Magazine Analysis

Little White Lies magazine analysis-

 

 



The ‘Little White Lies’ magazine is unique in its style and delivery of the ever-growing independent film industry, it uses 3 categories (‘Anticipation’, ‘Enjoyment’ and ‘In Retrospect’) that are marked out of 5 along with an explanatory text. This helps the reader easily understand the reviewed film and makes the magazine more approachable. The reviewer tends to give some background on the film, its cast or producer/director as well as giving their impression on the film. The magazine is special in that it makes independent film more accessible with short reviews and its scoring system, The Guardian called it “the best-designed film magazine on the shelf” which has helped to propel its status as one of the “magazines at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement”.

The magazine utilizes a variety of key features to give it its distinctive style.

The name of the short film as well as a few important details such as the director, cast and release date are detailed on the top left before the review begins. The names of the cast or crew are usually in bold which helps certain people stand out, the name of the film is also in bold and with larger text to make it clear what film this is and attract the reader.


On the top right of the review is usually a shot of the film that is interesting in its own right. This makes the review more enticing to a reader and can help to attract new audiences to the film.
It also helps to give visual context to the film.

The magazine uses a blue font and always begins with a letter that is bold and larger than the standard text, the review also ends with the reviewers name in bold text.
The font used it clean and simple which helps to make it easy to read and more approachable to an audience.

The reviews tend to focus on the plot at the beginning using descriptive language that helps the reader  to visualise the film and its plot easily, technical terms are included that appeal to readers interested or in the industry. Illustrative text and technical terms are combined to create a well thought out review that tackles the positive elements of each film whilst also constructively criticising and bringing out the negative.

The most unique feature of the review is the scoring system at the end of the review, this is usually on the bottom right. The categories are rated out of 5 and helps the reader to understand the review easily and quickly. The descriptions next to each score help to summarise the film and end the review in an excellent, simplistic way.