Evaluation Question 2

Q2:

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

We followed the normal procedure for any film production process going into the blockbuster market. By following this we created several different posters and a film review. The posters would be the first media text the public would see promoting our film; they would be on local billboards, and on the side of buses. This would allow the public to notice a film, the majority of the audience would see a bus every day, and the likelihood of that bus having the film poster on would be very high. Likewise if the public target audience did not see the actual film poster, someone they know would have seen it, and therefore spoken about it to them, this is the second way the public would hear about the film, ‘word of mouth’.

The aims of the posters are to create awareness for our short film. The film review would then follow, giving the audience the inside review on the film, persuading them with ratings and brief explanations on the film. We had to create three posters; we wanted the posters to show out film in a very unique way, we did this by adding the genre into our film posters. So that the target audience can instantly know what our genre is. In order to create our film posters, we had to analyse several real life film posters from the same genre. I came across ‘Due Date’. The film shared our genre, and its am was to make the target audience laugh, which indeed it did for me. They genre of the film is comedy; like ours, the designers of the posters have tried to get the comedy aspect into the posters. The comedy aspects have defiantly came across in their poster when the main character portrayed by ‘Zach Galifianakis’ is lifting half of his shirt up, into the other main characters face played by ‘Robert Downey Jr’. The poster has managed to make the audience laugh before the film is even released, this makes the target audience eagerly await the arrival of the film. When creating my film posters I felt it was important to keep the normal codes and conventions of a comedy genre, because we changed many of the codes and conventions throughout the film, and I felt to many changes would disrupt the film together, like the famous saying ‘if its not broke, don’t fix it’. Likewise I wanted to use images from the film so the shots used on the film posters would look real and not fake like many film posters in the industry at this time. It would also give the audience an insight into some of the scenes that will be in our film. We felt the link between the film and the posters was vital. There has to be the links there so that the audience can relate to the poster, and inevitably relate to the film. We had to create 3 posters, as a team we decided on creating one with both of the characters in, with the main theme being about the lottery ticket, then with the other two basing them on the characters individually, showing how the film is about them, and how we based the film around their personalities. The posters would contain the humours shots we used during the film, making our target audience in the public to see the main scenes and shots in our film. After the film posters we would need to create the film review, for independent films makers like ourselves its hard to get review by a top critique. A film review could be the final persuasion for the target audience to come and watch our film. Because of this we were creating the review ourselves, therefore it would be a positive review, not wanting to lose customers before the film being aired. We creativity made the review, making it aesthetically pleasing for our audience, stringing them to come see the film. We did this film review for empire magazine, meaning we could market our film to a wider audience than was expected, which would cause our film to gain more views than expected.
Both of these two marketing techniques helped promote our media film to a wider audience than expected, because of this it was a success, receiving over 80 views on ‘Youtube’ the highest in the class.