Textural and Content analysis of “Sight and Sound” magazine.

As I have chosen Sight and Sound to promote my film I have chosen one of their magazines to analyse in preparation for when I create my own. Usually Sight and Sound magazine covers are kept simple and they don’t come across as bold.

This issue is from June 2010. At the time it was promoting the film ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. The film titles first word is in much larger text as it wants to garb the reader’s attention by using a short but loud technique. We as the audience are mostly attracted to the actor Nicholas Cage. This is because there is more light focused on him suggesting that he is the main character of the film.

There are other people on the front cover but as they are not in the foreground we rarely focus on them. On the right of Nicholas Cage there is an overweight man in the background. The colour tone is different. It is more black and white/sepia. This man and two others in the background don’t seem to be together with Nicholas Cage. This meaning that the people on the cover have been photo shopped in. This gives us more of an element of the film it’s promoting and the characters in it. We know that Nicholas Cage is the main character and the guy on his right has something to do with him. There is text on the front cover that states four actors’ names. The majority of the audience may not know who the other three guys our as they may not be that popular/mainstream so it was wise to put Nicholas Cage with more focus as it helps promotes the magazine and the film.

This magazine cover doesn’t carry a lot of information on it other than the title of the film and one or two things about it. Underneath the film title there is more text in smaller font. It advertises two features that are contained within the magazine. They are features on the media rather than about celebrities, compared to other film magazine cover ‘Total Film’. One of the features ‘The New Golden Age of British TV Drama Chris Morris ‘ Four Lions’’ elevates the fact that this is a British film Magazine that focus’s mostly on the intellect and artistic fleur of films rather than what was produced from Hollywood budget.

I looked at this article feature from the magazine which is titled ‘Lions for lambs’. This review focuses more on the director’s point more than the actual film. However it does look at various aspects of the film such as the comedy input of the film. Mostly after something has been stated about the film, the article makes a lot of references to other projects that relates to the director. For example, ‘Not much comedy has been made about Islamist terrorism. The relatively little humorous film-making that has engaged with the ‘war on terror’ has tended to focus on the absurdities of the western stance: think of the bombastic – bathetic marionettes of Team America: World Police (2004) or the servile political manoeuvring of In the Loop (2009), whose director, Armando Iannucci, worked with Morris on On the Hour and The Day Today, and one of whose writers, Jesse Armstrong, collaborated (along with his writing partner Sam Bain and Morris himself) on the script for this film.’

There are more examples like this through the rest of the article. There is no negative or positive approach to how good the film is; the reviewer just states how the film conveys and how the director conveyed it. In most film articles there would be expectancy of information or talk about the characters from the film. But as this is a British New Age film it is based on reasons of the film and the main concept.

The context of this magazine is consists of reviews and articles of films plus other media relations i.e. DVDs and books. As well as reviewing the listed films, they also add in the credits of it. They acknowledge the people who actually made the movie. It is less featured on celebrities and other context that could be classified as being vague when considering this type of magazine. Even the advertisements fit directly in with the magazine, 15.38% of the context is advertisements. Empire magazine advertises games, DVDs, movies, and some clothing items. However the little percentage of Sight and Sound consists of films, DVDs, film festivals, institutions where one could study film plus there is also an advertisement that promotes ‘LastExitToNowhere.com’ which sells t-shirts, hooded tops, posters etc the factor is that they are logoed with relation to films.

This certain issue, I would say, is mainly aimed at the male gender. The front cover has the film that they are promoting and it only shows men. Nicolas Cage is mostly known for action films (which targets mainly males). The colour scheme, as well, does not scream out for females to pick up the magazine as the colours are dull. Also the majority of films featured in this magazine are mainly male dominated.