Total Film Magazine Cover Analysis

Brad Lacey
Published on December 19, 2014

Total Film is a UK-based film magazine published every four weeks by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 offering Cinema DVD, Blu-ray news, reviews and features. This magazine is both printed and available to buy from shops or can be digitally bought and viewed on iPads. The lay-out of the magazine is in an old-fashioned comic book view, as the main interest of this specific edition of the magazine is Comic-Book Movie preview, making the layout work and interesting. For example screen-shots of different films are presented with an old fashioned film border which goes across leading off screen from both sides. The bold masthead is two words, yet the first word “TOTAL” is imbedded into the second word “FILM” and positioned in the top left, making it easy to read and understand as “TOTAL FILM”. Despite the front cover looking visually noisy, it’s still lain out easy to read and the colours keep the magazine looking professional and thematic. Having the model, Spider-man positioned in front of the masthead shows his important to the magazine and institutional context. The main image also works with the comic book theme as Spider-man is based on a comic. The bold and bright colours of red and yellow represent the comic theme and also help all the main parts stand out against the background while also diverting the eyes to different sections of the cover; these colours also represent the emotion of the model. The expression of the model is serious, showing he’s in character and this magazine focuses on the actual film, rather than behind the scenes of it. The selling-line “The world’s best movie reviews” make the magazine appealing to the audience and critiques to see if the reviews they provide are actually the best. This selling-line has a border made up of stars, which suggests that these stars are what film critiques use to rate films. The text on this magazine cover includes parts that are bold, showing the importance and popularity of the things that are emphasized, making it stand out and appeal to a wider audience.