Empire Front Cover - Editing 2

The next step for my cover was to fill the space at the bottom. 

From looking at previous Empire covers, the bottom is often used to place more names of films. Sometimes the word 'Plus' is used, and other times just the '+' symbol is used. 

Inspired by the Public Enemies Empire cover, I created something similar on my own front cover. 

I did some research into films that came out in the same month as Final Destination 5 - which was released in August 2011. I went onto the website Movie Web, and found a webpage with all of August's releases on it. 

http://www.movieweb.com/movies/2011/august

The films I have selected to use are as follows: 

+  30 Minutes Or Less, Fright Night, One Day, Columbiana

The Debt, Grave Encounters, Atrocious, Brighton Rock, The Change Up

After adding the '+' which I chose to do in the dark red, I added the film titles at the bottom. To separate each title, I inserted '//', which seems to be a convention of Empire's covers. 

Inspired by the 2008 Harry Potter cover, I decided to play around with different colours with my titles. 

I decided on alternating the titles between white and a dark blue colour, because these are the colours of the Final Destination franchise. I also added in red for the '//' dividers, to create more visual impact. 

I used the font style TW Cen Mt, as it fits in with the rest of the typography.

So far, my cover is looking more and more realistic, but I need to work now on adding in the other elements and paying attention to detail as I go along. 

The next detail I needed to add was a by-line type heading to go with the Final Destination headings. 

On further inspection of the by-line type headings of the Public Enemies Empire cover, I noticed that conventionally the by-lines need to be exciting, and should entice the reader to pick up the magazine. I also noticed that the phrases need to be catchy, 'Steals Summer' - the use of alliteration is interesting, and will stick in a reader's mind. The mention of famous names is also a key component: as well as the image itself, the reader will also pick up on famous names which will intrigue them. The language is very informal and I'll also need to convey this in my own titling. 

In the same font style and in the dark blue colour I'd used in the film titling at the bottom, I added the phrase "STEVEN QUALE TALKS THREE DIMENSIONAL DEATH!" 

I've included the name of the director, to entice fans of his work, the word 'talks' is very informal and again reinforces the idea that Empire get special access to actors,directors and special information, and the phrase 'three dimensional death' is catchy and interesting, because of the use of alliteration. Also, I felt that because the article will focus a lot on the 3D of the film, and because 3D is so important to Quale as he worked on the Avatar 3D with Cameron, I felt this was another reason as to why I should include it. 

I also noticed that the dark blue only looked good on black, so I decided to create a black outline where the text was overlapping the photo. I could have moved the text off of the photograph, but I wanted to keep it united with the rest of the typography, so felt it would look much better overlapped. The diagonal line of the typography is also another way to keep it unified, as it's at the same angle as the 'Final'.

To create this outline, I followed some very simple steps. On the layer of the title, I right clicked and selected 'Blending Options'. Then, I selected 'outer glow', and chose a black colour. I set the opacity to 100, and the spread to 100, and then the size to 7, quite small, but still enough to make a difference. 

So far, I think the elements of my cover are really coming together well. The colour scheme with the added blue just adds something extra to the cover, and also keeps it related to the film. The tiny details, like the customisation I made to the fonts, the blood splatters, the slight colour changes to things, etc, make the cover successful.