Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

The main types of marketing are viral and heritage: Viral marketing uses the internet (for example, blogs, social

networking and apps) to spread information on the internet and slowly releasing information about the film. It’s good for gaining attention from the online target audience and generate hype that relies on word-of-mouth, utilising social networking sites and all at a low-cost that is ideal for indie film companies. An example of this is ‘Paranormal Activity’ (2007), with the small budget of $15,000 they managed to earn $3,593,762 in the box office opening weekend due to their successful marking campaign, getting fans to demand the film came to their town where they recorded reactions and put them online to generate hype, getting fans to ‘tweet their scream’ on the social network Twitter to easily, quickly and effectively spread the word.

Herritage Marketing uses analogue methods, such as posters, newspapers/magazines, billboards, buss spreads and interviews, to advertise the film. A conglomerate that took this offline approach was ‘Warner Bros.’ with ‘The Hangover’ (2009), putting wanted/missing campaign posters relating to and making the narrative seem real, this was very effective, generating $3,193,806 in its UK opening weekend.

My marketing scheme involves the use of a poster, a magazine cover and a trailer, taking inspiration from existing materials of the same genre.

Promotion and Marketing

The inspiration for both of my ancillaries were different, with my poster being influenced by ‘One missed call’ (2008) and ‘Friday the 13th’ (2009) and my magazine cover being influenced strongly by 3 covers by ‘Empire’. When researching ancillaries for analysis, while I didn’t have trouble finding plenty of posters, I found it more challenging to find magazine covers which related with my chosen genre being horror. As a result, I decided to select more than 1 magazine for their layout and advertising and taking inspiration from the conventions of the horror genre for the background image.

Ancillary Products

Poster For my poster I found inspiration in horror films ‘Friday the 13th’ and ‘One missed call’. In both posters the typography is similar to my own, with the colour scheme of red, white and black , also with a similar font title but I edited the text in a way it looks like its been attacked. The background image includes the main villain with the key prop of the film – the mask. With the added blood splatter, it is clear to the audience what genre it is and that this face is the face of the killer. I have included production companies which

are known for producing horror films and also I did not want to include a release date but I put ‘coming soon’ as it seems more of a tease and mysterious rather than letting too much information out – I followed through with this for my trailer

Magazine CoverFor my magazine cover I found inspiration in 3 ‘Empire’ Magazines featuring ‘Avengers’, ‘Man of Steel’ and ‘Hunger Games’. I have used the layout of all 3 examples including the magazine title – however I changed the colours slightly to make it more of a horror issue rather than an action big and bold issue. The layout of the text from the ‘Man of Steel’ issue was appealing to me which is why I took a similar road – however I thought that if I also place the text behind the character it will look as if she is the main character as it is for superman. I used the same font (Engravers MT) as I have in my trailer and poster to carry through the flow of my 3 products. Although my film title on my magazine looks differently to my trailer title and poster title – I thought this made it have a different side to it as each of my ancillary products feature different characters whereas when the text is full it is where I feature all characters – in the trailer.

Main Product - Trailer

I find my 3 products to be very effective together as I find they flow together but are slightly different and give more away as they go on with my main product showing the most detail to the film. Because of the consistent colour scheme, interest in characters, production companies and details regarding release date and target audience – I feel that this is the key to have my products effective enough to stand on their own if a spectator only sees one of the 3 and they will still be interested in going to view the film.

I wanted to include my other characters in the magazine cover because in the trailer the audience wasn’t only focusing on the masked killer but the scared girls as well which is why I chose to allow them to have a story arc for the audience to relate with.

Main Product - Trailer