Film Magazine Textual Analysis: Empire Inception
Empire magazine is a British magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain to date. Empire is an iconic magazine featuring the biggest blockbusters regularly and famous actors and also inspiring directors and writers.
The denotation of this magazine is a strong colour themed image of red black and blue with a medium long shot of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb from the Christopher Nolan Directed film “Inception”. The picture of Leonardo DiCaprio and the setting surrounding him is one of the main focuses as the release of “Inception” was the summer blockbuster of that year. Leonardo’s character is staring off camera with one hand wrapped firmly around a gun.
The masthead font is a sans serif font in block capitals. The trademark Empire masthead is positioned to fill most of the top third. The font is signature to the magazine unless they decide to change it to accompany the film which is being featured. The masthead is the traditional red which is usually used it is a colour that is bold and bright and grabs readers attention from the news stand and helps with the left third. A common convention among some film magazines is for some of the masthead letters to not be visible. The “P” in “Empire” is not shown due to it being covered by the main image, this composition connotes that this magazine is popular and known very well globally as it is obvious to the reader what the name of the magazine is called.The main image looks very 3D as if the reader is entering the magazine when looking. This relates to the whole concept of Inception as it’s as if were entering the dream world. High key lighting helps create this illusion, as the background settings behind the cover lines are very bright enhancing the illusion of entering a computer generated mind made up of tall buildings which are shown in the film. Leonardo as the main image is key, as it is his character that enforces the adventure of going into a dream within a dream. A mixture of high and low key lighting is used on Leonardo’s face to reveal some of his stern NVC, which connects to his character, and to create a sense of mystery with the shadowed parts on his face, as dreams can be a dangerous mystery.
The layout of the magazine is quite unusual as the cover lines are placed in a diagonal type degree turn to add to the 3D illusion. Although some of the magazines layout is quite simple with the main cover line it matches the Empire masthead font and colour showing the audience this is one of the main attractions as it is red and big, attention grabbing. Included within the main cover line is a quote “The Matrix meets 007 on steroids!” Empire has cleverly entwined this quote into their front cover as they have included two big well know high rated movies to compare inception to, encouraging readers to go see but by adding “on steroids” to the quote shows the reader it is a must see as by further comparing to steroids show is must be even more fast paced, powerful and exhilarating that “The Matrix” and 007 films. Below the main cover line is also a small puff which doesn’t fit the colour scheme to perhaps break up the brightness of the red on the reader’s eye. The puff includes a clever pun “Dream Access to the movie event of 2010” creating further the reader to read the article to have “Dream Access” which the movie revolves around. The magazine doesn’t just focus around Inception, some of the focus surrounds the director Christopher Nolan, as above the Inception cover line it has “Christopher Nolan’s”. It is further noticed that the magazine is partly centred on the director; an aspect Empire is known for, as above the masthead it has “The Dark Knight Returns…” this has nothing to do with the film but everything to do with the film’s director who wrote and directed the dark knight. By including this further get the audience keen on buying, as the selling line could relate to a third instalment of the batman series or it could refer to Christopher Nolan being “The Dark Knight” and returning with another major block buster.
Other films mentioned in this issue are: Batman 3, Toy story 3, Jonah Hex, Thor, Predators and Let me in. All films mentioned are all of different type genres showing the magazine is versatile and can appeal to all types of people who are into different films. The cover lines are positioned on both sides of the main image and are in black to not draw away attention from the main image but bold enough to be noticed. Certain film such as, Batman 3 and Toy Story 3 have been placed to the left as they are high profile films which had a lot of media coverage around them. Placing them in the left third could possibly be strategic to help sales where the magazine is not shown full-frontage.
The issue was released in July 2010, showing that it is a magazine which is released monthly. The date the magazine was released has been put in between the “M” in “EMPIRE” which is conventionally done in Empire issues along with the price the magazine is to be sold at, which has put the price depending where the magazine is sold connoting it is a global magazine. The web address of the magazine is a small font size opposite the magazines tag line “The world’s biggest movie magazine” in block capitals but with a white font which isn’t so easy to see. Other features within the front cover are the barcode positioned in the right lower corner to perhaps not disturb the overall layout of the cover. Further in the bottom left corner is edgy puff like box which includes “The complete Hitchcock part 1” further showing that the magazine appreciates the directors and creators as well as the movies and actors that feature in it. The font used also is very different from all the other fonts within the cover. The font is more playful contrasting the serious tone and NVC of Leonardo. The edgy puff box shows that it is “part 1” including different parts to be in different issues is a good selling point as it not only encourages the reader to buy this issue but also the next as it holds the 2nd part to the “complete Hitchcock”.
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