Evaluation Question 2.

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

To ensure our products were effective as a cohesive promotional package we ensured a number of factors were the same such as colour schemes, typography and imagery. Our main product was a horror teaser trailer and our ancillary texts were a poster and website.

Products: Poster, Website and Teaser Trailer

Our poster has a colour scheme of metallic colours consisting of browns and black reinforcing the factory location element of our teaser trailer. The single bright light added to the filters used to edit the poster over expose the actors face creating binary opposition with a sense of light versus dark. This idea is reflected in other aspects of our products with the website having a colour scheme of brown and grey and reflecting more subtly the idea of binary opposition and good versus evil, the use of the time lapse as a background establishes the idea of our film being location focused on the “Klinger Factory”.  The editing of the time lapse creates a vivid contrast with the brightness of the clouds creating a darker “Klinger Factory”. And this links more cohesively to our teaser trailer which focuses directly on location with the Klinger Factory shown in the first four seconds.

The same title typography on all three texts creates consistency and a brand associated with our product with which the audience can identify. The typography was chosen to conform to other films similar to ours such as Chernobyl Diaries. Our typography was chosen to make an impact and tie in with the idea of an abandoned factory this is highlighted by the fact it is a rusty brown colour and has been edited to look eroded.

The use of a tagline only on the poster is to reflect the plot of the teaser trailer as it can’t accurately be shown any other way. It is needed on the poster only as the teaser trailer has title slides which highlight the plot and this is similar to the website whose background reflects the narrative similarly to films such as Amityville Horror.

Poster tagline to suggest narrative to the audience

Our poster follows convention by having a single victim inside our main location with the hand creating a hint of the danger that will unfold.  The single victim is also easily recognisable in relation to our teaser trailer as they have a speaking part creating a sense of cohesion between the two.

Actor prominent in both the poster and teaser trailer

More obviously the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is effective by having the trailer directly on the homepage of the website playing automatically. This reinforces the brand created and enables the audience to quickly identify with our teaser trailer and product.

Website; embedded video of teaser trailer which automatically plays.