Friday, 4 May 2012

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


There is a strong link between our film, radio trailer and poster; our poster helps create an effective visual for our film. The poster would really support our film if it was to be shown in cinemas.

To create our poster we used Photoshop, we had taken pictures whilst we were filming to use when it came to this stage. There are two main images on our poster, the background is the graveyard/church that our character walks through every day, on top we have a silhouette of our character. The reason why we have used the image of the church is because it is one of the main locations in our film, this image also reflects on the film – spooky. We decided to have our main character as a silhouette because we thought that it helped make the poster look scary, we also thought that it’s reflective of how the character is in the film. Mr Smith is a very quiet man and does not say much in the film, the silhouette suggests that may be he is a dark character, hiding many things.

The colours in our poster are very dark and creepy looking; we had done this because it helped create that eerie atmosphere which links well with the film. The branches in the poster are more visible when the image is darkened and the darker blue help give it that sinister feel. The colours reflect the film very well as throughout the film it is very dark and eerie. There is also an outer glow on the main character as well as the text, the outer glow on the character suggests that there is some innocence of the man, it makes you think that maybe he isn’t the bad/evil one; the outer glow on the text again helps create that creepy and eerie feel which links well with the film.

The font used in our poster is called ‘Cracked’, I think that this is an amazing font and is perfect for our poster/film. We used this font because there were cracks in each letter, it gave that horror feel – we wanted to make sure that the audience knew straight away that the film is a horror film and I think that the font is one of the main things that help achieve that, and this font had done an amazing job in doing so.

The text on our poster is bold, we decided to do this because we wanted it to stand out, we have used the rule of thirds as our tagline ‘an ordinary man an ordinary day an extraordinary set of events’ I think that this tagline is effective to the audience, what helps create that fear to the audience is that the font gets bigger and bigger, we have done this because again we wanted to create that creepy feel. ‘MR SMITH’ is also in capital letters and is at the top of the poster, we decided to put that text at the top because firstly it is the characters name and we wanted to place it above the silhouette, also because it stands out more at the top... shows that it is important. This text also has red outer glow instead of the white, this is because we wanted to ensure that the viewers knew the name of the film and also because it gives a hint to the audience that something is going to happen to him.

Typically the BBFC rating are usually on the corners of posters, we decided to place it at the top right hand corner, this indicates the level of horror the audience should expect of the film. We decided not to add text saying ‘coming soon’ or the release date because we thought without  that it creates a more mysterious feel to it, and the audience will be eager to find out when it actually releases.

What makes our poster effective are the images and the colours on the poster, if the images had not been darkened down it would not make the poster as effective because it did not give that horror feel that we were searching for. I think the image of the church is what makes the poster, it is the whole background and very effective because of how the branches stand out and how old the church actually looks.



When creating the radio trailer we used the digital editing suite A.K.A The Studio. Recording our radio trailer in here made it sound extremely professional and the quality of the sound was great. We had a male voice over in our radio trailer, we done this because we wanted it to be very dramatic and it was. We also added background music which was used in our film, we got these from royalty free websites. The reason why we used the same music in our radio trailer as well as our film is because we wanted our ancillary text to link in with the film. We had first started off with eerie music which then lead on to it getting faster, which is quite typical for horror film radio trailers. We also had sound effects which we took from the film, they we’re the loud door noise, this is because throughout the film the loud noises are usually the door, we thought that it is an important sound from our film.  

Our trailer support our film because we have included our tagline ‘an ordinary man an ordinary day an extraordinary set of events’ , if you was to hear the trailer then you would immediately link it with our film poster as it has the tagline on it. We also have ‘Coming soon’ in our radio trailer, when this is said it is silent and there is no music playing, I think that by doing this it is very effective as it will hopefully excite the audience and attract people to watch our film.

Creating a poster and a radio trailer is very effective, as it can reach out to many more people, we can feature our poster on many magazines, newspapers and billboards which are seen everywhere, a large amount of people look at newspapers and magazines and advertising our poster on them would attract more audiences to want to see the film. The radio trailer would have only been played on specific radio stations and it would not have been heard very much so it is important that our poster is everywhere. 

Overall, both my ancillary texts are effective and create a very strong link between them and my film. 

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