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

For any film campaign, it is crucial for the themes of the trailer and film to be conveyed in its ancillary texts. The magazine and poster are as important as the trailer itself, and are both great tools to market the film.

It is important for media products to have a sense of synergy between them, and for it to be easily recognisable to the audience. If the magazine, poster and trailer are successfully identified by audiences to be belonging to the same film, then that means that the marketing aspect of the film worked and was successful.

Initial influences for poster

o Whilst researching posters in our genre, we found that these three especially had stood out for us. They all successfully connote the ‘faux found’ aspect of the film.

o We also felt that we needed to do this in our poster , and initially were going to do something similar to the Paranormal Activity poster, by having a screenshot from the film as the main image.

o However we then decided to try and subvert the conventions for a poster completely by having a ‘missing persons’ poster as the main image.

‘Missing Persons’ poster

o ‘Missing persons’ posters in general include extremely detailed descriptions of what the person looks like, was wearing etc when they were last seen. They also include a recent picture of the individual.

o As a group, we all decided that the poster on the top right (poster 1) was the template that we should loosely base our on, in regards to the picture position, ‘MISSING’ position etc.

o However one problem that arose was that if we were to do this, then we wouldn’t be able to include as much information that you’d normally find in one. However, we showed audience members the mock up of our poster, and they still recognised it as a ‘missing’ poster.

PosterOur final poster utilised the forms and conventions of both a real media poster and a ‘missing persons’ poster. The main images are of the missing protagonists, and it furthers the ‘reality’ of our plot. The boundary between ‘real’ and ‘staged’ are blurred in our poster.Social media, especially Twitter, was an important factor in the promotion of our film. In our trailer, the ‘#Jeopardy’ is the last thing that appears, and on our poster, there are countless signs of the use of our Twitter integration. Below the ‘missing’ text, ‘#Jeopardy’ appears. This may prompt users of the site to tweet and search the term, which will then give them further information regarding the film. We placed the Twitter username under the picture of each protagonist, which will again prompt users to ‘follow’ them. This Twitter integration was mainly due to our campaign promotion idea, which can be seen in our blogs.

Finally, we included ‘uncover the truth’ as an insinuation of the story. This could act as an enigma, as audiences will want to know what the ‘truth’ is. The tree in the background is supposed to replicate the main place where you’d find a ‘missing persons’ poster.

Influences for magazine

o These two magazines stood out for us. For magazine 1, although the text is in Spanish, we liked the effect that the picture had on us, as the audience. It immediately signified to us that it was a thriller/horror film. The grey and yellow colours also signify a dark and mysterious theme to both the film and the magazine.

o Although magazine 2 isn’t the official ‘The Shining’ magazine, it stood out to us through the image it used. That specific image is a recognisable one that everybody associates with the film, and is a screenshot taken from the film. This inspired us to take a screenshot from our trailer and use it as the picture for our magazine.

Magazineo This is our final magazine. We believe that it successfully signifies our genre, mainly through our image and text. The audience may recognise that the image is a screenshot taken from our trailer, hence making a connection between our ancillary text and main text.

o The sign of our poltergeist replaces the ‘a’ in our title, ‘STARDOM’. This was done as we felt that the presence of the poltergeist had to be in our magazine. Therefore, with the protagonist and a part of the poltergeist both featured in our magazine, it explains the binary oppositions in our text; protagonist vs. supernatural.

o The effect on the text on the right hand side of the magazine cover directly relates to our trailer. The green, ‘fuzzy old tape’ effects tells readers that it is a faux found footage film. It also gives our magazine an edgy, mysterious look that we hoped it would give.