Evaluation question 2

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

The purpose of our film was to provide entertainment to the audience in order to intrigue them into the storyline. We used elements from the genre psychological thriller such as black and white scenes like in the film Memento, to please the audience of our film. The black and white sequence signals the past and this is also done through the narrative working backwards, which we attempted in our film. As our film begins with Damion waking up in a mental asylum and then ending with his realisation of what he’s done, playing with the audiences mind and allowing everyone to have their own interpretation and piece the film together.

Our film adapted throughout the planning stages on blogger, to ensure we created a film which was entertaining and kept the audience on the edge of their seat during the film and especially on the plot twist. We did this by creating a treatment to show what the overall film was about after we had collected all of our ideas and using our audience questionnaires to put a final certificate on the film, now with the knowledge of who our audience was.

What we were trying to achieve with our main product

Our film is a psychological thriller. Films of this genre usually involve innocent victims, doctors and mental illnesses which is what we used to try and portray this type of film. The themes in our film are remembrance and death as the whole storyline is trying to remember a death and then dying as an effect of this. The music is very important in a psychological thriller as it impacts the entire film and the way it’s perceived by the audience. An audience would expect suspense and intense music in this genre and would be surprised if this wasn’t included. Our film uses dialogue to give more information about the plot and who certain characters are, as well as a voiceover of Damion explaining who he’s looking for. This makes it simpler to understand and although psychological thrillers are usually background music based as a lot of dialogue makes it less intense, we felt by adding a voiceover, it would give the audience a basic outline of the storyline, allowing them to gain an in depth view on our film.

We used codes and conventions that are typically found in psychological thrillers. This includes the theme of death as most films that are similar play on this idea and have secrets in the plot, which often ends in death or a death that’s happened previously in the film. But also editing such as the black and white scenes to show memories, which have appeared in other films of this genre such as Memento. The only subvert in audience expectations would be the hanging as you would expect the mental institute to be quite strict on security depending on the time. Also we have a female doctor which would be unlikely to appear in these sort of films as they’re usually very male based audiences that watch them.

We also used props such as the photograph to show what Damion was remembering but also clothing like the doctor's coat to symbolise the character being a doctor. This made the film seem more realistic to our audience who would expect this sort of planning for the film of this genre.  Our main aim was to provide the certification 15 audience entertainment and a psychological thrill from the short film and complex storyline.

Poster

After we created our film, I started to research into similar film posters in order to produce a rough draft and final film poster that would represent our product. I looked into similar genres of films and looked at posters which included dark backgrounds, characters and good slogans/titles.

I found these 4 posters which I took inspiration from for our rough draft and final film poster. The film poster Premonition was analysed for our final poster because of the creepy looking background as it shows the characters face in the trees, symbolising the character being involved in the setting, the woods, in the film. The differing in the red text compared with the white underneath stands out against the dark background, making the film appear as a horror/thriller. I analysed Gothika to create a similar poster as the character’s face from the film is pictured on the poster, meaning you know the film will be quite chilling from the reaction on her face. Atticus Institute’s background seems psychological because of the ghostly body coming out from the women, giving the effect of a ghostly storyline, which we could have used in our film poster as our film involves a ghost.

Finally the film Shutter Island was my main inspiration for our film as the storyline was very similar and we took aspects from the film, such as the character in a mental asylum searching for his wife and the mental asylum setting, as well as the character of the doctor. Due to the storyline being so similar, I felt that we were able to create a similar film poster as this film poster reflects the storyline of the film, a character who’s full of hatred, trying to find out the truth. As the light from the fire represents him searching for the truth in a dark setting. The text matching the fire makes the audience want to watch the film as the poster looks interesting.

Although all of the posters are for different films, they were all quite similar as they all included a background image of the character in the film, giving the audience a feel of what these characters are like which would maybe tell them the genre as if the character looks sad they know it’s a tragedy. The text on each also stands out against this image, so the audience know what the film is called and who is involved in it. The fact that there’s only one character pictured in each of these posters show it’s them who become psychologically damaged in the film as they’re the main characters.

Layout of film poster

Beginning with a film poster layout, I portrayed similar aspects onto my rough draft. This includes the film title at the top, the background/photo below and the credits underneath this, which is the classical layout.

Poster

Firstly, I created a rough draft film poster with Photoshop, which showed the genre of our film.

I then analysed this to show why the audience would be attracted to this film.

This is our final film poster, which we used to advertise our film. I analysed this film poster to show what aspects we had used from other similar film posters and certain things included in the poster to show its genre. The film poster included credits which show the audience who made the film as this could be a good selling point, perhaps people recognise the production companies name or who made the film, making them want to watch it. I finally added a release date so the audience know when to expect to see the film, as this knowledge would draw more people into watching it, as they know exactly where they can find it.

Radio trailer

Before making our radio trailer, I searched into existing radio trailers in order to get a feel for the expectations of this genre. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a psychological thriller film on the radio, however I found a Doctor Who trailer which shares similar elements like sound effects, indicating what’s happening for the audience who are only listening rather than watching. I discovered that this radio trailer uses speech and dialogue to tell the audience what’s happening, however doesn’t give the entire story away, leaving them intrigued to watch. Using music from the film reinforces the genre of the film, setting an expectation of a psychological thriller for the audience and a voiceover on the trailer creates understanding, making the film easy for the listeners to understand. My main aim for our radio trailer was to make it so that the audience could easily understand what was happening and the summary of the film just by listening, by doing this I’d have successfully created a product that would represent our film.

I then looked at the film Terminator as I found a trailer for this and listened to the audio to give the same effect as a radio trailer. Although it’s more action based, the features involved would be similar to my radio trailer as the audio reflects what’s happening in the film. This is what all radio trailers attempt to do successfully.

The dialogue also involves reviews from critics and newspaper, giving a rating for the film, which by including this in our film trailer intrigued people to watch it as they would gain a sense of whether the film was good. So I then looked into what we would include in ours:

Radio trailer message

We then made a final decision and created a script for our radio trailer by incorporating parts of example radio trailers that we looked at:

"The Forgotten Truth"

"Starring Hayley Townend & Dale Cook"

"An extreme psychological thriller that'll blow your mind"

"An original HVRD production"

"Remember"

"Available on YouTube on the 25th January "

The voiceover for our film was performed by Hayley’s dad who read this script slowly, so we could include sound effects and music from our film over the top. By using the title of the film, it tells the audience directly what our film is and then by giving information about the genre, it verifies whether the audience will enjoy it. Telling the audience who is starred in the film may encourage them to watch as they could have seen films with these actors in beforehand and so know what to expect in terms of acting skills and maybe even storylines, depending on what type of films these people are usually in. We used a quote from our film ‘Remember’ to give the audience a taste of what the film includes i.e- a male character attempting to remember what had happened in the past with his wife. This slogan is also used on our poster, giving the same message and a hint to the story plot. By giving a release date, we know that we’ll gain a wider audience as a lot of people will just have a look at the film, even if they don’t enjoy this genre.

The audience can identify our film as a psychological thriller due to the voiceover stating its genre and the voice over of Damion declaring his love for Lily, which is then contrasted with the creepy sounding music in the background, signalling something has gone wrong. This music may entice the listener to watch the film as it sounds intense, giving an initial overall feeling of the film. The audience may also be able to tell the location of the film and the setting by the accents of the characters which will then be shown through the setting. By the narrator stating the production company, the audience will know it’s a film.

Conclusion: How effective do you think the two ancillary texts are in selling your production?

The poster-

The poster had to look professional in order for our film to be advertised realistically and gain a wider audience as the film poster was the first thing that reflected our genre and plot. By looking at previous film poster examples and similar genres of film posters, we were able to create a poster that advertised our product in the right way. Using Photoshop, it was simple to make the poster and yet the layout looked professional, saving us time and money, but also the heightened expectations for a good film. If the audience saw a poster that looked poorly made such as my plan for a finished film poster:

They wouldn’t be intrigued to watch the film, so after re creating this poster until we achieved a final draft, we knew we would have audience support.

Also by using a real image from the film, it made the audience enticed to know what would happen with these characters and their relationship. This is why our film poster presents the film well and advertises the final product completely. I wouldn’t adjust our final film poster too much. However from my first poster plan, I feel that by adding a real image of a hand rather than one from Google, I could create more suspense for the audience when they see my poster.

Radio Trailer

The radio trailer successfully engages our listeners, by conveying psychological aspects of the film like death and illness by forgetting such a horrible act that Damion did. Yet also shows the romance that goes wrong, signaling a thrill for the audience as they are able to see the relationships faults and why Damion kills his wife. I think that our trailer would be effective at promoting our film because it uses all of the elements that exist in a radio trailer, as I know from research. Our target market was a teenage audience and due to the genre of the film being well portrayed in the radio trailer, I felt that we had a very good chance of gaining our target audience.

In my opinion our two ancillary texts reflect our media products well because we showed our creativity throughout and gained inspiration from similar films, like Shutter Island, promoting our film genre and storyline.

Results of questionnaire on two ancillary texts- conclusion