Evaluation Question 2

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

In my opinion, the combination of my trailer, magazine cover and poster is an effective way to promote my horror film. The first thing that was produced was the trailer itself so that we could make sure that all materials used in the ancillary texts were relatable to the film, as we changed some aspects of our trailer regularly.

Film production companies always try to create a lot of hype around their films as early as a year before its release. This is achieved by releasing teaser trailers very early on to thrill the potential audience and make them anticipate the release date of the film it is advertising. Another way to create a buzz around a new film is to get their film on the front cover of a big magazine, such as Total Film or Empire, this is usually a few months before the release of the film. By achieving this, it gives the production company a totally new platform on which to advertise their newest release. It is very hard to get a film onto the front cover of a magazine, but the coverage and feedback it receives afterwards is well worth the time and money invested into doing so.

Distribution companies have three areas of their marketing plan, this is to make sure that it is a success among the target audience. The marketing plan consists of advertising, publicity and promotion. Some methods of promoting their media product are television adverts, billboards, posters, magazine articles/covers/adverts, websites, cinema adverts and many more. In order to learn more about their target audience, distribution companies carry out an audience profiling. The audience profiling consists of age, gender, lifestyle, media consumption, social networking and other factors. By finding out more about their target audience, the distribution company can use this information to their advantage by reflecting this in their marketing plan. For example, if the target audience of one media product are frequent Twitter users, the marketing plan will involve links to a Twitter account made especially for the release of the new media product.

Poster

The trailer tended to have a lot of symbolism, rather than actual shots, of violence. For example, the sweet wrapper left on the floor is symbolising that the final girl has gone missing and has left everything behind, and so forth. After including this much symbolism within the trailer, I felt that the poster needed to be a symbol for the film itself. I used vectors to create my poster, as this is uncommon in film posters (especially horror posters). And I used a minimal amount of shapes, but managed to convey a lot of information. The knife is the victim’s weapon of choice. The blood drop is in the shape of a heart to symbolise that the kill is a crime of passion, as the victim thinks he loves the girls he kills. The background of the poster is a gradient of light grey to dark. I used a minimal amount of text on the cover. This was for those who do not know the basic plotline so that the poster can bring in new people who haven’t yet heard of the film. I put the title of the film, ‘Obsession’ was the biggest text on the cover, so as to make sure the audience knew that this was the title. It is in black so as to stand out against the greys. The tag line beneath it is smaller than the title, and is the same blood red as the blood on the knife and the heart, ‘Love has a consequence’. I used these words as the tag line as it reinforces that the villain loves his victims.

Magazine cover

Magazines are constantly in competition with each other, each one brighter than the next or with famous models or actors on the front. The magazine cover is supposed to sell the entire content of the magazine. This is why I tried to go against the typical magazine conventions and gave my magazine cover a black background, this is to make the red of the title and other texts stand out. The model of the magazine is staring straight at the camera and is wearing a blood stained shirt. The combination of these factors tells the audience that this is a horror film being advertised, and catches their attention as it is dark in comparison to all the other brightly coloured magazines. This is how I would like my magazine cover to look, but I would have o control over it’s appearance, as my role would be within the production company, not the distribution company.

Both my poster and magazine cover break stereotypical conventions of themselves, this is to attract more attention from the public as they are different to what they are used to seeing. These, combined with the trailer I made, should generate a lot of excitement for te release date of the media product I am marketing.