Ancillary Task - Magazine Review - Choosing the Magazine

When deciding what magazine our film review should appear in I feel it extremely important to compare magazines to ensure that the perfect one is chosen. As part of my own research into this, I went out and purchased two of the leading film magazines, Total Film and Sight and Sound. In doing this research I am able to measure the advantages and disadvantages of using either magazine, and hopefully come to a conclusion in which one will feature our movie review. Within the video below I will be taking note of my initial impressions of both magazines, from their covers, to their actual reviews.



I decided to look into each article with much more detail, to ensure that the decsion made in the video, is the correct one.






















Firstly, Total Film (Left). At first glance its clear to see that this article does in fact stand out. Likewise to the other reviews that appear within the magazine. The use of the large image draws the reader in and somewhat entices them to read deeper into the review. The use of the image I feel is an extremely effective way in making sure people actually read the article, rather than skim through and miss it out. This is dissimilar to Sight and Sound which takes a completely different approach and completely scraps the idea of an image and goes directly to the text. This may somewhat put off the reader as the text could seem rather intimidating, notwithstanding the fact that many reviews from the magazine Sight and Sound appear to come across this way, meaning people may not notice our review if they are just skimming through.

When deciding which magazine to choose I feel it most important to ensure that the magazine will relate to our chosen target audience, in our case that is ages 15-21. Despite the fact that Total Film's review does seem to be a much more engaging article than Sight and Sound, it is worth mentioning that the film we are creating is aimed at those who have an extremely big interest in film, whether they're studying film or even film makers. It would seem that Sight and Sound would appear to that type of audience, giving off the more professional feel with the article itself.

Taking into account these two examples, I feel it best to select the magazine Total Film. Simply due to the fact that I feel their articles are filled with much more content than Sight and Sound, what with the appealing visuals and overall verdict, these will appeal more to our targeted audience and hopefully draw the attention from those we wouldn't necessarily place into this category, but rather would be drawn in by the article itself.

Since I am certain Total Film is the perfect choice for our review, I decided to create a layout which I felt suitable for the review. After studying many different Total Film review articles I felt that this was the most effective type of layout. With a medium amount of writing length our audience will not feel intimidated by the text and thus will tend not to just skip to the end for the final verdict. Also, The use of the large image plays a key role in grabbing the attention of the reader, and thus make them read the article, after being intrigued by the image.

I felt it necessary to create multiple layouts to ensure the best one is chosen, despite the fact that this second one is more in depth when I finally write the review I will decide which out of the two images will fit best for it.