Audiences of magazine film reviews

The audience of a magazine film review can be different to the audience of the film it is reviewing. This is because the review is serving the target audience of the magazine, and not the film. For instance, a review for The Princess and the Frog (2008), a Disney animation would appear in Empire magazine however the review is for readers of Empire magazine and obviously not the target audience of the film as it is highly unlikely the young, child audience of the film would not read a review of the film.

Magazine film review audiences also vary due to the different interests in audiences. The magazine Sight & Sound is produced by the British Film Institute and can be seen as The Times of film magazines. The mode of address of the magazine is targeted at those with real knowledge and academic interest in film not only as a pass-time, but a key cultural tool and art form. The audience of Sight & Sound are much more informed and expect a higher standard of sophisticated English. The writing is also very serious and formal with most humour being very dry. Sight & Sound provides a full synopsis of the film with discussion of the narrative structure and style, balanced opinion and contextual information to feed its middle-class, well educated audience. The use of a full synopsis gives the interested, academic audience an in-depth overview of the film as well as discussion and view points of the themes and events.



Whereas a magazine such as Total Film provides a less extensive synopsis of the film to target an audience that are obviously interested in films as they buy the magazine, but use film for more entertainment than cultural research like the readers of Sight & Sound. The reviews in the magazine use a lower standard of English compared to Sight & Sound and also uses more and larger pictures, as well as break out paragraphs and break out boxes such as graphs. A Total Film review also uses word play and more obvious wit than Sight & Sound such as "No Country for a middle-aged man (and his boy)...". The magazine uses wider columns which gives the appearance of a shorter and easier read, this appeals to the target audience of the magazine.

These magazines although having the same subject matter, their mode of addresses are vastly different as they have alternating target audiences. Sight & Sound uses a sophisticated level of English and expects its audience to know what the words mean, in contrast, Total Film uses a lower quality of language as it is not targeted at a sophisticated, highly educated audience that is reading the magazine for a detailed, high quality review. Sight & Sound uses more, slimmer columns with more focus on text than on pictures and other break-out boxes, whereas Total Film is very much focused on images, e.g. The Road in the example.



There are also magazines such as Prevue which is an in-house magazine published by Vue cinemas. Magazines like these are useful for simple synopses of films, but do not give clear positive or negative reviews as they goal is ultimately to get the reader to see any film in the cinema. These types of magazines give very simple outlines of the film without further depth or analysis, the articles are surrounded by breakout boxes which give information of the actor's other work and facts.