Script - evaluation task 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and anciliary texts?

I think all three of my texts work well and effectively together. They all share the same elements; firstly the key feature is our lead female protagonist, Katie, who is played by Alice. In our trailer she is featured throughout the whole product and in my magazine and film poster there is a large clear image of her.  The combination of this image across all three texts is our main synergy focus; however it also gives the audience a sense of recognition between the three pieces. Both mid shot images show Katie looking down towards the floor diagonally, and therefore away from the camera, she also has a piece of duct tape over her mouth. This shows her to be emotionless, connoting that during the attack and hostage situation Katie is kept in she loses all emotion and therefore parts of her personality too. This is shown in the film trailer too as during the hostage scenes the only emotion Katie shows is fear.

I have also used the colour white numerous times across the three texts.  In our film this is mainly shown through white flashes acting as camera shots, this connotes innocence. As these close ups shots happen when the young girls who have been killed are shown this shows how pure and innocent they were when attacked. This also helps to create emotion within the audience as they feel more sympathy towards these girls knowing they were young and innocent.  However, this also contrasts to the rest of the film as the thriller genre does not include much innocence; it shows danger and fear instead. There is a large percentage of white on my magazine cover. This is mainly used for the different fonts and pieces of writing. I chose to use white as the rest of my magazine is very dark and the writing would have blended in with this, whereas with it being white it makes it much bolder and helps to emphasise the innocence further. This is also what I chose to do with the film poster as the text stands out making it much clearer and readable.

The title logo, which is also white, is featured in all three of my texts. The logo is a distinctive font and easily recognisable, therefore synergy is created as all three texts feature this, making it easily recognisable for the audience, therefore if a consumer of the text saw the magazine or poster after seeing the trailer they would be able to clearly identify that they are from the same film. This is a great advertising technique for films as the audience can constantly recognise this logo wherever it is seen.

Both of my ancillary tasks show the main narrative of the film, which is the hostage situation. I used this as all other narratives in our trailer stem from this. I feel that the image I used in the ancillary tasks shows a large enough section of the narrative to allow the audience to get an insight of the film, however they do not give away too much narrative to ruin the plot line for the audience, this therefore attracts our target audience and makes them want to watch the film due to the sense of mystery.

Although the stereotypical generic conventions of a thriller film trailer include the colour red, as this connotes danger and blood. We did not want to include too much of this during our film trailer as we felt our film did not include lots of blood and gore. However, we wanted to include some colour to connote the danger in our trailer. This is why we choose to use a red pen when the attacker was crossing out the girls he had already killed and circling his latest victim, Katie. I also used the colour red in my magazine cover. I used a gradient background ranging from a dark red to a black, as well as brighter reds used for parts of the writing. The darker red background allowed the brighter reds to stand out. In my images of other films I also made sure one included the colour red in a large percentage to connote the danger and fear in that film, whereas the other two are darker and more mysterious to create tension. I choose not to use too much red in my film poster as I did not want it to become an overpowering colour as it is not a key colour in our trailer. However, I wanted the pieces of the poster that were red to further emphasise danger. I chose to make the crosses on the girls faces bolder and more prominent to ensure the red stood out. I also used a brighter red colour for the tagline. The red highlights the danger in the sentence "I think he's going to kill me". As this is the last statement heard in our trailer I think this is a really important line. As Katie is hiding under the bed on the phone to the police as this is said, I wanted it to stand out in the poster and show she is scared to say this. The use of the tagline in my poster and at the end of the trailer shows the synergy between the pieces and creates an easily recognised statement that the audience will remember.

The relationships shown in our film trailer are:  Katie's relationship with her friend, as this shows she is a popular, friendly girl and helps the audience to get to know her. We decided to use this technique as based on the uses and gratification theory; the demographic target audience will feel emotions, such as sympathy, for her if they feel that they can identify with her.  

Relationships between Katie and her mum, and the police officer on the phone to her also occur during our trailer. I chose to leave these relationships out of my ancillary tasks as I did not feel that they were key parts of our narrative. The largest relationship seen in our trailer is between Katie and her attacker. As the USP of our film was to have everything happening from the attacker’s point of view I did not want to show him during my ancillary products as I felt this may ruin the illusion we had created. Aside from this, I still wanted to find a way to portray some of the relationship in my ancillary tasks. I did this in the both products as in the  image I used Katie’s mouth is taped and her hands can be taped up too, which shows she is in an uncomfortable situation that she has no input in. The magazine cover also shows a knife being held near Katie’s throat, further showing the relationship with the attacker and his violent behaviour.

We made sure that Alice, who played Katie, was an attractive young girl as we found out this was a stereotypical generic convention of thriller films. We also made sure she was always dressed in simple clothing; this was mainly a dark black top and a pair of blue jeans. This was an outfit that ensured continuity throughout the trailer and my two ancillary tasks. This outfit also suggested Katie to be average and not overly girly or fitting with a specific stereotype. This make her a character easily to identify with which will ensure a larger proportion of our demographic target audience find the film interesting.

When making my magazine cover I tried to use common magazine features to entice a mass audience. Firstly this was a large masthead, which was placed behind Katie’s head. This is to represent her importance to the film trailer; the large image I have used of her also takes up most the space on the page, which further signifies her significance. I also used buzzwords in the magazine cover, such as ‘exclusive’, however these are not used in the film poster as a different audience is targeted by the different mode of address.

The certificate of our film is included in the film trailer, and the film poster. I felt it was important to include here as this was direct advertising for the film, so I personally think they should be included. However, in the magazine cover I did not feel this information was necessary as it takes up and wastes space. I also think that if any consumer is interested in the film then they would look into this information themselves. I also think that as the film is clearly identified as a thriller film in all three of my texts through the use of generic thriller conventions, any consumer is likely to expect there to be a higher age certificate in the film and therefore will choose to look into this.

I also chose not to include the production company logo in my ancillary texts as I felt this again wasted space and did not add to the illusion I had created or further emphasize the thriller genre.

Overall, I think the decisions I made across all three texts created an effective and successful campaign as the synergy created across the three helped to make the texts easily recognisable for the audience and the generic conventions of the thriller genre were prominent in all three texts ensuring an air of mystery and danger was created.