Olivia LyonsA2 Media StudiesAdvanced PortfolioEvaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

As well as creating the finished product, our film, we also created two ancillary texts, a film poster advertising our film and a film review.

Ancillary 1: Film Poster

Ancillary 2: Film Review

Prior to creating the ancillary texts, we explored and researched real media texts, annotating the conventions used in order to help us with the success of making our own. Once our film was finished we went back to create our ancillary’s and print screened shots to use as the images.

Researching real media texts

Olivia LyonsA2 Media StudiesAdvanced PortfolioEvaluation Question 2 Throughout the making of our two ancillary texts I ensured the house style was consistent. I ensured that I used the same font on both the film poster and the film review to keep consistency.

Consistency

Whilst exploring other real media texts I noted that film posters also had conventions of the genre of the film. The main image on my ancillary 1, film poster, portrays Simon as an over confident, geeky character through his facial expressions, and his positioning immediately identifies him as a main character.

I used a simple layout on both my film poster and film review, which reflects in the content of the film, as it is an easy watch, straight forward story. I ensured I used the same fonts for the title on both ancillary’s, and I intend to use this same font for the credits on my final draft edit of the short film.

The large bold font is simple but effective as it stands out and is clear, making the masthead stand out from the rest of the image. I used the colour yellow to create a block of colour. I did this so that the texts are eye catching and look appealing/ attractive to the audience. I chose to use the colour yellow as it is easy to the eye and doesn’t have connotations of anything like death/danger/fire and therefore doesn’t distract the audience’s attention.

Before completing my film poster I did some further research into romantic comedies and of film posters advertising real media products from this genre.

A real media product that my ancillary film poster relates to is the film poster advertising “40 Year Old Virgin”.

Olivia LyonsA2 Media StudiesAdvanced PortfolioEvaluation Question 2 Both film posters have the main character as the main image, symbolising their importance within the film. The pull quote on the real media product gave me the inspiration to use this same idea on my design. The short snappy quote used “Better Late Than Never” provides comedy and makes the poster conventional to the genre.

When creating the ancillary texts I found it difficult to gain synergy between the two media texts and my final product. I found I had difficulties producing a combined effect between the three products as I was creating them using different software and at different times. Also, as I didn’t realise ancillary 1 had to be based around our finished product, I found the images used didn’t reflect the quality of footage in the short film. If I was to do this again I would ensure I took a wider range of images in order to successfully create synergy.

Overall I think my film poster and film review represent our finished media product as a romantic comedy and are successful in portraying a film from this genre.