First, I looked into the storyline that my group and I have for our horror trailer to see what images I should use to portray our storyline. I took the photograph of the female protagonist from my film poster as I decided to use the same image from the poster. I decided to use the same image from the poster as this will make sure that our targeted audience will be able to recognise the image and link the image with the film. For my magazine, I used the same costume from the trailer on the female protagonist as the costume is meaningful to the character, such as the blood red scarf and the blonde hair which represents the innocence of the character. The red of the scarf on the female protagonist highlights her as a target for the stalker which shows the audience she is going to be in some kind of danger in the trailer. The colour red has the connotations of blood and death which is a trope from the genre Horror. This builds up suspense as the audience will want to find out why she is the target and what is going to happen to the female protagonist.

I decided that I wanted to have one main image on my magazine front cover. I decided to have one main image as this will represent a part of the storyline that the trailer is going to contain and is going to show the audience what they should expect from both inside of the magazine and the trailer. I took the main image of the female protagonist and edited the mid-shot image. I took the focus onto the female protagonists face so that the face of the female protagonist’s face will be the focal point of the image. Having a main focal point will attract the audiences attention to that particular part of the image and shows a character that is going to be involved within the main story. I decided to put the blur effect on the female protagonist to give the illusion that she is does not know what is going on and she does not know what is going to happen to her. I edited the image to make the image sharper, added a ghost effect and smoke around the female protagonist. This made the lighting around the female character very high key which makes the female protagonist stand out.

As the audience do not know that the female protagonist is getting followed on the magazine front cover, they will be intrigued to find out what is happening to the female character. This is a Barthes Enigma code called the Hermeneutic Code. The Hermeneutic Code is when part of the storyline is shown (in this case, the part of the storyline that is shown is a female character is looking scared/worried) but is not fully explained (the audience do not know what is happening/going to happen to the female character). This leaves the audience thinking the reasoning behind the relevance of the female character and why she is looking worried. The audience will then need to watch the film to see why the female character is worried. This is a way of drawing the audience's attention and making them watch the film to see the mystery unravel. 

For the masthead of the magazine, I decided to use the font and the name that from the most popular result of my questionnaire. The font is a very bold font which will make the font stand out and make the audience aware that it is a magazine. Having a masthead that the targeted audience like is going to be very beneficial as it makes myself as the producer aware of the ideas and types of mastheads the targeted audience will enjoy and look for in a magazine front cover. I decided to position the masthead with the word “The” portrait as the juxtaposition being slightly slanted is very effective as it an original aspect that I have created to personalize my magazine company. The colour of the masthead is black which is a trope of horror as the colour black connotes death. Having a masthead that is in relation to a horror topic is very important as it makes the audience aware that the magazine is going to contain horror content.

Next, I added the date of issue, price and issue number on to the left hand side of the magazine. I added these features as it makes the magazine look professional and verisimilitude as possible. The date of issue is “May 2015” letting the targeted audience know that this magazine is a monthly subscription. As films do not come out every week, a weekly film magazine would contain less content in comparison to a monthly magazine. The date is in May which is the school holidays and our targeted audience being 17/18 year olds ensures us that our magazine will be purchased in the school holidays by our targeted audience. The price of the magazine is £3.00 which is a very affordable price for our targeted audience. Having a magazine price any higher than £3.00 may result in the magazine being over priced and not many people may be able to afford any higher. The issue number is 199 which shows the audience that this magazine is a continuous magazine and that it is a collectable magazine. Collectors of the magazine will buy the magazine which expands the amount of people that will be interested in the magazine. The juxtaposition of the text is in the far left hand corner which does not attract the audiences attention. I did this as this selected piece of information is important to be on the magazine but this should not be the main focus of the magazine.

The cover line on the magazine is positioned at the top of the page. I chose to use a red rectangle at the top of the magazine as it highlights the importance of the cover line. “Movie Special with Mary Hainsby & More” lets the audience know that inside this magazine contains more information about other films rather than just being about the film that is featured on the front of the magazine. The text is all capitalised and bold which shows the audience that this selection of information is separate from the other information on the page and shows the audience that there is more information inside the magazine rather than the magazine just being about one selected film title.

I have used a puff on the magazine and placed the phrase “Amazing free poster inside”. By using buzz words on the cover of the magazine will attract the audiences attention and make the audience want to know what makes the magazine “Amazing”. The buzz words are capitalized and are in bold to present the important in the words. I have used red on both the cover line and the puff so that the audience know that these things mean similar things; in this case they both mean that there is other content inside the magazine rather than being all the same information. Although both puff and cover line are red, the audience are aware that they mean different things as they are not positioned together.

I added a bar code to the front cover of my magazine. I did this as the magazines I analysed previously all had things such as bar codes and issue dates and I wanted to incorporate the look of real life magazines in my magazine. I added a bar code to the magazine as bar codes are important on magazines as it makes sure that the audience can pay for the magazine as without the bar code they would not be able to pay for the magazine. I added the barcode as I wanted to make my magazine front cover look as verisimilitude as possible. I placed the bar code at the bottom away from the main content of the magazine as this may be an important part of the magazine but this does not need to be the main focus of the magazine as the audience will need to concentrate on things such as content on the front of the magazine.

On the left hand side I have added a section of information about the content of the magazine. I have used the Buzz Words such as “First Look” to tell the audience that this selection of information inside the magazine is exclusive to the magazine and that this information will not be available anywhere else as this magazine has the “First Look” on the information. The text underneath gives the audience a glimpse of what the information is going to be about. As the text is capitalized and in bold, this attracts the audiences attention and makes the audience want to read about this information as it is an exclusive. I have used the colour red on the buzz word and the white text on the rectangle so that the audience will be able to read the text clearly and understand the message of the text. I have used black text underneath the buzz word as this shows the audience that both the buzz word and text are linked together due to the juxtaposition of the text.

The next thing I did was adding the title of our film onto the magazine front cover. I added the title as it will make the audience aware of the main film that is going to be featured in the magazine and will let our targeted audience know from the trailer that this magazine is going to contain further information on the storyline and what is going to happen in the film. I decided to use a title that was bold and could be displayed clearly so that the audience would be able to read and spot the main title to the magazine. I chose the colours grey and black as they are a trope of horror and they connote things such as death and danger which I wanted to link in with the magazine front cover. I chose blacks and reds as the character is wearing a red scarf, dark makeup and red lipstick so I wanted to make sure that there was a clear colour scheme throughout the magazine front cover to ensure that it looked professional and verisimilitude.

The next thing I did was added a section at the bottom of the magazine front cover. I added text saying “Plus 3 amazing exclusives” at the top of the section. I did this to show the audience what this section of information is going to be about. I capitalized this text to show the audience that this section is different from the main film on the front cover of the magazine. This gives the audience an alternative option to read in the magazine if they do not like or take an interest in the main film on the front cover. Making sure there is different film information gives the audience the option to read about different information and not be obliged to reading about one individual film. This also shows the audience that there is a lot more information inside the magazine and makes the audience want to read more about the other information. I used the words “Amazing” and “Exclusive” to promote the information inside. The word “Amazing” was used to tell the audience that the information is incredible and that they should read this “amazing” information. This is also a form of exaggerating the text so that the audience will want to know what about the information is going to be amazing. The word “Exclusive” is used to show the audience that this information is “Exclusive” to this magazine and they will not find this information anywhere else.

Next I added more information on the other films in the magazine. I did this by adding three subsidiary images to the bottom of the magazine so that I could add features about other films inside of the magazine. I chose 3 images from 3 films, two being open sequences that our group created last year in our AS Media course and one photo that was taken from footage of one of our opening sequences last year. I added titles above these photos and I added text about each image to show the audience what information about the films is going to be inside of the magazine.