How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?By Okechi Ezerakalu

Introduction

• For my A2 media coursework, I had to create a film trailer of a genre of my choice and a magazine front cover and poster. The film trailer is the main product while the magazine front cover and poster are the ancillary texts. The reason for this combination is to attract and keep the audience interested in my product. I am going to access the effectiveness of my main product and the ancillary texts and whether they work well together.

The film poster

• I researched and analysed a range of films posters in order to follow forms and conventions of professional products. While I researched many film posters, the main film poster that I choose to focus on was the film poster for the conjuring (shown on the next slide) I analysed the forms and conventions that they used and I attempted to duplicate them in my own product. I also looked at the things other posters did and so I planned to also use these.

Analyse of film poster

Analyse of my film poster

With the poster of the conjuring I found that the way the poster is taken from a forest was very effective and created a sense of mystery that didn’t give away too much but at the same time it has the effect of keeping the audience interested. Conventionally in all

posters its important that the name of the trailer id also the name on the poster for obvious reasons like promotion and identification

Some posters include the name of the actors in the movies as promotion because if the actors are famous enough they will attract a wider range of people.

A catchy slogan is also important in helping capture the audience attention.

The magazine front cover

• Initially I analyse three magazine front covers, however I came across the limited edition magazine front cover of a company (Empire)that I had previously researched and analysed and I choose to duplicate my product to be like this one. The limited edition is slightly different to the regular magazine, so I went and did extra research on where and how they placed the different parts on the limited edition front cover.

Magazine front cover

My magazine front cover.

Conventionally in magazine front covers is that they have to put the masthead illustrating the name of the magazine, which of course I also had to do.

The main difference between the product that I analysed and my product is that they were both in different genres. Man of steel is an action/superhero movie while my product is horror so of course the main image of both of them would be completely different. However I tried to maintain the dark background that the man of steel magazine front cover used because I thought it was effective

With every limited edition magazine front cover that I analysed I found that they all printed the text ‘limited edition collector’s cover’

With the limited edition front cover that I analysed this was the same order and set-up of text, the magazine website, then the realise date, then the price in pounds followed by the price in euros.The title is also important because for promotional purposes.

I also put the barcode in the same position as the man of steel magazine front cover.

The Trailer

• In my research I analysed three different trailer for horror which were

The conjuring, Evil dead and The purge. I analyse the locations and

props that they used in order to make the trailer interesting but more

importantly scary. I attempted to use certain forms and conventions

from the trailers like in evil dead and The conjuring their location was

mainly based in the forest so I also included a scene in the forest.