Q.2 How effective is the combination of the main product and ancillary products?

How effective is the combination of the main product and ancillary products?

By Shaban Jahan

The three products which we have created are directly interconnected. The poster we have made would be used to correspond visually about what the film has to offer. The poster can be used as part of the advertisement of our film if we were able to hit the big screen.

The poster is made up of digital images which have been edited through software called Adobe Photoshop.  In the poster both sides of the main character’s personality and the screen shot of the wife getting strangled have been used together to show the story through the images. The colours used in our poster have been decisively used in order to make that essential link with the story line also the character within it. Hence together the colours have been used to create a certain mood, which in our film it is always tensed. The poster being a dark colour and the little hint of red connotes the elements of the mind, this is because dark colours for example the colour black can represents a psychological mind and the colour red represents danger. Therefore this implies that the story is supposed to be a disturbing and upsetting film which relates to our genre, which is a psychological thriller. This helps the audience to associate these factors together to help understand what is happening in the film. We decided that the title of the poster would be in red, with bold writing and the title in a big font. We also decided that we will have the meaning of the title in the poster so that the audience don’t get confused. This is because our title is in Latin therefore to make sure that the audience understand what our film is about we had to add the meaning of the title, to make sure that we don’t lead the audience into something mystified. In addition adding the Latin title in the radio trailer; this creates the link between the two productions.

 What makes our poster to be effective and helps reel in our audience is by having the shot of the wife being strangled in the middle of the poster between the main character’s two different personalities. The reason why we decided to put that particular shot in the poster, is because it leads the audience into thinking that the wife is danger and her husband is going save her, however when the audience watch the film the hidden truth of the wife getting strangled is revealed to the audience. Hence this would create a shock for the audience because the poster tells the audience a different view of how the film might be.    

       

When recording our radio trailer we used the Digital Editing Suite. The Digital Editing Suite allowed us to use Logic Pro and a microphone to create our radio trailer. In order to find the right sound tracks for our radio trailer we used free download music from the Internet. These were music such as tensed music, for example we used music from Peter John Ross. We also had a voice over that engages the audience in to the film for example at the end of the radio trailer the voice over says “Ignis Fatuus” “coming to a cinema near you”. Therefore having the voice over adds to the excitement which the mood in the voice is trying create. The ways in which I think the radio trailer is effective is by having the right type of music or sound effects such as running footsteps and heavy breathing, to create an atmosphere for the audience, for example creating the  right atmosphere for the film would mean that the audience can absorb and understand the film. In addition I also think that radio trailer is effective when you know your audience and if you have a voice over that grabs the audience attention when they hear the radio trailer.

Lastly I would argue that the production of the poster and radio trailer are effective, because they support each other and the film itself. Both the poster and the radio trailer have the proficiency to speak to large number of audience, for example radio trailer would generate audience from listening to the radio and the poster would generate audience from a large scale, due to fact that the poster can be put outside in the eyes of the public. Overall both these ancillary texts have the potential to be equally effective and also bring in profit to the film; this is because both the poster and radio trailer have a strong connection with all the media products.