Magazine Covers

What I have noticed about the majority of magazine covers advertising TV shows is that very often it is the characters - and by extension the actors/stars - that are being sold to the audience. The images of the characters can be reflective of the style of the show, for example in a crime show the character(s) shown may be holding a weapon, and the characters are usually in costume, but the photoshoots are definitely about the people more than they are about the narrative of the show, which is just how celebrity culture works: people are interested in watching their favourite stars in a show, so advertising the stars is simply good marketing. Most of the time, the show's name is displayed in large text that contrasts the background, which draws in audiences' attention to the show itself. The image to the right is not of a lifestyle magazine like the brief asks me to create but is of a TV guide magazine, but I thought I would include it here because I think it's interesting how even magazines dedicated to TV - with an audience almost exclusively of TV viewers - don't capitalise on narrative or stylistic aspects of the actual shows they're advertising, and instead focus on star factor and celebrity image.

The two images above are from covers of high-end lifestyle magazines that use more sophisticated front covers than their tabloid alternative in alignment with their audience of more middle-class people. The images on this type of magazine are almost always from a professional photoshoot, and often adhere to a specific visual style that is sometimes dictated by colour. However, they still conform to the industry expectation of advertising star factor, focusing on the celebrity personality and their life (often both on and off screen) more than the show itself.

For me, I do not have access to real stars who I can use to advertise my show. However, I can definitely adhere to the trend of advertising character above narrative or style, though this perhaps would not have been my first choice. I think that my own magazine cover should reflect certain elements of my show, and so I need to find a way to visually reflect the ideas of the psychological thriller genre. My initial idea was to have the same dramatic red lighting used on one of my dream-sets in the AV production on the magazine cover, which would draw a striking visual link between the two projects and establish a marketable aesthetic across multiple media platforms. However, this is perhaps too aesthetically radical for Lifestyle magazines, so maybe I need to rethink the idea, or perhaps I should just lower the extremity of the lighting and just have the photoshoot red-themed. I would have preferred to have taken an action shot from the show to put on the cover, but looking at my research now, I think that I will have an action shot - probably one from the dream sequence where my protagonist is running across a field in the dark, looking back over his shoulder in fear - as the main image in the two-page spread, and I will have a themed character-shot from a photoshoot on the front cover.