Film Magazines UK

In the UK, as with most countries, it inhabits a variety of magazines tailored for certain hobbies, jobs, locations and audiences for example there are magazines for different music genres, for different hobbies such as cooking or knitting etc. The types of magazines that my group and I are interested in for our project are film magazines which focus on all aspects of film and reviewing them to give audiences an honest unbiased opinion. Due to there being various audiences and people of various interests, not all film magazines are the same: some may have similarities but each one has a specific target audience which therefore means it's contents is tailored for that target audience: no audience is the  same so one film magazine will not suit the needs of a different type of audience.

One film magazine found in the UK is "Total Film" magazine which is the second biggest selling film magazine in Britain. This film magazine is fairly reader friendly meaning that it uses colloquial language with a minimal number of columns therefore making audiences feel more comfortable with reading the reviews as they know it will be easy and will not take too much of their time. Also, certain audiences are put off with long articles as they predict there will be sophisticated language used that they may not understand. Therefore, the main target audience for the magazine is people who enjoy mainstream films as the magazine usually writes articles about new releases, releases in the near future, films that have had a lot of good feedback or bad feed back etc, as it even has a section that is gossipy about films. It's lay out tends to be about 2 or 3 columns to make it reader friendly using serif font for the main body. The heading is usually in a large, bold sans-serif font to make it emphasized and easier to see, the headline also is usually the name of the film the magazine is reviewing. The magazine's style tends to be to layout the pages so it is as aesthetically pleasing as possible with as little white space as possible meaning using a wide range of break out paragraphs and break out boxes, larger pictures, graphics etc: the articles are constantly put to life and made to look interesting. Humour is also part of the style of the magazine as the journalist tries to engage the reader through humour such as for an article on "The Road" the journalist made a slight joke on the picture saying "after another muddy year, they vowed it would be their last Glastonbury". Overall, Total Film magazine is very "Hollywood".

"Sight and Sound" is another major film magazine in the UK which is produced by the BFI. Its style, contents and layout is completely different compared to "Total Film" magazine. The magazine is mostly aimed at mature film academics who are probably middle class, well educated and into art house film meaning less main stream and more artistic such as films by french directors such as Andre Techine. Like "Total Film" the main body is usually written in serif and the headline is written in sans-serif however the layout of "Sight and Sound" shows an average of about three times the amount of columns as "Total Film" which is to do with the target audience being well educated therefore they expect a lot more detail and do not mind spending longer to read on articles. The magazine assumes that the readers are art house film fanatics therefore constantly throw in technical language, art house films from the past etc. The magazine's articles tend to be structured like the following:
1. reference to other films
2. synopsis (extremely detailed, the opposite of Total Film where they try condense their information)
3. discussion of narrative structure and style
4. balance of opinion (extremely important for any audience)
5. academic references
6. contextual information
7. summary and closing reference (this magazine are fairly successful at concluding)
When it comes to connecting with the readers the magazine are not as quick to do it, they use intellectual jokes that only educated film fanatatics would understand first time round. Also, there do not tend be many white spaces however that is due to the amount of text since they use less break out boxes and break out paragraphs than "Total Film" magazine.

Finally, another film magazine in the UK is "PreVue" for the Vue cinemas in the UK which is an in house customer magazine. This magazine will mostly review forth coming films about to be released therefore it is mostly persuasive with no critical opininions to balance them out. This magazine tends to focus more on mainstream films however the reviews tend to not focus as much on the actual film and plot as it does on the Hollywood actors: the journalists assume that most of their audience will usually pick a film to watch based on the actors. "PreVue" magazine's main audience are quite obviously people who go to the Vue cinemas and who are insterested in the newest main stream films. Like "Total Film" magazine, break out boxes and break out paragraphs are also used to fill out white spaces in the pages however the pictures used in "PreVue" tend to be more dominating and seem to be more of the focus than the article itself. Short sentences and colloquial language is used throughout the article with an over emphasis on punctuation when the magazine tries to engage the reader; it makes it seem more like a chat rather than a proffessional article review about a film.