How alike film posters and magazines are our ancillary texts?
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Poster:
When constructing our film poster, we wanted to make it look as realistic and alike a film poster as possible; and to do this, we analysed a few film posters - identifying the key features that are most appealing and effective to audiences. The key focus that we found in most posters and is the one thing that should be most appealing is the image. We found that in the majority of the posters that there was only one image and this tended to be of the main character. The effect of having only one image is that audiences will have one focus and will be more engaged with it rather than having multiple small images. The use of a close-up shot is prominent and the direct-eye contact in the image is significant in captivating the eyes of the audiences. The effect of using one of the main characters in our trailer - and is the case in many other films - is that when it comes to watching the film, audiences will remember the characters and will have some recollection or recognition of who they actually are.
The title is one of the main things that you expect to see on a film poster as it is something that is promoting our trailer - and therefore, the title is the key thing that we are going to want audiences to remember when it is released. When analysing other texts, we recognised and followed the presentation of the title being prominent to audiences. Our poster clearly presents the title of our film, with it being in a bold-like font, with the capitalisation of letters. Also the white font on a black/white background able's it to stand out much more with the contrasting colours. In relation to titles, we decided that it would be most effective to include a slogan/phrase on our poster. This was something that we did not see a lot of when analysing other ancillary texts however we thought that this would be something that would make our own original but that would also create a brand identity for our film - as other than the title, this slogan/phrase would be something that audiences would remember our film by. The slogan we have used is 'your fears are what you create' which is a phrase that also appears in our trailer and would therefore be something that audiences will remember and associate our film with.
The final expectations of a poster that we followed were the release date and the credits. With a poster, you don't tend to want to see the further information of the film - and for this reason, these are in a smaller font. A poster is something that you would typically display or keep as a memorabilia of some sort - and therefore, you wouldn't realistically want to see all the credits and the release data. However, this is important information for the distributor's as it is information that you want audiences to be aware of. Overall we thought that the way in which we presented our poster, with using an eye-catching image and a prominent title and slogan, allowed us to engage audiences and we thought it was very alike other film posters as we aimed to follow their ways of presenting - whereby we analysed many posters prior to creating our own.
Magazine:
Alike with our poster - prior to actually creating it, we analysed many other film magazines to get a basic idea of what the key features were and how we should incorporate them into our own. We found that the most prominent feature on the majority of magazine texts was the company name. The reason for this is that they are the ones that are publishing our trailer - and depending on the popularity of the magazine company, they are essentially the cause for engaging audiences. This would be because there are often audiences that make regular purchases of specific magazines - and therefore if our film is being promoted on there, the company will be wanting to take credit for that promotion. We followed this by presenting our company name 'Illumination' in a big, bold font - prominent to audiences.
Another key focus that we found in most magazine covers was the use of imagery. We found that in the majority of magazine covers that there was only one (often two) image(s). The reason for this is, similar to posters, that there is only one focus of which audiences will be engaged by and will most likely recognise. Again, alike film posters, this image tends to be of the main character of the film - allowing audiences to recognise the character and warm to them when it comes to actually watching the film. On our magazine cover, we do have one primal image which is of one of the key characters in our trailer. And this was prominent and eye-catching to audiences as it was a partial close-up of the woman's face. We did, however, include other images - of which included a film-strip of shots of our protagonist, which were effective as they were not shots that actually appeared in our trailer. We also included an image of a location of which we did not use in our trailer, however it was being presented as an exclusive that features inside the magazine. This is effective as it is essentially a unique selling point for the magazine as audiences may be more engaged in knowing that they are getting extra information or extra inserts of which they may not have expected to begin with.
It is important in film that there are unique selling points - and in the majority of films this can be the main actor who may have starred in many successful films. Alternatively, it could be the director of a film who has produced many popular films. In a magazine, however, the unique selling points may vary and we aimed for these to be the exclusives which audiences receive inside the magazine such as free posters and special interviews. This would be seen as unique selling points as audiences would feel more obliged to purchase it if they knew that they were getting more than what they may have hoped for - therefore getting 'more for your money'. We have also displayed the price of the magazine, however it is much smaller than other information. Similar to the majority of magazines, the price is not something that you want to be immediately noticed which is why it tends to be in a much smaller font to everything else.
Overall, we feel like both ancillary texts are very similar to other film posters and magazine covers. The way in which we were able to achieve this was by analysing both sets of text, prior to actually creating our own. This allowed us to identify the key features of both which we were able to incorporate into our own creations - resulting in a successful promotion.
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