, red and white, this makes the front cover look very mixed up and confusing, but this could be because of the gossip magazine feel, due to the films concept being a realilty type show.
- This is an old version of Empire and so they may not have the technology to make it up to magazine front covers of today, and so if you were targetting this magazine at film buffs today they may not go for it, as it dosen't have the sort sleek film magazine feel as magazines do now. But then again people may pick it up as it does look different and it has the kind of gossip magazine look to it and so it would be different, to other things on the shelf around.