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

In the film industry, it is important for a film to be successfully advertised to its audience.The main way of making sure that the audienceare familiar with a media product is toadvertise it in a variety of ways and make sure that all of these ways link together throughcross promotion. The link between each text allows the intended audience to create anopinion of the text before they actually decide whether or not to go and see it. Consideringthis, I knew that it was important to combine similar ideas from my ancillary texts whencreating my teaser trailer.

One of the main ways that I cross promoted my products was by using an identifiable housestyle. The way that I then decided that I could use my ancillary texts as influence, wasthrough the obvious genre features that could come to be an identifiable house style.The genre features used in my poster were the colours used (deep red blood, black and redtext and a dull/dark image), the blurred distorted edges of the image, the wooden sign as aconventional horror prop, the metaphorical “invasion” of “normality” with the car driving into the village and the conventions of a film poster being the credit block, the title and theproduction logos. These are similar to the genre features that I applied to my websitehomepage – a dark background; a horror soundtrack as music; dark wooden backgroundlinking to the wooden sign in the banner; media ratings; and the social media aspect (twitterfeed). The genre features that are obvious within my teaser trailer link to some of those that Iapplied to my poster and website. I decided to use the same soundtrack from my website asI felt it created a tense, horrific atmosphere and helped my website conventionally fit intothe horror genre. This was a copyright free soundtrack that we developed by adding avariety of effects and another underlying soundtrack, helping to create pace andatmosphere. However, the original soundtrack is the one made clear and helps create therunning house style between both the teaser trailer and the website. This is similar to the house style of the horror franchise for the film “Scream” (Wes Craven).It was intended tobe positive in creating a running theme for the audience to understand the style andnarrative of the film. The low angle shot that I used within my poster seemed to work well in looking distortedand conveying the cult-like horror conventions. I decided that when going out to film someclips for the teaser trailer that experimenting with low angle shots could help me also applythis convention to the trailer. The fact that these shots are identifiable in the car sequenceof the trailer links really well to my poster - helping to cross promote the film.For my poster I also decided to create a wooden sign with the words “Welcome toWoodwich” written on it, reminiscent of that from “Silent Hill” (2006). I liked the way thatthis prop worked and so decided to use an image of it as the banner of my website. The waythat these texts linked together through this sign created the cross promotion that I feel wasneeded in order for them to look professional. Because of this, I knew it was vital for theprop to appear within the trailer. The only problem that I had was that we had alreadyfilmed the car crash sequence and we were happy with the shots, and so it wouldn’t be able to appear during this. Instead, I had the idea of it appear as a running motif along with othercult-like props. This worked and helped to link the trailer to my ancillary texts.The final aspect of my ancillary work that I feel created an obvious house style was thesocial media aspect that was used on my website homepage and within the teaser trailer. Ifelt that the twitter feed that I used on my website homepage was successful in connectingwith my intended audience as they should be interactive and involved with a variety ofmedia. To

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

help link this idea as a house style, I used the website address at the end of thetrailer with the link to our Twitter with the hashtag (#WelcomeToWoodwich). I feel thinkhelped to create the idea of the film being one big project linked together through the usedof a variety of media products rather than having three separate media products created fora film. If I could further the work of each text then I would assure that they work together inpromoting the film rather than acting as separate pieces of work.I feel that on the website, as well as displaying the trailer, we could use a link to a YouTubepage that could display other promotional content. I had the idea of designing a weekintended for our audience to witness small clips of the teaser trailer on each day. These clipscould be featured on our Twitter page and so linked to the website homepage. At the end ofthe week the teaser trailer could then be released. Ken Loach, an independent film director uses YouTube successfully to promote his films and create a “word of mouth” appeal. I think that this technique is successful for small independent films with a small budget. I feel that this is a way of creatingexcitement around the trailer in encouraging more of our audience to want to watch it. It isalso a good way of involving as much cross promotion as possible.However, I feel that the poster is much more difficult in working with the other texts inpromoting the film. Because it is a 2D piece of media, it cannot be further explored and isdesigned to only be looked at, at a glance. Because the title that I used on my poster wasnot the one that we decided to use in the trailer, I also have the trouble of my audiencemistaking the poster and the trailer for two different films. Because of this, I feel it isimportant to link the social media aspect to the poster in order to encourage our audienceto explore our film and its promotional content.I feel it is the social media aspect of the ancillary work and teaser trailer that helps clearlytarget the intended audience most successfully. Because we are intending to aim towards ayoung audience that are frequent film and media consumers, I feel that making thepromotional content as interactive as possible is important. The film is a 15 meaning thatanyone above 15 can watch it, yet I feel the themes within the film would appeal to ayounger audience. This audience would probably be users of Twitter or other social mediaand so connecting with them in media that they may use every day is a good way of makingthe film highly identifiable to them. The elements that I am most proud of concerning the combination of my ancillary and mainproducts concern the way that I have dealt with the house style, the intended audience, thecamera work and my use of editing. Using the colours red and black intending darkness and blood helped me convey the horror genre whilst identifying a house style in each product.The way that I have portrayed social media in the twitter feed on the website home pageand as text at the end of the teaser trailer not only combines each text to help link the filmtogether as cross promotion, but it also is a way of me to capture my intended audience.This aspect was also important in my camera work as if it didn’t look conventionally horrificthen I wouldn’t scare my audience. Low angle and distorted shots was one of the aspectsthat I was proud of as it pulls the horror genre through every aspect of the film, making itobvious as to which kind of genre it is. The final element that I am proud of is the fast pacedediting that we intended to use in order to create tension and that I feel is successfullyachieved. Although I couldn’t create a combination of editing throughout each piece, asthey are different forms of media, I combined the website with my trailer by

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

workingaround the soundtrack used on the homepage. I feel this gives the film a distinctive touch. Overall, I feel that the strongest piece is the teaser trailer as it combines ideas that I hadduring the process of creating my ancillary products and explores areas in which I didn’thave to time during the production of the ancillary work. One of these areas is the use ofnegative effects on images during editing. I had the idea of adding a negative of the sign inmy poster but felt that it was too late to explore this in order for it too look professional.Instead, I used my sign in the trailer along with a distinctive object from the poster of eachof my group (a voodoo doll, a mask and a child from the cult), where we added a negative,jump cut effect as a bridged montage motif. I feel the reason that the teaser trailer is thestrongest of the products is that we learnt mistakes in the production of the ancillary worksuch as planning our time in a schedule or simply how to use programmes such as AdobePhotoshop. If I had to make improvements to one of my products I would choose my poster. I feel thatthis is the product out of them all that isn’t conventionally horrific and the one that containsthe least cross promotional content. I could have possibly used my image on a blackbackground instead of featuring it as a background itself. I feel that maybe then it wouldhave linked to the house style of the dark colours used in my website homepage and teasertrailer. I also feel that in the poster there is not enough made of the wooden sign. Althoughit was the poster that was my original idea for using the sign, in the trailer it is significant asa motif and on the website homepage it visible as a huge banner and matches the woodenbackground. I feel that blurring the rest of the image and making the sign more evident mayhave made the poster much more engaging and the narrative more identifiable. Finally, I feel that the skills development that I have learnt throughout the creation of myancillary work to my main product proves that my main product is much more professionaland the strongest of the products.The way that I used research before creating my teaser trailer was almost done whenresearching for my poster and website as the horror conventions and audience research wasto be exactly the same if I wanted each text to act as an ensemble. I researched into the BBFC and how I should portray a 15 film as well as considering the idea of a young, mostlymale audience. My research into the theorist Susan Hayward and her work on the “unnatural” sub-genrethat I did for my poster was developed into my trailer as I had a good understanding of thesub-genre that I was aiming to look like. I also feel that the way I planned my teaser trailer was heavily influenced by the productionof my website and poster. When I went on the shoot for my poster at Saddleworth Moors,the weather was really bad and I felt that it was very far away to get to. We were quite saddened because of the history that Saddleworth has surrounding murder. However, because of this, Ispoke to my group and we reconsidered going there for the filming of our car crashsequence. This proves that the production of one product helped in the planning of anotherand meant that we were fully prepared to film. My technical competence has developed fully during the process of my advanced portfolioand I feel this is due to the combination of programmes that I used in order to create eachpiece. The skills that I learnt in Adobe Photoshop came from a workshop that I took part in yet Ifeel the actual production of my poster was that where I learnt most of my skills by makingmistakes and overcoming them. Some skills that I learnt in making mistakes was how

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

tolayer, the difference in brushes and how to successfully save a piece of work. This fullyhelped me and my group when creating the title for our teaser trailer as we had learnt fromour previous mistakes. Making an animatic before creating our trailer was aimed to see the piece as a whole withmusic to see if we felt it would work. However, this process was successful in developing myskills in Adobe Premiere. I now know how to successfully upload content and edit to a pacewith music and video. In the future this could be helpful in uploading small clips of a teasertrailer to a website in order to combine each piece of media.Finally, I now know how to use a professional camera in terms of framing and holding ashot. Going up to Saddleworth in bad weather and trying to get a good shot took a lot oftime and taught me that framing is very important. This was again made important whenediting on Adobe Photoshop and so taught me to be very precise with the camera whilstfilming in order for the editing to be made easier and the piece to look more professional. Overall, I feel I have cross promoted each piece successfully and professionally in order forthe products to look like promotional content working as an ensemble in order to promote afilm. If I could do it again, then I would be sure to use content from my poster in the websitehomepage and teaser trailer in order for it to look more like a piece made for the film.