Elizabeth Addis

How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main

Product And Ancillary Texts?

In our main production we were aiming to both intrigue our audience with plot twists and mystery, whilst also scaring them and creating fear and anxiousness for the characters they were watching.

We managed to achieve this through the use of post-production editing with a mixture of fast and slow scenes to add suspense, as well as the use of music and sound effects to create an eerie mood.

It was important for our group’s film to be represented well in our publicity material (the radio trailer and poster), as the genre of the film meant they had to make the film seem appealing and interesting to attract an audience whilst not giving too much of the storyline away to spoil the plot twist we included. When designing and making our poster and radio trailer, we had in mind the results of a lot of research into existing posters and trailers as well as a plan of what key things to include across the main product and ancillary texts in order to link them together.

Poster Research In order to create a poster that fit with our chosen

film genre and ‘promote’ it well to an audience, I first did some research into existing posters. This meant I would have a better understanding of what conventions appeared throughout all the posters, and what rules to stick to in order to accurately portray our genre.

I looked at the posters for Thirteen Ghosts and American Psycho, both psychological thriller/horrors.

I noticed that most posters I looked at contained black, as black connotes darkness and evil; as well as most posters main focus being the main character or the antagonist, as this draws an audience in to wondering who they are and why they are important. Many used distorted images to scare the audience.

From doing this basic research among a few posters I then decided to do one highly detailed research on a single poster.

I chose to do in-depth analysis of the poster for the 2012 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street before I started to design my own poster. This helped me to make lots of notes about what to include as well as how to make up a poster, as I learnt about ‘pulling the eye’ and visual composition to focus an audience on what you want them to.

Detailed Poster Analysis

This poster was similar to the design we wanted, including conventions of psychological thrillers with silhouettes, and similar colour schemes.

During this research I also compared how the poster linked with the website, trailer and film itself and saw how small parts of the film were apparent across all publicity material, and we decided this was something we should replicate in our ancillary texts.

During this, I made notes on what conventions and basic things to include in our poster that were included in every poster I (and the rest of the group) had researched.

These were: title, tagline, information, company logos, release date, photo/picture of a main part of the film, reviews, links to websites.

To do this, I created a logo for our ‘company’ Se7en Productions Ltd. which would appear on the poster. This would make it appear official and make an audience have more faith in its production.

Conventions + Items To Include

Firstly, all of our group made a poster idea focusing on the mask used by the antagonist. I created this one and wanted to add an extra part by using a stock photo of an eye and adding it in, to make an audience feel like the mask is looking at them.

It also included all key parts of a poster we had previously noted down.

However, although we liked the idea of the mask we had decided to create an alternate poster based on a new found inspiration by film noir, which we had just discovered.

Making Our Poster

Film noir had inspired us to create this new, and final, poster. We believed this accurately showed our movie off and linked well with it, by showing a still from the film of the protagonist, Deb, walking towards an as-yet-unidentified door.

We also changed the main text to red, as red is a colour that connotes danger and a warning, as well as blood, for an audience.

I believe this poster shows an audience a glimpse of the film, enough to intrigue them to want to watch more, without giving away too much. By not showing the mask, it leaves the shock of it’s first appearance as a surprise to the audience.

Final Poster Design

In order to make a radio trailer, we first had to do research on existing radio trailers. This was hard to do due to the lack of radio trailers for films available on the internet, but I eventually found some and managed to gather notes on how to create a good radio trailer.

I used the radio trailer for the 50 Shades Of Grey movie as it was widely available on the internet.

I discovered that in radio trailers there are: voiceovers, audio clips taken from the film itself, and music. The voiceovers announce the title, a tagline, the release date, and possibly internet sites; much like information on a poster. Audio clips from the movie tend not to give anything away about the plot.

Radio Trailer Research

Click the poster to hear the 50sog radio trailer.

To make our radio trailer we used two programs; iMovie and GarageBand.

We used Garageband to create the music for the background, and iMovie to edit the whole radio trailer together.

In order to make our radio trailer sound professional we had to learn new skills on this program as we all had little experience with it. We used audio sections from our film as well as the music we created, and then recorded a voiceover to add over the top which announced the film title and release date, as with a conventional radio trailer like the ones we had researched.

Making The Radio Trailer

From my research I knew it was important to link the publicity material together, and that there should be common themes across the poster, film and radio trailer.

This is because it drives home an important point, or the main theme of a film, to an audience due to repeated exposure to it. For example, including the title and release date in both the poster and radio trailer means the audience would be more likely to remember it.

In our ancillary texts we made sure to follow this rule. We linked the poster and radio trailer by including: The title of the film The release date of the film Common characters: the radio trailer uses film quotes from the

protagonist, Deb, and the poster features a screenshot of Deb from the film.

Music that is similar to the music in the film.

Links & Importance

I believe that the combination of our film and ancillary texts was very effective.

It is the job of the ancillary texts to compliment the film, and to promote it without giving too much away. As posters and trailers are often the first impression an audience has of a film, due to them being circulated months before the release of the film, it is important that they follow the codes and conventions of the film’s genre to accurately promote it and attract a possible audience.

We knew from early on what message we wanted to convey in our poster and radio trailer, and by doing this well we knew that they promoted the film accurately and linked well with what our audience had said they liked about the film in the questionnaires: by transferring these things to the poster and trailer it meant the target audience would be interested in them.

In conclusion, I believe that the combination of all three is very effective due to how well they all link together, and by linking them it helps to promote the film by all putting across a common theme/genre and sense of storyline.

Effectiveness Of Combination