Final Trailers

Full Trailer

30 Second Trailer

15 Second Trailer 

Final Ancillary Texts

Final Poster

Final Magazine Cover

Question 1 - Evaluation

Question 2 - Evaluation

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

It is very important when advertising a large media product over a number of different platforms that you make the image of your product recognizable. It would not be effective to have a strong film trailer with weak secondary material, and vice versa. The secondary promotional materials such as posters and magazine covers need to be just as strong as the trailer with a similar layout to make the texts link in together, making them recognizable as part of a brand for the film. I believe that on the most part I achieved this with my film poster and ancillary texts, as I used features such as a consistent colour scheme and house style to make the texts blend together. 

Here are some examples showing similarities between my products:

As you can see I have used similar colours for both the magazine cover and the poster. Not only does this help reflect the genre, but also helps to connect the two texts and make them associate with each other. When you put them side by side you can see that there is a similar house style. Although it is not exactly the same as they have some different colours, you can still tell that they are associated with each other as they use the same shades of red and grey, and share some of the same font types, especially in the film title. Having the film title the same on each text makes it easy for the audience to connect the two as being part of the same product. This helps the audience to gather more information about the film, making it recognizable so that it stays in the audience's mind and makes them want to see the film. Another thing which is similar between them is the use of colour for the main and secondary text. On the magazine cover the tag lines are in red and the smaller detail is in white. This can also be seen on the poster where the small print is white but the larger release date is in red. This is one of the elements that shows to the audience that they are associated with the trailer and with each other.

Although I think that my main product and ancillary texts are effective, my audience may not agree with me, so I decided to do a quick questionnaire with a group of 11 people of both genders, 7 female and 4 male, from my target demographic. This is useful as it will help to highlight elements of my products which I may not have noticed. I can also get my audience to suggest places to improve so that I can see where I have not used conventions effectively to tie the different products together. Here is what I found:

From my audience feedback I found that on the whole people agreed that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts is effective. 9/11 people said that my ancillary texts fit with my main product, 8/11 could identify the genre, so maybe I could try and make the genre more obvious. 10/11 people said that they would link my texts to each other, which is good as it means that they have achieved their aims and are recognisable to the audience. 10/11 people also agreed that my products have the same house-style, which is a critical part of making sure that the audience can associate the products with each other. My respondents named the film title as the most recognisable element of my products, with colour being another popular response. This is a great response as it means that I have managed to establish a brand for my film, making it easy for the audience to recognise my main product and understand that the poster and magazine cover accompany this.

I finished the questionnaire by asking my audience what they would improve about my products to make them link together more effectively. Multiple respondents commented on the background colour of each of my products being slightly different, which I would agree would make them associate better with each other. Another response which came up more than once was that the grave from my poster was not seen in the trailer, and my main character can be seen on all products apart from the poster. I could have made the combination of my products more effective by making sure that there are multiple repeating elements in each of my products, so I could have put the grave in the trailer somewhere or re-designed my poster to include my protagonist.  

In conclusion, I believe that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts was very effective and met their aims. Although there are some small elements that could be improved such as colour and background, I think that overall my trailer and ancillary texts all worked together to advertise the film well. I could have made them even more effective by using more of the same features across all three texts such as having the exact same background colour on them all rather than just similar ones. To do this I could have added some texture to the background of the text in the trailer as the other two products have a grey fog texture where as the trailer is just a bold colour. I could also have improved by making the poster more similar to the other two texts. Although I think my poster is strong and achieves its purpose, I do believe that the colour scheme is not as strong here.  I think that I needed to add more darker colours and add more red text to make it more similar to the other products.

Although there are some things which could be improved I still believe that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts is effective and achieves it's aims as advertisement material. The re-occurring features throughout the three texts helps the audience to recognize and associate the texts, each time finding out more about the film through the different texts. This is effective as not only does it mean that the film will stay in the audience's mind as they will keep recognising it each time they see it, but this leads to more audience members going to see the film once it is released, which is what the materials are for after all, therefore making them effective.

Question 3 - Evaluation

Question 4 - Evaluation

Making My Film Poster

Film Poster - 5th Draft

Here is the 5th and hopefully final draft of my film poster. Following a survey to my target audience it became apparent that a couple of changes had to be made. Firstly people said that the title was too small, so I have moved some of the small print to make room and now the date  is double it's original size and easier to see.

The other thing that most people mentioned was that the credits were too difficult to read so I changed both the first name and the surname to the same colour. The black font would usually be difficult to read on the grey background which is why I added the red drop shadow to make the text easier to read.

The most common suggestion on how to improve the poster was to work on the hand. I used the cartoon effect to add the black lines to it to make it look like it was covered in dirt, however I think I over used this tool and ended up making it look like a cartoon which it not what I wanted. As I cannot undo this without starting again with the original image (which would take a long time) I experimented with other effects for a quicker solution. I ended up using the water colour tool as this got rid of some of the more dominant colours but still showed up the small details. After experimenting with the levels I think I have found one which has corrected some of the cartoon style of the hand.

I also decided that it would be best to change the colour of the names at the top of the page. Although when I was editing the image the text was clear and you could read it fine, after looking at it on a different screen I noticed that it was not as visible on some more high resolution screens, and so I decided that changing it to a light grey would make it much easier to read on all screens. The light grey also works well with the background and stays within the house style.

5th DRAFT/ w review

In this draft I have only made subtle changes like closing up the gap in the middle and making last minute edits to some of the clips. I think that either this draft or the next will be my final draft. I will re-watch this draft and make and last minute changes if any are needed.

Film Poster - Fourth Draft

In this fourth draft I have added credits to the bottom of my poster. I added in my credits at the bottom of the page and made my production/distribution company logos smaller so that they would fit underneath. I then added an age rating and a Dolby Digital logo. I had to make the date smaller in order to fit my credits on the page, so I decided to re-colour it red so that it stands out more now that it is smaller. It was herd to decide how to  position my credits as they are not centre to the poster, however they are directly underneath the main image. I tried putting the credits centre to the poster but it didn't look right as it was off position with the photo, and so I decided to leave it  slightly to the right directly underneath the image.

Making My Magazine Cover

Magazine Cover - Fourth Draft

In this fourth draft of my magazine cover I have made some more subtle changes. Audience feedback showed that I was missing a website name opposite the issue number and date, as this is a very common piece of the modern day magazine cover. I have added a website for my magazine under the right hand side of the title. Whilst adjusting the position of the web address, I had to move my plug. I decided that it would look better if it were slightly rotated, and so now it is tilted. This is conventional but also helps the effect of the blood splatter. I then went to the bottom headline where I decided to change some of the fonts. My audience research showed that it would be good if the word "horror" were in the same font as seen in the skyline, and so I changed it to this font. I also changed the word "Halloween" as before it did not have a capital letter. I then changed the font of "Halloween Brings" to a more conventional font in order to add variety. I changed the 3rd cover story and changed it from "Plus - John Erik Dowdle reveals all" to "Interview - Sam Raimi on his new project". I changed this because my audience research showed that the first story was too vague and sounded a bit strange! (Dirty minded people!) So I decided that in order to avoid any misinterpretation I would change it and make the article more obvious. I also changed the interviewee to a better known director, as none of my audience who gave feedback knew who John Erik Dowdle was. Having a better known director will help to appeal to a wider audience. I also corrected the mistake that SAW VI hand no question mark, and so I have added one. Finally I changed the colour of the eye of the character in the image so that it was a bit brighter and stood out more, matching the colour of the text.

30 Second Trailer

Film Poster - Third Draft

I have only made small changes in this draft as I have made the date larger and a different font, and made my production/distribution company logos smaller. I made the date a darker colour than before as I felt that although the bright white stood out, it felt out of place in the otherwise gloomy colour scheme, and so to fit in with my genre I made it a more grey colour to match the grave above it. This way it still stands out as it is brighter than the rest of the text, but does not look out of place.

Making My Magazine Cover

Here is a video showing all the different layers of my magazine cover giving some insight into how I achieved some of the affects and how I put my poster together.

Making My Film Poster

Here is a video showing all the different layers of my film poster giving some insight into how I achieved some of the affects and how I put my poster together.

Magazine Cover - Third Draft

This is the third draft of my magazine cover. In this draft I only made some small adjustments which consisted of changing the font on the skyline so that the word "horror" is in a horror font found on dafont.com. I moved my plug up and to the side a bit so it didn't draw too much attention from the main image and I changed the font for the details of the cover stories so that my cover has more range of fonts. I then moved the text in the middle down so that there was not as much empty space at the bottom of the page and some of the text is easier to read as it is now against a different background colour.

15 Second Trailer

Magazine Cover - Second Draft

In this second draft of my magazine cover I have added cover stories to the sides of the page. I added one underneath the plug and two on the left hand side so that all the space was filled and it has a sense of symmetry. I also added a headline between the banner reading "EXCLUSIVE!" and the film title "Vengeance". I put a summery of the article "Behind the scenes of this Halloween's biggest horror hit" and a quote from the article underneath. This is very conventional as seen here in an example from "TOTAL FILM". Here they have put a quote above the film title followed by a summary underneath. I preferred to have the summary above the title as it looks better as it means that the title can take up a larger space at the bottom of the page making it stand out more. I have taken quite a lot of inspiration from this cover as you can see I have put my cover stories in the same places and used a similar overall layout. This is mostly due to the fact that this cover has a similar main image to mine which takes up the centre of the page, leaving room for cover stories around it. I liked the idea of having the main story going over the torso of the actor as it means that you can still see the face and outline of the body clearly but you don't have lots of empty space in the middle of the page  where the writing could be.

In my next draft I will experiment more with the layout and add a wider range of fonts so that I have a more diverse cover. 

Film Poster - Second Draft

This second draft of my film poster shows some noticeable changes from my first draft. Firstly, I took some audience feedback for my first draft, and this highlighted some issues. Firstly it was apparent that the main title didn't stand out enough. My audience told me that the text needed to be brighter, so I made it a brighter colour but it still wasn't standing out very much from the rest of the poster. So I decided to try adding some light behind the title, This bright section on an otherwise dark poster immediately draws the audience's attention to the title. It was also apparent that the background was not dark enough, and so I decided that to make it more simple I would make the background clouds a darker colour and get rid of the trees in the background, as they were only cluttering up the poster. I then added a couple of small silhouetted trees where the original trees were and used the blur tool to make them appear far away. These more simple trees didn't mess with my house-style or take up too much space, drawing attention away from the main image. I also changed the colour or my company logos at the bottom as the research showed that the bright white colours didn't go well with the rest of my poster as no other bright colours were included. I decided to make them the same colour as the title to make them fit more within the poster. 

In my next draft I will add the last  missing pieces such as the titles at the bottom of the poster and the release date, as well as maybe some reviews.