Niche Audience Magazine

This particular magazine "Film Comment" is targeted to a niche audience due to selective interests as this film magazine focuses primarily on old and new movies, with in depth reviews and opinions.
This may be very uninteresting for some as topics such as this only appeal to a small group of people, making it a niche market.
The colour scheme for this particular cover is very bland and uses dull, natural colours such as leaf green, browns and yellows to represent the fact that this issue focuses more on old movies so perhaps these blander colours are to help relate to an older and more old fashioned audience. The cover features a large closeup of an actor with his eyes keeping contact with the camera, a very common convention of magazines. The mise-en-scene of the picture depicts him wearing a suit, he has a very stern and serious expression perhaps to represent a powerful or sinister demeanour, helping the audience to assume his character, the lighting creates shadows and highlights details of his face to further represent this.. In the background there are several other images all overlaid and faded, these appear to be other characters from movies and is a big hint to the reader as to which movies are the main focus of this issue.
The masthead takes up a lot of space on the page and covers most of the models forehead, this is obviously to advertise their magazine and to self-promote. The font style doesn't really change and remains a similar mint green colour but the issue date is white and in the top right corner. The barcode is small and situated in the bottom left corner so not to distract you from the actual cover. The magazine price is out of the way so that is one of the last things you look at in the hope that the cover is enough to persuade you to buy and certainly if this is a magazine full of information suited to your interests then you, as a part of this niche audience, would make the purchase. The theory of Curran and Seaton can be applied here as they have responded to the concerns of their readers, this being a large and overwhelming love and interest for movies, by including famous figures and different movies all in one front cover to successfully attract this niche audience by using their love of movies to their own advantage. Hall's theory of representation is present throughout the front cover of this magazine as the man in the image is represented as a stern and serious character through the use of his clothes, a sharp suit and tie to represent authority, the bland colours used further represent seriousness and perhaps a lack of fun as his facial expression suggests anger as his brow is furrowed and eyes narrowed, almost as if he is challenging the reader to pick up the magazine and read.