Monday 14 March 2011

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



The role of the distributor is very important to gain interest and public awareness of a film; they have to compete with not only other leisure activities but also other distributors. All distributors have aim to gain the attention of their target audience, they must persuade and throw out thier point that the audiences must see this film and that it will be brilliant, they do this by their advertising, publicity and promotion campaigns. To reach most of there target audience the campaign used must be as cost-effective as possible. By having a number of different publicity methods and advertisement you can reach more audiences, as every audience may be influenced to see a film from different methods, for example, some audience members may see the film poster which leads them into watching the teaser trailer soon after. No matter, what type of advertisement they see, all the advertisement campaigns must engage the audience and interest them into wanting to know more about the upcoming film. This could be if there is a key actor involved or even a director who is reknown for fantastic films. Reviews play a big part in this advertising campaign as they cater to such a huge audience around the country they can give it a positive review and people will go regardless of seeing a trailer, it could just be a word or phrase such as 'The must see film this year'. If someone sees a poster first, there will need to be key information on it that will tell the audience of the film, it must include its title , the release date, a tag-line, and even a website link so that they could further research the film online, looking at pictures and further trailers whilst they are there. Different age groups react to different advertising, the main users for my own target audience would be student/young adults/teenagers - A huge proportion of cinema users are in the age range of 15-24, they are likely to react to teaser trailers, internet websites, film posters, an d reviews in magazines. I think that effective films trailers to our generation contain quick flashy enigma's which confuse us into wanting to know what happens. The main image of a film poster must relate directly to one of the most memorable factors of the film, it could relate to the theme, genre, stars, or setting. In my film poster, I used the image of a little girl who the audience would start to instantly associate with the title of the film 'Alice' she looks really creepy, in my opinion not much can beat a little girl in a horror movie because they are known as the innocent ones, when they are involved in death it suddenly worries the audience. I wanted the audience to watch the trailer, remember her face and think wow that will be interesting to watch, I wonder if it will scare me. In our trailer we started it off as normal and throughout made the clips jumbled so the audience wouldn't have a clue what part they were seeing, meaning they would need to watch the film to actually understand. This means that the audience may ask lots of questions about what is happening. The types of clips seen in the teaser trailer need to be exciting, keeping the audience on the edge of thier seat, maybe including a few jumpy moments and rounding it off with a cold heartless moment, in ours the little girl walks across the screen and dissapears towards the other side, we hear a scary laugh from her as she dissapears into silence and ends. The poster is normally introduced into the public months before the teaser trailer to let the audiences know that a new film is going to be coming out, afterwards, the teaser trailer and many other advertisement devices are released to keep the audience interested in seeing your film. In terms of advertising a film, you would need to go to the next level, above and beyond other distribution companies, using advertising techniques to cater to the mass audience. I have chosen to make the film a certificate 15 this is so will be mid age range and suitable to all most teenagers, if I made a certificate 18 I may lose students and teenagers under the age, whereas if it was made to be a certification 12A you could lose the interest of the older teenagers and young adults. The trailer me and my group created was intended to confuse and keep the audience questioning the film, like all good teaser trailers should. Films such as the blair witch project were done using a handy cam, using minimal money to film and it was a multimillion success. Paranormal Activity was advertised to look as real as possible, to make it look as though a couple had set up a camera in their home and caught a ghost or prescence on camera. In a viral market campaign, you would firstly advertise by images, video clips, flash games, texts and so on, You would set up a website to provide all this information but also spread the information over other popular sites such as youtube, facebook, twitter, where it will be followed in mass quantities. The first step is to get people to start talking about the film, and then you could further release posters, teaser trailers, it is all about creating excitment and advertising the film in a brand new way. The full length trailer would be released nearer the release date, maybe advertisement on television could push thye sales and film viewing on box office release, some films are mainly marketed over the internet and through posters as tv campaigns cost a lot of money. The trailer works well with the design of the poster and film magazine as I decided to use the child character 'Alice' from the teaser trailer as the main face on the poster and magazine. All the products are visually very dark but contrast the theme of fire, using blacks, oranges and yellows around the girl. The lighting around the little girl on my final poster and my draft make her seem creepy and very satanic. When taking the images for the film poster and magazine I used flash photography ona dark background so i could edit the lighting around the girls body. In the trailer we used alot of light and darkness around the girl to show how innocent she is and to the potray her evil side. We didn't use any make-up on the little girl because we wanted her to be traditional, but using light effects we could make her ghostly, white and make her eyes shine as if she was posessed. For the poster I took a picture of a girl in my class for her body shape then photoshopped the little girls head on top, blending it in which surprisingly worked much better than I thought it would. For the horror genre we decided to use white text on a black background instead of traditional red for blood, this is because we wanted to link it in with the ghostly theme. I stuck with black and white text over my magazine cover and poster so I did not use too many different colours because it would have made it too distracting. The tag-line on my poster ‘The spirit remains’ relates to the teaser trailer and the imagery of the little girl, the poster and magazine promote the iconic ghostly child imagery which can be seen throughout the trailer. I chose to focus on the little girls face in my ancillary products to give it focus and attention from the audience, which makes the audience feel on edge from the invasion of personal space, as the ghost is right in front of your face, watching you.


My film poster

For my film poster design I used the images I had taken of the little girl sitting with the match by her face, the image I chose was cropped down and edited on photoshop so I just had her face as the main attraction. I found it hard placing my image around the poster and decided to center it at the top of the page, with the body dropping down the centre of the page into the darkness. Having the image in this position made the poster interesting, I based this image from a game poster I saw called 'Fear' involving a ghostly demonic little girl. I added several shadows into the images so the light was focused alot more inot the girls face, also making it look as if the girl was backed into a dark corner hiding? or waiting? the poster creates and enigma as to if she is scared or an actual threat. I also added a black background layer as most typical horror posters use black backgrounds Orange/brown and yellow text on the front. In small print at the bottom I used white and brown to highlight the actors, release date and production companies. For the main wording 'Alice', I used the shadow tool at different angles until I found the perfect lighting for my text. I used the colour yellow to link in with the theme of fire and to cross over with the black and orange colours around the rest of the poster, it was much more effective. I was inspired by a game poster called 'fear' because my prior knowledge to it was that it was a horror genre game using a young demon girl, it suited our trailer and it looked specific to what I was looking for whcih a movie poster couldnt give me. I created my own production company logo called CEEJ using the first initial from each member in my group, Charlie, Emma, Emma, James, I made the logo quite fast but I think it worked out very well, it was simple and blended well colourwise with the rest of the poster.


My magazine cover












The main image on the cover of my magazine was the little girl alice up close. I placed her spread over the whole page but focusing it on the right hand side of the poster. I used a blur effect on the image and the magazine title text so that ti looked burnt, again connecting the magazine cover with the theme of fire.
Another way I connected it to its theme was by adding flames into the background on the left hand side of the page which i had left a gap, it looks as if the little girl is being engulfed by the flames. I included small footers at the bottom of the magazine highlighting other big horror movies which would be featured inside the magazine. I used the white text because it was much more effective across the background and it highlighted the key feature of the magazine.

The poster and magazine both promote the film trailer my group created in terms of design and contents, my magazine promotes the film by offering up backstage information and interviews on the film, the poster also helps promote the trailer by including productions company logos and names of the cast and crew involved in the film, it also shows a film website link that can help promote the film and give audiences more information about it before the film is actually released. It outlines an initial release date for the film so the audience can get excitied if they like the trailer.

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