Researching Film Reviews

Before going straight into designing my film review for Blackmail, I decided to take a look at some film reviews from a few magazines, but also film reviews on certain websites. Some of these websites included Empire, IMDB, Total Film etc.

In magazines, the layout is obviously a lot different to the online film reviews. In magazines the reviews tended to be a lot more in your face, a lot going on and the idea of the magazine film reviews is to catch the readers eye. Whereas the online film reviews are an easy read, compact and simple. The audience would be of a similar age, but the online film reviews maybe for a reader who is at work and wants to quickly read a latest films review.
Here is a review of the film 'Hugo' on the Empire website. As you can see everything is kept simple but is still very concise. There is a clear key of what the film has been rated, a few film details about the cast and directors and also a quick summary of the plot and the overall verdict of the film. The review also has an image on the review to still allow the viewer to get an idea of the film. When it comes to designing my film review, I will probably create something similar to a review from a magazine. I'll do this as I want the review to be as much fun to read and view as possible and putting effort into the review will pay off when someone reads it.

Here is a film review of Spider-Man 2 in a magazine. Straight away you can see the difference compared to the online film review. It's a lot more in your face, the image is a central part of the review along with the title. The verdict is clear at the bottom of the page, white on red, which is also relevant to the article as spider man's main colours are white and red. Also the overall colour scheme is relevant to the central image (red,white,blue). This works well and keeps the interest of the reader. The main text is clear and the bolder writing will be important notes about the film. When creating my film review, I will be using a black and white image, and using fonts relevant to the central images and using fonts and texts which match the image.