Question 2 | visionaryfilms

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

For our brief we were asked to create two different ancillary texts to go with our short film. We decided to create a film poster and a film review. We choose a film poster because we thought that it would be a vital part of the advertisement for the film and it will give potential audience members a chance to gain an idea on what the film will be about without watching it. A magazine review was chosen because we that we would be able to show more creativity and look at the film in a new light as we would be giving our unbiased opinion on the film in the review. Additionally the review was chosen because it can help persuade audiences to watch our film as the opinion shared in the review may encourage readers to look into our film and watch it. Both ancillary texts will be able to reach out to a wide range of consumers as it can be viewed in print and digitally online. The film poster and film review also gave us the chance to work on print media, which is something we haven’t done in the a-level course so far.

Magazine Review

For the review, we had to create a realistic looking film review that would be featured in a print magazine.

We added a screenshot of a scene in the film, to give the audience an idea on what the film features.

We added the logos of two well known short film festivals in london, therefore the reader can gather more information about them especially if they are interested in watching the film after reading the review.

The review includes a criticism of the short film because the star rating was a four meaningthe review had to be explict in describing how the film could be improved. Also by giving the film a criticism it allows the review to not be biased.

The star rating was included in the reviewe as it is recognised universally as away to rate films. By having this in the review the reader can glance at it and gather the overall tone of the review.

Beneath the star rating the review features a coupe of sentances that describe the film in a simplistic way, without giving too much plot details away. When researching film reviews we found that this was done frequently by reviewers.

By adding a touch of colour to the review it adds to the general look of the review making readers intrigue about the film that is being reviewed.

A participant from our audience feedack noted that "Every aspect of the film is mentioned in the review" showing that the review is effective in informing audiences about the film while giving an honest opinion on how they thought the films.

Film Poster

We had the actors facing away from each other as it related to the theme of the film, which focuses on the husband keeping secrets from his wife. The poster symbolises the secrecy between them.

In this corner of the poster we included a brief tagline that relates to the film as through our research we noticed that films of the drama genre included this. The production company name, the directors names also feature below this.

The Cutting East Film Festival logo features on the poster to tell audiences where the film will be showing. By including this the film festival is also being advertised as audiences can look up the festival.

The colour red of the womens coat connotates the love she still feels for her husband.The colour red is significantly associated with romance amoung audiences, meaning that they guess that the film contains romantic elements. The female character is also wearing the same jumper that she wears in the film therefore creating a link between the two products.

The image features a dark shadow over the male character to connotate the dark secret he is keeping from his wife. The image also features a ray of sunlight beaming through the two characters to symblise the happier times in their marriage.

This element of the poster can be seen as an effective marketing tool because it communicates the films theme without explictly telling the audience the full plot.

For our audience feedback we asked participants whether they thought the poster related to the film or its genre. Here are some responses we got:

"Because of the positioning of the characters the poster could show that the film is a love story or if it is about a mother and her son."

This quoute shows that in some views the poster can be confusing for some as it doesn't explictly explain what he film is about. This weakens the effectiveness of the film poster as conventional the poster should give audiences some idea on the films theme.

" I think the poster shows that it is a drama film because the two characters are back to back and the dark shadow connotes drama and tension."

This quote shows an opposite view from the first one , as the participant thinks that due to the postioning of characters and the dark shadow above the male character it shows that there could be eements of confict. In addition this shows that the poster is effective because it communicates the genre of the film.

Production Logo

For our production company we decided to create a logo for audiencs to be able to recognise our company and different media products it creates. We created the logo using the website graphicsprings.com because it was easy to use and gave use a basic design that was easily recognisable.

For the logo we chose an image of an old fashioned camera to highlight that we are a film production company. The production companys name is also visable underneath the camera symbol.

The addition of a logo on our ancillary will help add more effectiveness in the promotion of all our products as audiences can recognise our products more easily due to the simplicity of the logo.

Production Company Titles

At the end of the film we included a short title featuring the production company name. This links the products together because it features the production company name which is featured on the film review and film poster.

In conclusion, the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is effective to a certain extent as our audience feedback has shown that some consumers viewed our products as successful forms of marketing for the short film. However some have mentioned that audiences may get confused on the actual theme and narrative of our film. We feel that a strength of this combination of products is that they effivetively give audiences enough information about the film in order to convince audiences to go and view it espically in the review. On the other hand an aspect we would change would be to create a stonger brand identity amoung the three products . An example of this would be to include our production company logo on the titles after the film or to include it in the poster so audiences would instantly recognise the products as being associated with our production company.

Kysan Bancroft