The Evaluation Question 1 (Part 6)- Emma Robertson

'Little White Lies' magazine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_White_Lies_%28magazine%29

Little White Lies is an independent film magazine produced by The Church of London

In 2008, Little White Lies won its first major award: Best Designed Consumer Magazine of the Year at the Magazine Design & Journalism Awards.

Each issue of Little White Lies is themed around a single cover film, inspiring the design and editorial content of the entire issue.

The design of each issue of Little White Lies is inspired by its feature film, represented on the cover by an illustration of its lead actor. The cover film also influences interior aspects, such as editorial icons, chapter headings and custom typefaces. However, the overall template of the magazine remains the same.

Little White Lies' cover films have ranged from small independent films to blockbuster releases.

Review conventions

• The image dominates the review: has to be a screen shot from the film itself- sets the genre and gives and idea about the characters (e.g. 44 Inch Chest is clearly a thriller/gangster film from the menacing and serious male characters huddled around a table)

• Reference to film sources/origins e.g. novels and inspiration for the film

• Evaluative comments: can add humour as the magazine has to be entertaining for the readers and allows the writer to add their person opinion about the film (can make or break the film!)

• Use of complex language: this targets their demographic audience:

16-25 year old males

Film literate

Emphasise on the male reader

ABC1

This is shown through the analysis of adverts such as Nike and male character dominated film posters

• Academic referencing (gender theory or analysis of representations): emphasis on independent British films, which deal with serious themes and issues. Cater to the film literate readers, who want to feed their film knowledge

• Plot description: gives a rough idea on what’s the film about for the reader, to gain an insight

• Genre references: this can be suggested through iconography or certain phrases such as ‘chick flick’ or ‘gangster film’

• Reference to film techniques/ use of film language terms: caters to film literate audience and gives a sense of a professional/expert opinion.

Our review: did we challenge or conform to these conventions?

Here is our review link on the blog:
http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010/04/altered-review-emma-robertson.html

• Our 'Rich' image dominated our review as we saw in 'Little White Lies', there was a review which had 4 columns so we used the layout as inspiration. We used Rich as our image to target Little White Lies target audience: male!

• Evaluative comments: to review our film honestly by criticising our use of green screen and used our audience feedback integrated into the copy (regarding the black and white cinematography)

• Plenty of complex language: this was a main convention used in the review content, which couldn't be ignored.

• Academic referencing to gender theory and representation: regarding Amie and female empowerment. (Only a brief mention, I didn't want to dwell on it too much)

• Plot description: to appeal to our audience and to encourage word of mouth.

• Genre references were used at the end of the review... " into social realism as it intertwines romance, realism and fantasy into a spellbinding short film"

• Reference to film terms were used as well to add our knowledge on camera work- e.g. long takes, narrative device, green screen technology, cinematography, extreme long shot.

• No references to any other films because it was hard to integrate into the review. We wanted to let the readers know about OUR film and OUR director Jo White so we used plenty of quotes and thoughts about the film

Emma Robertson