How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

By Nathes Anantharajah

My main product and ancillary tasks

For my A2 media studies coursework, the main task was to create a film trailer with an ancillary task which was consisted of us producing a movie poster and movie magazine cover. We chose the genre teen drama and with this genre in mind we had identified the different codes and conventions of this genre which we then used or challenged or developed in our media products. We did this in all three of our media products because we wanted to keep the audience attracted and interested to what they are watching or seeing.

Film PosterBy using both a film trailer and a film poster is very effective as the first thing the audience is most likely to see is the poster of ‘The Rulemaker’ which will then be the decisive factor on whether they will be interested to watch the movie or not. The combination is effective because the audience is going to get an impression of what type of movie it is from the poster. For example, as it is a teen drama we have a teenage cast who are also the models in the poster; this will instantly show the audience what kind of movie it is and it will also help attract our target audience as they are more likely to be interested in the movie if they see that the character is their age. The background of the film poster is a brick wall and this is to show the audience that the movie is set on the streets. This shows how by the film poster can give a first impression of the movie and interest them in watching the movie.

Film Magazine Cover

The film magazine cover in combination with our other media products was very effective due to all of the media products being linked. For example, in the magazine cover we have Holly as the model and we have a close up shot of her to show the bruise on her face and her expression while in the poster we have Holly looking up at Tom to show her vulnerability and having to depend on someone to survive the streets while in the trailer we show how and why this all happened to her; this shows how we had the different media products we made to represent the different topics our teen drama trailer is going to tackle such as abuse, homelessness and trust. By doing this it shows how the combination of the different media products we have made work together efficiently.

The Teen Drama Trailer

The trailer of ‘The Rulemaker’ is where everything in the combination of our products come together such as the themes and characters which is shown through different scenes of the film. For example, the audience would’ve seen the poster and magazine first and understands what’s going on with Holly but they don’t know why this has happened to her or who she is with; the trailer shows the audience this with different scenes of the film and Holly narrating what’s happened in the beginning. Moreover, the audience can also see the link instantly because we have used the same font for the title throughout the different media products and this can make the audience instantly identify if the product is associated with our movie.