Empire magazine front cover : Research and Planning

• Starting with the main selling point of the poster which is the close up of one side of Christian Bale's face, this tells the audiences straight away who the main character in Terminator Salvation. This alone is a good selling point as he also starred in The latest Batman films which were huge successes. People who liked him as an actor in the Batman films would want to go watch Terminator Salvation as he is the main character. The close up shot shows the audience the kind of role he will play in the film by his facial expressions and as you can see its a very serious face, so will play a strong, serious lead role. Only showing half the face to the audience may try and make them think about the film, as there may be a different ending to what they think, or the role Christian Bale plays may be different to what they may think. The robot machine that is surrounding him gives away the genre of the film, which you can tell its a futuristic action film.

• The title of the film is stated clearly "Terminator Salvation" its in the second biggest font after the name of the magazine, the white font colour may try and indicate the good side of the film and it also goes well with the dark background of the cover.

• The caption below the title "On set for mankind's new judgement day" tells the audience that this is going to be the very last terminator film, audiences who have previously watched the other 3 would want to watch the last one to see how it will end.

• The magazine has the first interview with Christian Bale about the film, people would want to read this and know directly from the main actors point of view about the film. The magazine also offers free posters as a promotion to sell the magazine.

The things i have picked up from the magazine cover are: The name of the magazine has to be bigger than the film it promoting, with the name of the film in the second biggest font. Offer free stuff inside the magazine to promote the magazine to its maximum and to attract the biggest audience as possible.