Evaluation question 2

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDtaCUeEtIc

Shots taken from my trailer that I then edited into my poster.

My magazine cover and poster contain shots from my trailer, which effectively combines my media texts together and allows my audience to link the texts to each other, which will be more effective for advertising my film to my audience.

Neither the poster or the magazine cover give away the narrative; the poster contains almost no obvious clues to my narrative it is there simply to indicate the genre and interest people, the magazine cover has a brief summary of the film on the cover – „plenty of running, plenty of screaming, plenty of drugs‟- again this gives away none of my narrative but indicates the genre and the use of drugs in our narrative, linking into the tag line on the poster „You Can‟t Escape Your Mind‟.

This shows a steady progression of information between my texts from poster, to magazine cover, to trailer; slowly building up the narrative and characters without ever giving away the full film narrative.

ďƒ&#x; My Poster

I have included horror conventions in my poster to let my audience know the genre of my film. One of these conventions is the fact that I have edited a cut across my main images face, coming from her eye almost as if she crying blood, this is one of the clearest ways to indicate the horror genre as violence or blood are immediately associated with horror. The fact that my main images is that of a face very close to the audience will make them feel uncomfortable as its coming into their personal space, especially if the person is bleeding as the feeling of repulsion is innate when we see pain up close, as we do not want this for ourselves. The face also has an almost plastic look due to the editing I did, which ties into the idea of warped realities and gives my main character a sinister edge as she does not look quite human. The fact that inside the eye there is a recognisable shot from my trailer of the main character connotes the psychological element to my film, as the eyes have long been considered

a gateway to a person‟s mind or soul, and across all media if you block out the eyes or wear shades (the characters in The Matrix for example) you remove a very human element from them. Therefore the image in the eyeball helps to imply that our narrative is centred around a distortion of reality or someone‟s mind, however this is very obscure and so many who view the poster will not know this and therefore it does not give away too much of our narrative, but will intrigue our audience and only allow them full understanding after they have viewed the film. The fact that the image in the eye is very big also connotes the fact that her pupils have dilated, which ties in with the drugs features in our narrative, as pupil dilation is a physiological response to stimulants.

The title is in a broken looking font which is another convention of the horror genre; to have text that looks distorted which also helps to represent the warped reality in our film due to the intoxication of our main character. The tag line is just below the title, in smaller text (following generic layout conventions) and connotes the fact that we say “you can‟t escape your mind” represents the psychological element in our film, as it hints at the narrative without giving it away, the statement is also true, as most great tag lines are as they make the narrative seem more believable, a great example being that of Alien released in 1979 “In space no one can hear you scream…” this si true, indicates the genre effectively and the location of the film, our tag line represents the psychological element and is non-disputable, it is also ironic as many people take drugs to escape their own thoughts and we are turning that idea on its head.

I followed other generic layout conventions such as having the credits at the bottom along with our distributor logo (vertigo films) and the line „Coming Soon‟ which features on many posters to entice audiences and make them want to see our film. The 3 main actor‟s names also follow layout conventions as I positioned them at the top of the poster, in red.

This colour is obviously associated with the horror genre as it connotes blood and violence.

Shots taken from my trailer and edited into my magazine cover

The empire cover is done in a dark and grungy style to fit into my target audience who will prefer underground cinema. The trees in the background have been edited wavy to represent a warped reality, and the two other characters are slightly behind my main character and slightly transparent to represent the fact that they are not really there, without spelling out the narrative twist to my audience. They both have slightly sinister-sweet smiles too which leaves their relationship to my main character unexplained and ambiguous, as it is in most of my trailer, again linking the texts together and never giving away the full narrative.

My main characterâ€&#x;s face is hidden, this is to represent that she is an antihero, however despite the semantic clues given away, my narrative is still not explained.

Again the title is in the same distorted font as on my poster and in my trailer. This again links the texts together and allows that font and tag line to become associated with our film and ensure that they are remembered, as repeating signs makes them iconic and they will then be linked back to our film.

The brief summary on my magazine cover of my film “plenty of running, plenty of screaming, plenty of drugs� and the editing of the two other main characters sums up that the film is a horror mixed with elements of drugs without giving away any of the narrative; my trailer explains my narrative by showing the equilibrium, problem and brief details of how to resolve the problem , but without giving away the twist that she kills her real friends whilst fighting the hallucinations of them. The summary on the magazine will also indicate to our core audience that these characters engage in the same recreational activities as they do, and allow any other audiences to know that our narrative follows horror, but with drugs involved. This is a build-up of information from my poster, which does not mention drugs other than the dilated pupils (which could be overlooked due to the image inside them), to my magazine cover which does mention drugs in the summary and my trailer which demonstrates clear use of drugs again showing a progression of signs and explanations between my texts, the only thing for the audience to do if they want the whole narrative is to watch the film.

The effects used in our trailer were also not used that much in our poster as I wanted to keep the poster simplistic and obscure, but on my magazine cover the trees in the background are edited wavy, which links into the effects used in our trailer (such as Ripple) to distort reality during POV shots.

I also included other generic signs on my magazine cover such as the Barcode, issue number, date and price , these things are of course essential for any magazine and so had to be included in order to let the buyers of the magazine know that this is indeed a film magazine that is for sale.

I also followed conventions of Empire magazine by placing the Empire masthead at the top of the magazine and the lower line: The Dark Issue slightly underneath, to show the theme of the magazine, as Empire does do themes and special covers and so this will help to indicate the importance of our movie as well as indicating and reviewing other horror movies on the market.

Overall I think the combination of my poster, magazine cover and trailer is quite effective, I repeat certain effects, shots and fonts in order to

indicate the link to my audience and to slowly build up their interest in my narrative and characters.