Planning: Magazines - Front Covers.



On this page, as you can see, are a series of magazine front covers, each of which shows the featured artist in a close up camera shot. I want to use a close up of my artist as her image will be quite striking and will gain the audiences attention quickly.

Despite this close up being a rule breaker, when concerning the typical conventions of a music video, I want to be able to use a close up in order to stand out from the other front cover images of other music magazines. Although I plan on using a close up, I will be shooting my artist from various shots and angles, in order to create a wide variation that I can choose from when putting my magazine together.

On a few of my favourites, below, I will analyse them and look into how and why they are striking and whether or not it creates a negative response as a close up is rarely used on the front cover.

 

Lily Allen (Above) - This shot is very clever, although it is a close up camera shot, they have allowed the artists personality and image into the shot without taking up too much room (simple make-up and a fashionable head band.) The image of her overlaps the mast head of the magazine, which breaks the rules as audience members are supposed to recognise and connect to the title of the magazine first before the image of the featured artist is clear. The tag lines used around the image only overlap the main focal point for the audience in the hair and around the shoulders, not drawing attention away from the image. The colouring of the tag lines branches out from the magazine house style as the text is coloured white and pink, fitting with the artists representation.

Tom Cruise (Above) - Although this is not a music magazine, this shot shows that it is not only music magazines that break the typical conventions of a magazine front cover. Close ups are rarely used. This shot however says almost everything about the actors image - the fact that the body positioning of the actor has his arms in the air, with his face set in a very stern way, this can connote quite clearly as "the action hero" or "the tough guy". Here the mast head over laps the image, keeping to the conventions, and the tag lines only over lap on the shoulder while the main head line over laps around the middle/bottom of the page, which may draw attention from the image.

Although a close up on a magazine front cover is rarely seen, I think it is very striking, and would fit my artist accordingly. I am aware that I am making this more difficult for myself as I may have problems trying to fit text around the image later in InDesign, I plan on sticking to my guns and trying these close ups out. However, as I have previously stated, I will be taking different angled shots such as medium shots, maybe a few long shots, to experiment and see what looks right for 'Kathy Striker'.