Audience Research on Film Magazine Front Covers

From the research conducted through the use of secondary sources and analysis, I found that film magazines tend to be aimed at a male audience.

Action, horror and fantasy films are more likely to be featured on the front cover of film magazines rather than a romantic comedy. This may be because the target audience for romantic comedies tend to be women which differs from the target audience of film magazines.

From the image on the left from Empire magazine's website, you can see that there is a choice of covers with this issue. Both action films. The general layout, colour and language used in the website and magazine is also representative of a masculine ideology.

Because my film is a romantic comedy, the use of a magazine front cover as a ancillary text wouldn't fit in with the conventions of film magazines. Although I could create a film magazine front cover with my film as the main focus to de-construct the usual conventions, the ideology behind it wouldn't be right as the main audience of film magazines are male who are not the target audience for my film. This is why a website would be better as a promotional tool as women are more likely to use the internet to research and find out more information about a film they want to see.

Romantic comedies are usually promoted through magazines with the use of adverts within the magazine or through interviews with the actors or actor in the film.

For example, the image of the popular womens magazine 'Glamour' has Jennifer Aniston on the front cover.

In the month the magazine was released, Jennifer Aniston's film 'Love Happens' was released.