A Guide to Posters (and other products)

Pages 1-3 are on posters, 4-5 on sleeves/covers which are an option as additional texts.
There's much detail on what goes in posters, though really you can each work this out for yourselves, and should be comparing your posters to several (similar genre) posters when nearing completion. The last 2 points on this doc are crucial: keep a detailed record of tools used and steps taken to construct your poster, saving as a low-resolution JPEG each and every time you make a major change or addition (so you can evidence the work you did and your use of technology) + try to link every detail on your poster to some existing text, providing images for comparison where you can.

Posters and Products Layout Guide

UK Film Mag Circulations

[THERE ARE FURTHER ARTICLES ON EMPIRE etc ON THE BRIT CINEMA BLOG - WHICH YOU SHOULD BY NOW BE A FOLLOWER OF]

Although there a range of smaller-scale, Indie rivals, the film mag sector in the UK is dominated by just two players, Empire and Total Film - both of which are published by major companies (Bauer and Future respectively - see the mags blog for info on Bauer), a conglomerate with global reach in the case of Bauer.
Both are quite Hollywood-centric, not especially going out of their way to reflect what the UK film industry is up to for its UK audience! Their covers routinely lead on some Hollywood star or director.
Flick towards the back of each and look at the ads: all these invites to ring up young ladies for a nice chat suggests each sees the male reader as their primary demographic, a common assumption in both music and film publishing which I've always found a rather strange reflection of our culture (these companies are very, very good at knowing who reads their mags!).
The latest ABCs are out - figures are released monthly but half-yearly and annual comparisons are always paid particular attention to for highlighting trends. I'm sure you know by now that ABCs are how the official circulation (not necessarily sales) figures by the Audit Bureau of Circulation are known!
Here's the latest summary, from the excellent (though troubled itself; ironically the Media industry has struggled to support media on the media: The UK Press Gazette and MediaWeek the main players)  
....


THE REST OF THIS BLOG POST CAN BE SEEN AT http://mediabritishcinema.blogspot.com/2009/12/uk-film-mag-circulations.html !!!! 

Semiotic analysis of a teen mag cover

Semiotic Analysis of Teenage Magazine Front Covers by Siân Davies

SOME POINTERS ON THE MAGS TASK

The marking criteria would be a good place to start - I summarised all aspects of this in http://a2mediablogs.blogspot.com/2009/11/final-deadlines.html

some of the more unsual covers here are actually from Thai film mags, source: http://blackholereviews.blogspot.com/2007/03/movie-magazines-in-thailand-spoilt-for.html

If we take the specific criteria for PRINT products, this is how an excellent, A-grade product is described:

Level 4

The candidate is expected to demonstrate excellence in the creative use of most of the following technical skills:
using IT appropriately for the task set;
showing understanding of conventions of layout and page design;
showing awareness of the need for variety in fonts and text size;
accurate use of language and register;
appropriately integrating illustration and text;
framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate;
using a variety of shot distances as appropriate;
shooting material appropriate to the task set;
selecting mise-en-scène including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting;
manipulating photographs as appropriate to the context for presentation, including within text, within particular IT programmes, cropping and resizing.
Where a candidate has worked in a group, an excellent contribution to construction is evident.

 A few quick thoughts then on how to arrive at this exalted level:

STAGE ONE: RESEARCH CODES, CONVENTIONS, INDUSTRY, AUDIENCE TARGETING

1. research actual film mags, noting aspects of layout/design/colour and balance of image/text, plus aspects such as use of fonts, font size, breakout boxes etc
   
   
2. try to include some data on the size of the film mags sector - ie ABC data (see the earlier posting on mags for useful links here) - and some detail on what challenges face it (oh, say the threat/opportunity that new media/web 2.0 presents! But also the democratisation of punditry: through blogs and websites, and reading user comments on amazon, YouTube and many others, we no longer rely quite so much on the expertise of professional print and broadcast journalists to form our views of new movies)
3. make sure that you're thinking about target audience as you take notes; look for obvious signifiers such as plentiful shots of scantily-clad ladies and smutty humour/double entendres in mags with a primarily male target aud (HotDog, an otherwise rather good film mag, was an example of this - not to be confused with the curious canine mag!); reviews of rom-coms will often say much about the target audience too. The style of language used is critical: informal, slang for downmarket/mass market publications, perhaps more formal and complex language for a more sophisticated, film literate audience - it would be useful to make some reference to Sight and Sound as an eg of an upmarket film mag
   
4. pick out an actual magazine publisher - this could be one without any film mags currently - and do a little research; explain how your concept for a film mag would fit within its profile 

Okay, so you've researched the codes and conventions, and looked a little at mag publishers too...so what about the creative side?

Mag article design tips

Magazine Pages Design and Analysis Tips

Film Magazine Resources

I've put notices in both staff and student news asking for donations of film mags - ask around yourselves; the more you have to look at in F6 the quicker and easier it will be to get this part of the coursework done, and done well...

You'll find some useful info and links on the mag industry at http://bauermags.blogspot.com/ though its been a while since i've added to it.Don't forget there are THREE mags held by the Library on film; you may just have noticed the subtle blown-up-to-A3 hint on this in F6...

Basing your style fairly closely on an existing mag is fine; as always be clear and specific on your "influences"! Style of language, design choices, headlines and tone appropriate for the target audience (which you need to detail) are all important. IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT AT ALL IMPORTANT THAT YOU PICK A MAJOR MAGAZINE TO MODEL YOUR MAGAZINE ON; A FANZINE IS FINE SO LONG AS YOU DETAIL THE REASONS BEHIND YOUR DESIGN AND LANGUAGE CHOICES

There are obvious resources such as www.guardian.co.uk/media/magazines (and its regular features on ABCs - Audit Bureau of Circulation figures - not the same as sales, but a verified count of the number of magazines in circulation, including free titles and 'bulks'). You probably haven't come across www.magforum.com which has many great features - including a guide to the terminology used to denote the various features of magazine covers, and a glossary.

There is more of this over on the mags blog, but you can find a lot of info on specific companies by looking up the Media Guardian, but also sites such as http://www.mediauk.com/owners/88/bauer-media and publishers own sites (eg www.ipcmedia.com). The Press Gazette is useful (eg http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44141&c=1)
Also did a quick bit of googling (starting with "uk film magazines" and then trying some variations) to unearth the following:

http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/magazines-newspapers/empire/
http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Press-Office/News/ABC-Circulation-Figures-January-June-2009/ [includes figures on their film title, Empire]
http://www.totalfilm.com/magazine
http://shop.littlewhitelies.co.uk/product/little-white-lies-issue-26-the-where-the-wild-things-are-issue
http://www.world-newspapers.com/film-magazines.html
http://www.vertigomagazine.co.uk/issue.php?sel=cur&siz=1
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/issue/200912
http://www.uncut.co.uk/magazine/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_journals_and_magazines
http://britishfilmmagazine.com/
http://www.premiere.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiere_%28magazine%29
http://www.horrorfilmmag.com/
http://www.fangoria.com/ [wouldn't work for me at home, but possibly as I tend to block cookies]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_journals_and_magazines
http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Movies_and_Film/Genres/Horror/Magazines/
http://www.filmquarterly.org/index2.html
http://independentfilmquarterly.net/
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/
http://www.indiewire.com/
http://www.ifmagazine.com/
http://www.indieslate.com/
http://britishfilmmagazine.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/20/business/the-media-business-american-film-magazine-sees-the-end.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/apr/07/books.guardianreview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Weekly

Mag Cover features

Its worth putting this in as a separate post; image comes from http://www.magforum.com/cover_diagram%20copy.jpg - an excellent website all round this
The written analysis can be found at http://www.magforum.com/cover_secrets.htm