Saturday, 5 February 2011

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

Nashay Start. The combination of our media products and ancillary texts are very much alike, once we started the project my group and I wanted synergy to be the main focus in targeting the potential audience and they would always recognise that our teaser trailer, poster, magazine and webpage are all from the same campaign. The use of synergy has also made real movies successful today such as The Dark Knight and The Matrix.

We also wanted there to be strong continuity throughout most elements of our marketing campaign. We used the same colour scheme (red, grey, black and blue) all sinister colours and our slogan ‘Revenge is Sweet’ is used throughout the advertising process. This all increased our audience awareness of ‘The End’ branding.


During the development and the pre-production process myself and group decided that we were going to, push ourselves one step further than the tasks set and this was to make an Asian horror movie poster we knew that this would broaden our horizon in terms of our target audience, drawing them in and making them feel as if we are targeting each culture personally rather just have one poster for everyone.


On a personal level this move was a very smart decision in making us stand out from all the other potential competitive production companies. The fact that we have two posters targeting at different audience can be classed as our unique selling point, as no other group has decided to be so ambitious besides us. We also feel as a production company we need to stand out and take risks in order to be successful.


When undertaking research I and my group looked at the 2008 superhero movie ‘The Dark Knight’ by Warner Bros Pictures and directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan. We looked at the way in which they advertised their products and we decided to go down the same route, In saying this I mean the use of synergy across the many media platforms such as DVD’s, Toys and Games. The images below exemplify my point.





If we had more time we would have definitely distributed DVD’s and CD’S.


When advertising, marketing and distributing media products there is often a ‘buzz’ created around the movie, this buzz can determine how successful a film will be in the box-office for example again the Dark Knight had a large budget ($185 million) and so they could afford to use techniques of advertising such as cross media convergence, technological convergence and cross-promotions. The Dark Knight grossed just over $1 million.


The company ensured that the film had maximum exposure to film audiences globally, which was a major factor of the company’s success. Technological convergence was used to target the core audience of the film which successfully worked and this is reflected through the Box office figures the Dark Knight made. Had our film been able to use ALL these techniques I feel we would have been much more successful than we have been.


We needed to create a ‘buzz’ around our film and so we knew immediately that we had to expose our film so we uploaded our trailer to YouTube and using advanced technology we were able to spread the link to our teaser trailer through Blackberry messenger, and we also emailed the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku_4tucwzZ4 to the whole college, to get a deeper insight of how we could improve our teaser trailer had we had longer time to make it. We also wanted know what exactly people liked about our teaser trailer and weather our film would have had potential had we taken the project further.



Uploading our teaser trailer to YouTube was a big step for us as a group as we would have to be open to negative criticism from an international audience.
This made it possible for the audience to distinguish between our movie and other production companies.













The colour scheme of red, black and blue is continuous throughout our campaign. We chose these three colours because of the connotations which are linked to them (Death, Blood, Revenge, Death and Darkness). Throughout our campaign we ensured that our actress was wearing the same costume on both magazine front cover and poster, again so the audience can easily identify our products.


I and my group filmed in and around the college area, the main location being our media room which includes a blue screen, we used the blue screen to our advantage making it appear black because as mentioned before we always wanted our campaign to be predominantly black and red.


Our ancillary text was mainly red the reasons being is, red and black are very popular colours and support the connotations which are associated with these two colours in an horror movie campaign.




The ancillary text and style that my group and I used on all three of our products to symbolise that all the products are from ‘THE END’ brand. The rough jagged edges of the text connote that of a Horror genre.







On all three products we used continuity in the theme of our poster, all our actresses and models were females this again illustrates the idea and concept of identity and our unique selling point as many of the Horror films today include allot more men than female or the man is the protagonist character.


To bring the question to an end my group and I feel that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts was very successful and this certainly benefited our understanding of how the real media world operates. We also feel that the combination of our main product and ancillary text raised our audience awareness immensely.

Nashay Ends.


Teniola Start



The picture above explains visually how effective the combination of our two posters and magazine front cover are. It explains the synergy between the products, and how each can be recognised and know they are advertising the same film. As said before we have the continuous use of red text in each product, which is a main convention of horror films as it represents blood. We also have an emphasis on the female roles shown which is a challenge to normal horror conventions. Also, the low key lighting in the Asian horror poster and the magazine front cover to show a sense of fear among the protagonist female. It represents darkness and the fear felt among her, others will feel. The colour black is also repeated among each product, from text to background. We used this colour repeatedly as it's quite sharp, to the point and states the obvious clearly. The repetition of the synergy is also recognised among our horror teaser trailer as in the shots seen below. From the black background, to the black distinctive text, the red text, the female protagonist and the bloody red text.








Each shot/picture shown represents and distinguishes the same synergy that we've placed on our other three products. What is shown on our Asian poster, UK poster and magazine front cover is what is shown in our horror teaser trailer, so there's no surprises for viewers. From seeing our posters and magazine front cover, I believe that people will see the synergy and realise that each one connect, rather than being confused and seeing no relation between them. I think that my group and I have clearly stated and made it obvious that we are advertising the same film in each product, which is quite effective.

Teniola Ends

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