EVALUATION

QUESTION 2

Eleanor McKeown

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

• In my opinion I think that the combination of my ancillary and main products are effective. I feel I could have perhaps worked harder to improve the standard of my print products to fit more with the horror genre. It was a key trial throughout my coursework to constantly assure that my products complimented each other well.

• The photographs I used did not differ greatly, so they still had the same intended effect on the target demographic. The colour scheme is frequent throughout the pieces and also relevant for the genre of the pieces. The colour scheme also relates to the dead girls makeup of the red, white and black hues, which is a subtle way to link the pieces together but effective as it is this eye for detail you often see on real life magazine images.

QUESTION TWO

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

EFFECTIVE:

I would say that as a combination my main product and ancillary texts work effectively at a glance. Subtle details such as the frequent use of similar fonts- such as my staple ‘Trajan Pro’ worked well to create a sense of continuity between the products. The similarity within the slashed out texts for the film title in the cover, poster and final credit all works well in providing a recurring image of the film name, whilst the repetition of the font/colour/size would effectively stick in the audiences mind for them to memorise the film name. In addition to this, I would say that the frequent use of close-ups of the dead friends face effectively adds to the motif of death and revenge whilst being haunting to the audience – I used similar camera angles and shots for both the magazine cover and poster, whilst within the trailer a similar close-up of the actresses face is used as she appears in the mirror. In addition to this, throughout the ancillary texts a similar colour scheme of red, black and white is used, which not only fits into the structural conventions of the genre but also enhances the same visuals of continuity between my texts.

QUESTION TWO

NOT-EFFECTIVE:

Despite this, I would argue that I could have made a further effort to make the ancillary texts look more similar to the final main product by creating a more blue/white hue to the poster and magazine image, as this is the colour film used within the trailer on top of the footage. This continuity between the pieces is crucial for creating an effective product on a whole as it portrays a sense of professionalism and realism to our tested audiences. Furthermore, I could have made my ancillary texts more effective and stylised by using more distinct different images for my magazine cover and film poster because upon reflection the two images look very similar, which wouldn’t usually happen for a promotional package for a horror film. In addition to this the combination of my main product and ancillary texts could have been made more effective if I had used a different font for the end title sequence of the trailer that says ‘Best Friends’ because in the end there is quite a difference between the appearances of the title used here and titles on the print products, which again does not look too professional.

The trailer I feel particularly combines well with the other ancillary texts due to other staple similarities, such as the blue filter I placed upon the models face for the magazine cover and poster, is also present onto many scenes during the trailer as the horror within the plot heightens. In addition to this, I feel the trailer fits well as part of a promotional package due to the repeated sense of mystery and themes of death, friendship, and betrayal. These themes are well depicted in not only the moving image but the posters and magazine cover, particularly emphasised within the tag-line I chose for the poster ‘Two’s Company, Three’s A Crowd’.