EVALUATION: How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary texts?

Introduction

Here, I will illustrate my promotional package magazine cover and poster. I will be comparing it to my case study that I did which was:

Friday the 13 This is a teen – slasher which is the same

genre as what I picked to make a trailer on. It was hard work, however from the audience feedback that I received I was very pleased with myself.

Comparing my poster to Friday the 13 poster

Poster comparison

Friday the 13 poster has very dark lighting to it, with a low angle camera work to make the antagonist look superior and powerful, like he is looking down at everyone else and no one can destroy him. I chose to have my antagonist facing his back towards the camera because I wanted the audience to want to know more information and want to know who he is (become intrigued) so this is why I faded his top half of his body into the dark background and only left his bottom half which shows his hands holding a knife and a mask which indicates a double identity and doesn’t want to show who he really is.

The font used for Friday the 13 is very thin like knife slices and quite wide which could have a link with the big knife / sword that the person is holding. I have thick letters, however also chose to have the same conventions of linking the font to the props used, so the bottom of the font I chose has cracks and slices coming up to make it look like someone destroyed the font.

On Friday the 13 poster, they have no ratings to indicate what kind of results they got from newspapers. I decided to go against this, and include two ratings because when the audience see the 5 stars they would want to watch it because of how well people rated it. They also did not include an age rating, which i on the other hand did.

My magazine cover

I could not find a magazine cover for Friday the 13 so decided to analyse mine on it’s own.

I chose to use Total Film as my magazine to promote my film because the audience for this film is the target audience that my film is aiming at therefore they would be seeing my film. I chose to have the antagonist in the centre to show the audience who exactly is the killer, and from my results that I got, they audience loved this magazine cover and many said they would want to watch the film.

The font I used is similar to the font Total Film uses as their trade mark. I decided to use the same font and include some magazine features such as a ‘Free cinema ticket’ triangle in the top right hand corner which would get more readers wanting to watch the film.

The theme colour I chose were white and red. The reason for this is because my picture and background is very dark so the white would stand out and catch their eyes, and the re I used to reflect blood.

Questionnaire results (from audience)

Questionnaire results (from audience)

Strengths and Weaknesses

The narrative had good feedback

The antagonist walking through the door and the lift scene were successful

14 people said they would want to watch the film and 10 said maybe

The sound made them jump

Could have made the shots more effective by cutting them faster, to make the trailer overall better.

Some said they would not watch it due to not liking horror films, or gruesome scenes.

Strengths Weaknesses

Friday the 13th analysis

Friday the 13th uses various techniques in order to keep the theme running throughout their promotional packages.

They use similar camera shots for the trailer and the poster of their film, which is of the protagonist in the woods or forest with the mask on in a confident standing position with a large weapon in his hand.

They also have the location setting in both the poster at the top stating ‘ Welcome to Crystal Lake’ and also in the film trailer as it has a sign (shown on the next slide) and has one of the actors (a boy) read the sign “This place is called Camp Crystal Lake”.

The font for the title of the film ‘Friday the 13th’ is on the poster and the film trailer however in different fonts. On the trailer the font is merged together to make the writing fit in a square shape, however on the poster it is lined up straight across the bottom. They do however follow the colour scheme of adding red (which could imply blood, evilness, danger) for the number, which also makes it stand out to the audience as having an important significance.

In addition to this, the colour scheme for many shots in the trailer resemble the colouring in the poster. The colours for the poster are mostly black, blue, grey, green, and these are all dulled. There is a specific shot in the trailer showing two of the actors (a girl and boy) walking outside in the night surrounded by trees, leaves, mud, and a cabin (or some run – down small building). The colours used for this shot are black, blue, green, grey, and white in some parts to create silhouettes or form a light that the moon could be casting over the area.

Evidence for ‘Friday the 13th’

Poster Film trailer

‘Father’s Day’ analysis

For our promotional package we stuck to many themes so that our advertisements link together and the audience will know that these are all from one film.

One of the themes we followed was having the mask showing in all the packages (including the film trailer, magazine cover and poster). The reason we did this is because we wanted the audience to see what the mask that is killing everyone looks like, but not know who the actual person doing it is. The poster does have a sense of double identity because we had Kevin hold the mask in his hand and face it towards the camera so the audience see that the protagonist hides his true self, and had the top half of his body edited so that it disappears into the background and leaves the audience wanting to know who the bottom half of the body belongs to.

We also followed some of the conventions from ‘Friday the 13th’ by using the same colour scheme throughout all of our promotional packages. We used black, red, grey, and white. These were the colours we thought suits our film the best.

The font for the title ‘Father’s Day’ was used in both the film trailer and the poster. The reason for this was to keep the font continuous and so that the audience will be able to recognise the film based on the font. We also had the titles in our trailer in the same font so that it follows through.

Evidence for ‘Father’s Day’

Poster Magazine cover Film trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6xRPbug5Jc

The sequence

Here I created a sequence of our promotional package and the way I believe it should be showed to the public, because the further into the sequence the more information is given.

The reason I chose this order is because I think that the magazine cover is quite straightforward and just Has a close – up / mid – shot of the protagonist and the film’s title situated below with the actor/actresses’ names. The poster, i believe holds more meaning and gives away a little more as the mask is shown like the magazine cover, but a knife has also been added and the mask has been taken off meaning there is a person who we have not seen yet hiding behind the black shadows.

Magazine cover Film trailer Poster