‘Empire’ magazine is the biggest selling British film magazine, out selling its rival ‘Total Film’ by two to one. Empire was originally published by ‘Bauer Consumer Media’ but it was taken over in 2008 by ‘Emap Consumer Media’ who currently publish it. Empire has also expanded to other countries such as
The denotation of this magazine is a mid shot of Dave Lizewski the main character of the film ‘Kick Ass’ Played by Aaron Johnson, he is posing in front of a wall with posters of the other characters pasted to the wall with graffiti.
The main image of this front cover is placed in the centre of the page and has the model as the focal point; he is looking directly at the viewer making full eye contact in an intimidating/aggressive way which grabs attention to the magazine when it is in the newsstands. The model is posing in a hostile stance with his arm held up like he is about to hit someone giving us the feeling that he is not to be messed with. He is wearing a green and yellow spandex outfit as worn be the main character and clearly looks like he’s been fighting. The lighting of the model in the image is coming from the right and high lights the cuts and bruises on the his face, suggesting that this film will be violent. The model has been photographed in front of a wall covered with two posters which look like they have been painted on and distressed to resemble fly posters on a street wall. These two posters are of the two other heroes of the movie.
The image is effective in connoting the characters violent, aggressive and angry feelings that come out in the movie. The lighting and colour used in the image suggests that the film has a dark edge to it; the red in the background is like splattered blood which suggests the bloody violence in the film.
The masthead to Empire is always in the same sans serif font and is predominantly red in colour, but is often changed and adapted to encompass the genre and atmosphere of the film featured. In the case of the Kick Ass front cover the masthead has been designed to look as if it is blood splattered which breaks up the edges of the font and shows blood dripping down the wall which does not cover the posters of the other characters. Half the ‘M’ and all of the ‘P’ in Empire is covered by the characters head this is a common theme on the front covers of Empire as they are confident that the magazine logo is well known enough to not have to show all of the masthead. The dateline and year of publication and price is placed in small text at the top of the ‘M’ this is also done in every magazine.
The main cover line is ‘KICK-ASS’ which is written in a simple bold font in neon green and is the main focus of the whole magazine, by both K’s in kick there is splatters this puts more emphasis on the word kick, suggesting punching and kicking this puts more violence in the front cover. The other cover lines that draw attention are the ones above and below kick, these involve the words ‘Bloody!’ and ‘Brilliant!’ they are both in bright red so you read them before you read the sentence, it is also using alliteration which adds to the emphasis that the film in the magazine opinion is both bloody and brilliant. The cover line below starts with ‘The worlds first look at your new favourite movie’ this is in red and white, this line directly tell the buyer that it is there favourite movie, subliminally making them want the buy the magazine to see there favourite movie. At the top of the magazine there is a long arrow, within the arrow it says there is a free fold out cover inside, this makes the reader think they are getting more for there money, they also use this at the bottom by saying that James Cameron has told the magazine information on Avatar 2 which is the sequel to the 2009 blockbuster Avatar that grossed $2,782,300,000, this will help sell the magazine as many people would like to know information on the sequel.
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