Question 2 written form

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? (MUST REFER TO FILM, POSTER AND RADIO TRAILER)

I used above the line marketing to promote our ancillary products as we used mass media to create a campaign. For example, I used Instagram, a social media app that I knew our target audience use every day of their lives. Using Instagram to promote our product was useful in getting our target audience to realise that there was a potential film coming out. For example, I posted segments of our poster bit by bit to introduce the movie. I would post for example the bottom corner of the poster or the middle, and tag other horror film accounts with a mass audience, and used hashtags which would mean that people who were fans of for example ‘American Horror Story’, their explore page would also have our content in it. This gained the interest of our target audience. In addition, I also created a teaser poster to display and share through apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat which allowed the news of our new film to travel by word of mouth as people would then start talking about it and helped me build a campaign.

The teaser poster links to the radio as it shows that Mila is not in a right state, just by looking at her angry facial expression. At first, the teaser poster has red eyes on it but then the audience said that they couldn’t notice much of the red eyes. Now, the teaser poster links to the final movie, as what I did was change Mila’s eyes to a rainbow type of gradient and reduced its opacity. This is to link with the film as I used the prism filter on Final Cut Pro every time Mila had a malfunction of depression. This allows my audience to know that there is something wrong with her, and they also preferred it like this as they could recognise that there was something wrong with her. We wanted to keep the teaser poster simple which was influenced by many campaigns with similar techniques such as ‘Avatar’ and ‘Friday the 13^th’. Their campaigns were successful as they tempted their target audience to watch it and gave them a hint of the narrative without revealing the whole plot.

Regarding focus groups and surveys for the poster in our primary research, people mainly preferred the Orphan film poster because it was 'simple'. We tried to make our poster as simple as we can too, for example showing the two personalities of our character on each side of the main character ‘malfunctioning’ with two different facial expressions. Also they thought that the font for the movie name of Orphan was unique and different. Thus, we named our movie ‘Senseless’ as the audience will wonder why this is called senseless even after the release of the film. The audience feedback during research and planning was different to our production as people mainly saw trailers on YouTube or on TV, films in huge cinemas and posters on big billboards. However, as we are a low budget production group, we cannot afford this and so campaigned through social media apps and posters as much as we could.

I used the ‘Z’ formation when producing the poster as the audience who see the poster normally read a poster from the top left to bottom right. This would allow my audience to construct a narrative from my poster, as the top left is light and the bottom right is dark, connoting that these conventional colours could mean a dark horror story. The facial expressions that they see first may also give them this hint. Lastly seeing the title and website of the film will intrigue them to find out more about the movie and keep the name in their minds so that they remember it and watch the movie. Furthermore, the font that we used for our poster was the same fonts that we used in our film. For example, the title of the film on the poster was in the font ‘Cabanyal Z’ and the same was used in the film after the opening titles. This re-assures the audience that they are watching the film that has been advertised to them and they will recognise it straight away. This makes them an active audience as they would remember the poster. This would be our preferred reading of the poster.

With the radio trailer, if people believe they can relate to it then they may watch it using the uses and gratification theory, for example if they aspire to have a job in crime and see what psychological impacts can lead a person to commit murder, therefore a person may watch the film for work. Alternatively they can watch it for escapism or any other reason.

Many people also said they would hear trailer in a variety of places, such as the shops or the radio or on television. What the most votes was on was YouTube. Knowing this, I know that if I wanted to further develop the campaign for my product, I would release a trailer on YouTube as our target audience is more likely to see it on YouTube because they are young and it is easy and free to access. This was useful in seeing where our target audience are most likely to listen to things.

What influenced me to do this was the campaigning that I researched on ‘The Blair Witch Project’. They handed out fake ‘missing people’ posters to real people created fake rumours to make it seem like students were missing in the forest. Through this, their target audience really search to help to find these students through sharing the posters and information about these fictional characters. However once they found out it was a film, they all went to watch it as they thought their campaigning was amazing. This influenced me to make my radio trailer start off like it is a real news story at first, as in my film, Mila finds out she is the killer of her bullies through this. The headlines that start off the radio trailer would connote realism, which assists the placement of the marketing campaign on a commercial radio as it could trick the audience into listening and thinking it is a special news bulletin. This would make my target audience active and engaging instead of being passive. However, the headlines in my radio trailer then become a reverb as the repeated lines of the news reporter repeat with distortion. This is not just to make my product unique, but it also links with the film as the news reporter’s voice is repeated after Mila hears her bullies names and realises that she kills them. Also, within the poster there are 3 faces of the same person, again connoting that there is something wrong with her and that the repetition of the faces mean there is a distortion in her personality. To further connote that there is something wrong with Mila, I tried to match the prism FX to the radio trailer by having static sound and 4 glitches when Mila says ‘everybody has a good and a bad side’ in the trailer. This makes it seem like she is not real and that the her true identity will come out soon in the film as her voice is glitching.

The key element that linked through all three of my products is the tagline which says ‘everybody has a good and bad side’. This is shown in the poster, and in the radio trailer through directly speaking to the audience as our narrator says ‘everyone has a good and bad side… which one are you?’ Again this allows our audience to actively engage in our products. The way this element fits into the film is through showing that Mila has both a good and bad side and that the bad side is the one who kills her bullies. The tagline is therefore made memorable and can help to stick to the audiences’ heads as it is simple and catchy.

Our ancillary products tease our audience in what is interesting in our film and to encourage them to watch it. If the target audience find it interesting and talk about it to people, it would create a word of mouth advertising which would be beneficial to us as it is both free and reaching a mass audience. We would distribute it to well-known cinemas such as ‘Picture House’, ‘Odeon’ and ‘Vue’, and also after it is released we would release it on DVDs so that people can buy the film, thus increasing our gross income.