Evaluation Question- 2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In our project we created three ancillary texts which are texts that help promote the main product which in this case is the film. I created a film trailer, a poster advertising the film and a magazine front cover for a 'Fangoria' magazine with my film on the front page. Because the ancillary texts are made to promote the film, they have to include some similarities and visual links between themselves. Although the three promotional texts would have been effective enough alone at promoting the film, together they create a bigger and better effect and a wider interest in the film as together they form a stronger brand identity.

The main way I used to make sure that the three texts conveyed the film is using an image of Eve. She is on the front cover of the magazine and is the main image on the poster as well as of course being featured in the trailer. The use of her image helps to promote the film as people that would come across all three texts will link them together and it will create an appeal for the film. As well as that it gives the audience a sense of narrative as they can see the little girl as the main image therefore assume she is a big part of the story. The background is also darkened in both the poster and magazine cover to give away an eerie dark atmosphere to emphasise that the genre of the film is horror and this is also emphasised by the way I made her eyes look red. That gives away that there is something evil about her. These simple visual links create a wider institutional context.

As well as using the image of Eve on the ancillary texts I used the same typography for the title ‘Eve’ for the poster and the in the trailer. I did this to again, establish the brand identity as using the same typography will allow the audience to identify it with the film and relate back to it. However, I changed the typography in the magazine front page because although I’m trying to market my film through the three texts, the magazine has its own brand identity which I didn’t want to change. Because of that I used a similar typography that is conventional for a ‘Fangoria’ magazine i.e. horror/spooky looking letters. I have chosen to use the ‘Fangoria’ magazine to market my film as the narrative revolves around a group of teenagers and the main readers of ‘Fangoria’ are often teenagers and young adults so I believe that that is the right demographic to choose as my film is aimed at people around that age. My film is also a British independent film so having it on the cover of a popular horror magazine will help it gain audience and create an interest around the film which will help it earn more money when it is released as more people would know about it.

Another common theme that runs throughout the ancillary texts, mainly my poster and trailer are the logos of the production companies that worked alongside our own. These include Film4 and Dankershein. The reason we included these is because of the fact that our film in an independent movie therefore doesn’t have as much funding as a big Hollywood blockbuster so in reality it would need help with money. We chose Film4 as that is a British company which works alongside independent film makers in creating films based on the British social realism. Because our film can be considered a British social realism film as the beginning reflect the lives of five normal teenagers living in England it would only make sense to put Film4 as one of the co-producing companies. Their logo has been included both in our trailer on the end card and on our poster alongside the age rating which is essential to include to let the audience know how old they have to be to watch our film and the film reviews. We included the film reviews on the poster and trailer as it would create more appeal to the audience if they saw that the film received positive feedback from critics. Again this was not included in the magazine as it wouldn’t have been appropriate to include these on the front cover.

One feature which I did however, put on the magazine cover and not on the poster and trailer are the Facebook and Twitter logos. This is due to the fact that people nowadays use internet and these social networks to communicate and find information. Due to the fact that our film is low budget we cannot market it using expensive billboards etc. so it will solely rely on social media and the internet to gain publicity. The logos for these popular social media websites help as people can go on the internet to see the magazine in web format therefore see our movie on it which will create interest.

In that way, the three texts work together and intertwine to create one big marketing strategy for our film to become successful and gain a wider audience.