evaluation part 2

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

I feel that after improving our ancillary texts we are able too combine the productions and texts more effectively for a better result.However we could of gone further too do this as i will later discuss.For our teaser poster through research it stood out that the idea of a teaser poster is too slowly start too build the audiences awareness of your film, this then gets further built by the poster, by the teaser and official trailer the audiences knowledge of the product should be high on certain aspects such as release date,producers,who's starring in it, reviews and a 'rough' idea of the storyline.We kept our teaser poster very simple.It links in to our production as the main protagonist is the only cast member featured, this shows her importance within the production. Lucy is holding a cocktail glass with fake blood dripping over the edge;we hoped by doing this that the audience would pick up a sense of the genre of the production as well as Lucy having something too do with the blood in the glass due to her being the one holding it.If we applied the commutation test here, this wouldn't fit for a teaser poster for a rom-com therefore i feel it was successful. By picking the colour red out of the black and white image we hoped too signify that its an important colour, red can be a signifier of love (which would fit in with the title 'A DATE From Hell')in contrast it can also represent blood and danger. All of these moods are conveyed in the production therefore linking them successfully.

Our first attempt at the poster linked well from the teaser poster as we used the same image and worked from that.It involved scenes from the film which don't give too much away.We put a scene of the main boy and Lucy talking in the bar too drag in female audiences yet similarly included a shower scene of a blonde too appeal to men as part of the 'male gaze theory'.'Red Dress productions' logo was also put on the poster; showing that it was a female based production.

After revising the poster we ended up with a much better result.The poster links in with the main productions by having all the cast members present in the trailer on the poster (The Donkey Punch is a real life media example of this). Its very common for more than one cast member too be on the poster however we did slightly develop the idea as this cast are all sat together;usually its from different scenes and clips. We featured a knife as a phallic object, this links in to the shower scene which is featured in the trailer where the knife is used too kill the victim.Including the knife on the poster shows signs of violence,therefore the BBFC rating of 15 is appropriate here and prepares audiences for the production as scenes of violence and sexual content are both included.In contrast we did find many horror /thriller films that had a BBFC rating of 18 such as 'The strangers, Donkey Punch,Scream,Urban Legend',we didn't feel the material was strong enough for an 18 and thought it narrowed our target audience down too much.I feel that one of the strengths of the trailer is the idea of the photograph been taken and then the killer cutting the girls out of the photograph as they get killed.The poster includes the idea of the main feature of the trailer as the killer is taking the photograph on it; this therefore has a strong link too the main product and i feel makes an effective combination of the two.We have included reviews on our poster from a variety of sources; we chose these very carefully as too which reviews would get seen by our target audience the most. The first review is from the tabloid newspaper The Sun,The Sun has a younger audience than most newspapers as its considered a less educational paper and focus's more on celebrities and sport.As our target audience is 15-24 i feel that this paper is appropriate and would be the most popular with this age range,we found this out by conducting our own survey from friends and found the newspaper that the most people read was infact The Sun. The fact that we are a low budget production also highlights why The Sun is a good choice of newspaper, a higher film budget may result in film reviews from broadsheet newspapers.

We included a second review from film critique Johnathan Ross, this may appear too be an unusual choice as Johnathan is a comic.However we decided on him as he has reviewed many films and has become an icon that the public have learnt too trust and go by what he says, he also has a large fanbase with a wide range of ages (including our target audience), this also may work in our favour as it may drag people in from outside our target audience. As


Our first attempt of the magazine cover had a still frame of a clip from the trailer, therefore this links well too our production.However as research and audience feedback told us it lacked alot of features of such magazines as Empire and Fangoria included; we therefore decided too do it again. Our second attempt combines the main product well as it clearly shows the main protagonist within the film as centre fold. However it doesn't give anything about her character away; similarly too the trailer. We've also gone for red and black font which is present within the trailer.

Too improve our ancillary texts and link it more too the main production i feel we could of used more clips from the trailer onto the poster which would of given better anchorage for the audience. I may also add reviews for different soruces next time such as a teenage magazine instead of a newspaper as newspapers are stereotyped to an older generation.For the magazine poster we could of had Lucy dressed as her chracter but therefore felt it would give too much away for viewsers too still be interesting in the production.

We also made a podcast of a breif summary of the main points too this question.