Front cover planning

MAIN IMAGE

Looking at the main images on the front cover of empire magazines, there is always a main character filling up the whole page and covering part of the 'Empire' title. This was something I had to ensure I kept the same when creating my front cover. Here is the first

example that I looked at when researching the Empire front cover and as you can see, Will Smith who is the main character of 'I am legend' is on the front, covering the 'P' of the empire logo and taking up the whole page. The magazine clearly has information on this film as the title is in big bold letters across the front. The second example I looked at again was very similar as there was the main character of the film that the magazine was focused on and again it covered part of the Empire title however not as much as the first one. The character on this magazine is looking directly into the camera which compares to the first one which shows the camera angle positioned below Will perhaps reflecting his dominance.
By having the character looking directly into the camera it engages and interacts with the audience and people who recognise the character and who are fans of the Spiderman films are likely to pick it up.

With that in mind I wanted to recreate something like this and have my model looking into the camera but also as I wanted her to have dominance I knew I needed to position the camera below her.

MODEL

The model that I used for my main image was a female friend of 18 years old. I wanted my model to be a female as the focus of this magazine is to look at horror films and how women and children are represented usually as the victims. My article focused on the children and therefore I wanted my front cover to represent females. My model was going to be the main character out of a new horror film who is not a victim but a hero and a survivor. Therefore I needed to make her look as if she had injuries such as cuts and bruises on her face. To do this I used makeup to give her black eyes and bruises with black eye shadow, purple lipstick and red blusher.

TEST SHOTS

This was the first picture I took using one studio light and without the flash on the camera. This image was good in the way that the camera was positioned below my model giving her power and you can clearly see the makeup on her face however it wasn't very clear and it still looked slightly too dark. I chose a leather skirt as women are often sexualised in films to attract the male audience and therefore I wanted to show this representation on my front cover. Also in this image she was looking slightly over the top of the camera rather than right into the lens which I would have preferred as it engages with the audience more. I then took a few more photos using just the studio light however I felt that they were still all a little too dark and her face looked dull which did not work as that is one of the most important features.