Evaluation: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Overall as a media package of the film teaser trailer, film poster and magazine dedicated to our film ‘State of Flux’ the three products have been effectively combined. Throughout the three media products our group has carried on a recurring image and theme within our own style and that of the idea ‘Indie’ genre, therefore we were following the typical conventions of a very different genre to mainstream films and media products and meant we were targeting a very different audience of older adolescents or young adults between 16-25 years old as opposed to families or young teenagers.
-One way we combined our media products is through the lighting, colouring, colour scheme and overall look of the images in all of the trailer, poster and magazine such as by using the same ‘sunset’ hues of dark reds and oranges in all three products. By doing so we are creating an undoubted link between the three and developing an image or identity for our film project, using these colours is suggestive of the themes of love, desire and warmth in our film that the protagonists strive to feel. Likewise by using this colour scheme in the film poster as well we are giving the impression of distortion of reality as the colouring of the image is slightly ‘red enhanced’ (as done on Adobe Photoshop) and implying that reality has been somewhat skewed as this is a theme that we explore in our film narrative of ‘reality versus fantasy’ therefore is we continuously use this throughout our products, audiences will learn to recognise and identify our product through this construction – an emotion of warmth and intimacy which is consistent across our products.
-Another way we combined our products to create an ‘identity’ is through the use of text and typography such as through the use of the ‘Action Jackson’ font from dafont.com. Therefore this relates our film to the genre of ‘Indie’ film and audiences identify our film with the use of our font for example, films such as Scream have a distinct typography which audiences recognise and identify with the film – through the use of the same ‘Action Jackson’ font in our trailer and poster we replicating this same technique. This font also develops the overall identity of our film across the three products as it is suggestive of a pleasant creativity and childlike innocence which we associate with the characters in our film.
-We have also linked our main and ancillary tasks together through the recurring use of doodles to symbolise the distorted sense of reality and the notion of being in a childlike state of mind – hinting to the transgression to adulthood that the protagonists will undertake. Through small hints of doodles that are significant to the image such as the train ticket, bird and milk carton in the film poster and the translucent autumn leaves on the magazine cover there is a continuous theme amongst our products that the audience will recognise. Likewise through the coloured and hand drawn photograph of Beatriz on the back cover relates to the idea that one of the protagonists may or may not be real throughout the narrative of the film, we also tried to recreate this idea in the trailer by using fade transitions on final cut whilst the two characters are in one locations at different times to create the sense that they are following the same path and again in the poster by drawing over the image of Caleb using the tablet so mimic the same effect with the rest of the products.
Valerie's A2 Media Blog 