My A2 media studies coursework required my group and I to make a film trailer to go with an ancillary task of making a film poster and magazine cover for the trailer that we created. One of the main aims when making our trailer, poster and magazine cover was to try and make the three link together as much as possible through the use of different elements. This would include the use of Mise-en-Scene, colours, fonts and the main characters in our trailer. These different elements would be clearly shown and recognised by the audience throughout the combination of our main product and ancillary texts. To do this, we analysed mass productions trailers (such as “One Missed Call” and “The Return), mass magazine covers such as Empire magazine and film posters such as “Drag me to Hell” to gather ideas on what our main product and ancillary texts should contain and we looked at if they had clear links between the posters, magazine covers and trailers that were recognisable to the audience.

Firstly, with the use of costume we used on the main female protagonist. When making the poster and magazine cover we decided that the main recognisable costume would be a red scarf in which the female protagonist would wear. We chose the red scarf as red connotes danger and shows the audience that the female protagonist is a target of the archetypal character being the villain who is stalking the protagonist. As our chosen genre is horror, this costume will show that the female is in danger and makes the audience aware that this is going to be her situation throughout the storyline. As the red scarf is used in both poster and magazine, this is effective as the targeted audience will be able to recognise that they are both for the same film and will remember the storyline which will give our film a larger audience. Although we used this costume when making the poster and magazine, we didn’t use the scarf for every shot in the trailer. The costumes changed throughout the trailer to give a sense of verisimilitude to the trailer. Having the protagonist in the same clothing would not be very effective as it would just seem that time has not moved in the storyline and changing clothing establishes a period of time that the storyline is set around.

Another use of costume is used by the stalker. The psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, believed that universal, mystic, archetypes reside within a collective people all over the world such as characters that are in films. The stalker in the storyline is an archetypal character and the stalker is considered an archetypal villain. The stalker is wearing a black hoodie which will make the audience recognise the stereotype of the stalker and makes the audience aware of the part that this character is going to play in the trailer. This is a trope of the genre Horror as black costumes are generally used to highlight the villains in horror films.  We used the hoodie costume in the main product and in my poster. It is very effective as it will make the audience think of the characters when they see the black hoodie and it will help the audience associate this costume with that particular character in the storyline and does not show the audience the face of the stalker which shows the mystery in the storyline.

I decided not to show the stalker in my magazine as the main female character is very distinctive and will be able to be recognised and able to be grouped with the trailer and the poster as the character is wearing the same clothing on both poster and magazine and is wearing the same makeup and hair style in all three products. This is a Barthes Enigma code called the Hermeneutic Code. The Hermeneutic Code is when part of the storyline is shown (in this case, the part of the storyline that is shown is a hooded character) but is not fully explained (the audience do not know what the hooded characters identity is or why this character is following the female protagonist). This leaves the audience thinking the reasoning behind the mysterious character and why the character has not been shown. The audience do not know the gender of the stalker which challenges the conventions of the stereotypical male being the stalker and makes the audience recognise this. The audience will then need to watch the film to see the mysterious character which is a way of drawing the audience's attention and making them watch the film to see the mystery unravel. 

Colour played a big part of the trailer, poster and magazine. When creating the magazine and poster, I used the colours red and white as the main colour scheme. I used a colour scheme so that the targeted audience will be able to recognise the colour scheme and be able to recognise that they are both promoting the same film. The colour red has the connotations of blood and death which is a trope from the genre Horror. This builds up suspense as the audience will want to find out what is going to happen to the characters and why they are going to be in a difficult situation. The colour white was used as it shows purity and innocence which shows the audience that the female protagonist is innocent and is being attacked by the archetypal villain for no reason. Mass production companies such as Warner Brother use clear colour schemes through the magazine, poster and trailer such as the film Harry Potter. This is one of the inspirations I took as I saw that other mass production companies used clear colour schemes to show the audience that they were related and were promoting the same thing which makes it look very professional and verisimilitude.

The use of fonts in the main product and ancillary texts were all three main different kind of fonts, however the fonts were all tropes of horror meaning they all linked to horror in a certain way. The fonts were all coloured in black and had some kind of linking theme to the genre of horror. I chose the colour black for all three of the fonts as although they don’t necessarily have the same font but they do look very similar in the way that they are shown to the audience. Steve Neal’s theory said ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variation’ which means certain generic features had to be included and repeated, this can include similar fonts so that the audience recognise the genre and recognise the connection

I used anchorage through title of the film poster and the magazine front cover by placing the title “displacement” off centred but on the main film title on the trailer it is centred. The anchorage between the two titles as the name of our film is “Displacement” and by not centring the title, this is showing the message behind the film. I purposely did this as the audience will still be able to recognise the title as it is still in the similar black horror themed font but is just placed slightly different.