Evaluation 2

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

Before completeing my anciliary tasks, myself and Zoe chose to split up the two task between us. After discusing what we would want to do, the conclusion was made that I would do the film poster and Zoe would complete the film revew page.This helped me to section my time up efficently and concentrate on one section of these tasks. We also completed both of these tasks at school,at the same time together so we could share ideas and comments to suggest what could be better or what we didn't like; this allowed both pieces of work to be shared but done seperatly. Also, by doing this it allowed us to keep consistency, for example in the colour scheme, front type and font size.




My short film that both my partner Zoe and myself made and created.

 Typically scene within my short film that shows and denotes the darkness and danger this victim is under; this shows that my short finl connects with the two ancilliary tasks as it allow the tasks to support the dark features within the film.

Film poster that I made.

 

 

Film review page that my partner Zoe made

 

 

As you can see from the genre of my film and the content that is displayed within it, you can see why chosing certain features to make up our anciliary tasks were done. For example the colour scheme was consistent, by using dark colours such as black and grey for the backgrounds of our texts. As said above, when producing both of these texts we concentrated on staying together in the same room throughout the process, to maintain a consistent formula. As our film is based around dark content and eviliness from certain characters, I took this to my advantage and was certain to maintain this through the anciliary tasks; this is clear through the colour schemes we have both used, these being black and grey and the font colour and titles are the same colour as well, this being white. I purposely done this, as I think a combination of white, grey and black suggest and denote certain feelings. For example, the white suggests the angelic, innocent and naive young girl being a victim to this dark, evil and dangerous old man/killer. I also think the contrast between the two are very eye catching and the white on black works really well. These colours also link to the events that take place within the film, such as the pure young girl still being at school, still hasn't lived and explored the world links to colour white and the black/grey supports the horric crime the killer is doing, when taking and tying this young victim up, followed by killing and raping her. Also the contrast between the film posters grey background, mostly concentrating on the killers black mac, and the film review pages consisting of a black background, could be suggest that the killer is standing behind her, connotating that he is in control. It also denotes the black and dark place she is currently in, suggesting bad and dark things may end up happening to Lily. When I was doing the film poster, I knew it needed a little bit more than just these colours so I thought it would be extremely revelant to put some red into the tag line; this suggests many ideas, for example that the killer is dangerous and capable of killing, but it also works well with the link between Lily's father and events that happen to her as the red suggests blood which could mean that she's more close to her father than she thinks. However, this could have been included within the review page and this would definitely be something that we would change if we was to go back and re-do this project, although I don't think it is a error that critically needs to be changed now. On the other hand, the ancillary tasks are two different forms of media, meaning that different techniques have been used to gain different results. This links with my film poster as I wanted to concentrate on attracting my audience, so the red colouring will catch the eye of the viewers; however the purpose for the film review page is to encourage the audience to watch it and in ways to show it off as a successfully hit; this means that the mistake with the red colouring wasn't a huge problem as the texts won't be shown together at the same time.


I also made sure the formula of both anciliary tasks consisted of similar images. However, we didn't use the same images but obviously used relevant images from our films and I decided to use the killer and Zoe decided to use the victim tied up. By doing this, the audience can see a link between the two, which suggests negotiated readings as they can work out their own meanings to whats happening; by doing this it may encourage the audience to watch the film, if they like this type of genre, as we have given some hints out within the content shown in the anciliary tasks. The one problem we did have, was that we didn't use a picture that was taken at the scene, we chose our images from the actual film, resulting it images that were slightly distorted and didn't hold great quality. I think we could of changed this, however it would of been very time consuming and as a whole I think the images being this way made the poster and review page look spooky and scary. However, if I had more time with this project and the audience picked this up as a bad feature to the poster then I would definitely change it.
On top of this, we both decided that we was going to keep a consistency through the use of the camera shot being a mid shot and I think this has proved very effective. Using this certain camera shot, allows the audience to have a clear picture of what's happening within the shot and gives them a hint into what may happen in the film. As you can see in the film poster, there is a shadow following him up the stairs, which could suggest to the audience a devil like figure is following him, almost inside of him about to do something extremely, the black mac again supports this idea as it suggests death; this constrasts very well to the shot of the victim being shown with grey masking tape over her her mouth, suggesting a link that the old man has done this. The image that we made within the film was very clever and I took it too my advantage to use it in my film poster; this being the typically, iconic image from the nosferatu. By displaying this in my film, I made an intertextual referance to an iconic sequence in that horror, to fit conventions as many people will see that image and it will remind them of that film, which onbiously hints to the type of the content it may display.

The format of the film poster is also very important as it shows the killer almost in the middle of the page, leaning towards the right hand side; this works extremely well with the review page as the girl is centered towards the right hand side of the page, suggesting clearly the killer is going to her and is going to kill her.





Finally, I think the tag lines I have used within the film poster, relates very well to the content of the film and strongly supports the events that the killer is able to do so easily. Using the colour red within this tag line, supports the danger that the young girl is in and conveys how deeply disturbed the killer is when taking the young girl at her fathers bedside. However, I would have chosen this to be done within the film review page, so that the tag lines link in a consistent manner and they stand out together. Also, the tag lines are slightly different which wasn't what we planned to do, and was done accidently; this would be changed if we was to re-do this project again.

 

Syngery

Whilst producing the tasks I had been set, it was very important to consider the main factors on doing and creating them; this was down to syngery, based on the way you can sell a product in different mediums. One of the main factors I had to achieve when creating my task, was that it would be attracting and encouraging to buy, based on the appearance and what it looked like. If this was achieved then it was most likely that it would be brought and would gain money. As the genre was a thriller and the content of the film wasn't very positive, it was important and vital to display this within my anciliary tasks. I think I achieved this, due to the dark and dull colours schemes that were used and the explicit/spooky images that both my partner and I chose. I think one way I achieve this through the film poster was that when you see and look at the poster, you want to know what this creepy/spooky looking man is doing, questions instantly come into your head on why is he walking up those stairs, who is he going to see and then what is he doing to do? So baring that in mind, I think that is a great and effective way to encourage audience to buy the product. After doing a lot of secondary research into film posters with a similar genre to my film, I found a recurring factor that was seen at the bottom most film posters; this was the advertising side, displaying which sponsers the film had. For example, I chose and included 'Dreamworks' and sponsers such as Film4, to promote and attract my audience and to show them this film is on the same levels as the rest of the films that become extremly successful through this label. I also used the convention of using and displaying the actors names and director on the film poster. I again found this a recurring feature which was seen on many other existing texts; this was to promote my actors mostly. I did make up some names for other job roles as I didn't want to repeat myself and Zoes names, eventhough we did all the work; this was to make the film poster look professional and also to follow conventions from similar existing texts. Finaly, I also included many promotional methods to attract and encourage the audiences to watch the film when it was released; this was again shown of a number of other existing textsincluding our genre and others as well. I included things like the release date so the audience was aware of when it was coming out and made up a website for the film, so that the audience could view that too. On top of this, I displayed 'Coming soon' in a bigger font to suggest to the audience that is a must see film.
Zoe also used and considered synergy when producing her film review page. As the film would already be released it was harder for her to promote the film as people may have already seen it; however this didn't stop us using synergy on this piece of work as we wanted to ensure that the people that hadn't of seen it already, would be encouraged to do so. The first main thing she included was using a star rating. As we didn't want to put the star rating too high or too low, we decided on putting the rating on 4 as it would be encouraging for the audience and they would still see it as worth the money spent to see it. The questionnaire responses that we used to gain feedback from our audience also supported this rating so we decided to go with that. Finaly, one of the best ways Zoe has promoted our film is due to the emphasis on how good and breathtaking the film is, within the text on the review page. By suggesting and emphasising how good the film, will make the reader feel like they need to see it for themselves.

In conclusion to this evaluation, I think I have achieved the main function of the mian task and the anciliary tasks mostly because I have kept all the four F's closely related to the genre of the film, making sure that the appearance is consistency managed in regards of all the tasks that I have done. I also think the syngery of the film and the anciliary tasks has been well managed and successfully achieved the aim to promote and encourage audiences to watch my short film.