Film Review Distribution

I looked into the different types of film review magazines that are available to the public and decided that I want my short film review to be of a casual tone, similar to Empire, rather than the formal style of the BFI’s Sight & Sound, to appeal to my target audience of 15+. As the critical analysis of an Empire review may not be as serious as that of a Sight & Sound review, I have decided to take inspiration from both magazines, so that my target audience are engaged by the tone of the review, yet are still made to read about and connect with the serious topic of cyberbullying and its effect in people. This analysis will broaden my potential target audience and appeal to people from the age of 15 to the mature age of 25+, with the addition of enthusiastic media students/ students fascinated by the film industry. Driven by this inspiration, I examined the layout of various Empire film reviews, particularly the film ‘Joy’ in the December 2015 paper issue, and used this as a basis to construct my review. I was intrigued by the difference in layout between the physical copy of the magazine and the online version, but figured that it would be more sensible to recreate that of the physical copy as the online page has technological features like hyperlinks to social media and other film review articles - which I won't be able to achieve when creating my film review on Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is the most appropriate software to use for constructing my film review and making it look professional as it provides 3D effects, text boxes, shapes and adjustable marginal lines to help with the spacing of columns and the measurements needed to replicate that of a film review by Empire. To ascertain a successful review, I need to correspond to the layout, themes, and style of content of Empire.