To begin, we decided to research into what film reviews looked like in magazines to give us an idea of what our review should look like. We looked at a collection of images and the conventions that they all seemed to follow. Through this, we felt we would gain a strong understanding of the components of a magazine film review. This would then allow us to produce a review of a high quality that would be suitable for a magazine.
The first review we analysed was of the "Spiderman 2". We felt this had the a lot of conventional elements we could pull apart and analyse. We selected areas that where key in the whole composition and commented on them to build up an understanding of what makes an effective film review that intreges the audience. We felt that the fact the image of the film seemed to be the main objectof the review was effective in capturing the audiences attention and hence giving them an idea of what the film is like, which is on of the main purposes of a review.
Review Research
Spiderman 2
In this review we thought the bold use of writing in blue and yellow is effective in drawing the audiences attention to certain important parts of text. For example, one way this review inspired us when through giving the actor credit in one piece of bold writing which we thought was a successful marketing technique as it excites fans of the actor as to what role they are playing in this film as using stars if often an excellent marketing stragey for fans.
In all of the reviews we researched, as you can see the image in the page is always the central feature of the review. This is effective for those who don't actually want to read the full review and just want to see what the film looks like.Therefore, in all of these images there appears to been screenshots from the actual film which couldn't be a better way of portraying what the film is like as the images are actually insights into what happens in the film and who stars in it. We knew this was something we wanted to portray in our own review as the image is one of the most gripping parts of each of the reviews along with the title and so we knew we had to select carefully which screenshot of the film we would pick.
Finally, one thing we took from this review and thought was extremlely effective was the small 'See this if you liked...' box. Therefore, this is something we wanted to include in our own review as it helps not only draw in further audiences who recognise and liked the films in that box to watch the film that is being reviewed, but it also gives the audience an insight into what sort of thing to expect by comparing it to similar products which is a faster way of the audience deciding whether to watch the film rather than reading the whole review.