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

I feel the combination of my ancillary texts and my main product are effective, they all work alongside each other to promote our film successfully. Our accompanying ancillary texts included a Film Poster, created using Photoshop and a Magazine Film Review created using Microsoft Publisher.

I believe that my film poster, uses a lot of conventions of already existing media products. After researching real media products we realised there was some sort of ‘guidelines’ that most film posters follow and comply to.

Initially I planned to use a camera still from the short film but then I realised that no existing products did this and also it looked quite amateurish and lacked professionalism. I took a separate picture of the actor and used a green screen, imitating one of the facial expressions he shows during the film.

The contrast between the quality of the image taken from the film (camera still,) above, and one taken specifically for the film poster with the aid of the green screen, below.

Running down the right side of my film review I decided to include a film strip with a variety of still shots of different scenes taken from our short film which enables the main product and the ancillary tasks to work well as an effective combination because both tie in well together.

The title of the review ‘The MISE-EN-SCENE’, I think will appeal strongly to media specific people, as normal people will most likely not understand the review title which ties in with the plot of the film, as the film is not that easy to grasp and understand which slightly broadens our audience.

Both the magazine review and the poster help to anchor the fact that Levi (Andy Cutajar) is the main character or anti-hero which was our intention, to put the audience/reader in suspense and to create enigma.

The main image on the poster is of the main character Levi however, there is nothing to suggest what role, the character will play in the film. The image on the front of the film poster could also be seen as very ambiguous as the character looks somewhat distressed which then works well with the short film genre of thriller/horror and targets the audience. The BBFC classification of '15' is clearly shown to inform the audience of the certificate of the film.

I didn’t exactly follow the typical codes and conventions of a film review as from research I noticed that most review pages include three films whereas mine only includes one but I wanted a lengthy review and more camera stills to ‘grab’ the readers attention, similarly to the examples shown above. I took inspiration for the film review from the Empire magazine and www.totalfilm.com. Therefore the genre of the film and the reviews on the film poster are a good combination.

The specific design of the title ‘Malice’ is featured both on the review and the poster. I wanted the same design so the audience/reader would instantly recognise the film.

I also decided to keep the image on the review quite similar to the image on the poster by trying to convey the same emotion which is a running theme throughout the film, being fear which adds to the horror/ thriller genre. As you can see the character is very distressed.

I think this is effective because there is clearly a running theme through the final products.

Overall, I believe we successfully achieved the creation of a film product, movie poster and magazine review that combine realistically to create a brand identity surrounding the post-production stages of the film, ‘Malice’.

HOW THE IMAGE AND TEXT ARE WORKING TOGETHER TO PROMOTE THE FILM. (QUOTES).