How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

1. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts? A2 Level Media Evaluation

2. Film Marketing Film marketing is used in the industry in order to promote a film. Different techniques and approaches are used depending on certain factors such as, type of film, budget of the film, size of the production company and size and experience of the marketing team. All these factors can affect the way a film is interpreted in it’s early stages and ultimately affect how it does in the cinemas. Wikipedia:- Trailers are a mainstay of film promotion, because they are delivered directly to movie-goers. They screen in theatres before movie showings. Generally they tell the story of the movie in a highly condensed fashion compressing maximum appeal into two and a half minutes. - Film Posters - Stand-ups (freestanding paperboard life-size images of figures from the film) - Cardboard 3D displays, sometimes producing sound So that is the generalised view of film promotion using common techniques in order for the film to maximize revenue in its early stages. However, what is done when you want to entice the audience about a film that is due for release in 6 months, 9 months or even a year’s time?

3. Teaser Trailer A teaser trailer, or teaser is a short trailer used to advertise an upcoming movie, game or television series. Teasers, unlike typical theatrical trailers, are usually very short in length (between 30–60 seconds) and usually contain little, if any, actual footage from the film. Sometimes, it is merely a truncated version of a theatrical trailer. They are usually released long in advance of the film they advertise. One of the reasons for the name "teaser" is because they are shown usually a long time (one or one and a half years) before the movie comes out, so as to "tease" the audience. Teasers are also commonly used in advertising. The so-called teaser ad/campaign consists typically in (a series of) small, cryptic, challenging, advertisements which anticipate a large(r), full-blown campaign for a product launch or otherwise important event. In terms of recent examples, the most recognisable would probably be the launch of Toy Story 3. The teaser release was done a year before it is due for release in the Cinemas and I think it’s working very well so far in terms of getting people interested in seeing it already.

4. My Teaser Trailer • So the main body of my media coursework was to create a media trailer. • For this I researched what a teaser trailer was actually and what the purpose of them were because although the name is pretty self explanatory I had to make sure. So a teaser trailer as I said before is a marketing feature which is often accompanied by other forms of media such as posters in order to have a well rounded marketing approach. • For my teaser trailer, I tried to keep it simple and give the audience obviously a teaser of what the ‘film’ was going to be like. • All things in to consideration I think that I gave too much of a narrative in my trailer and almost gave away parts of the film. • I feel that the genre I chose (horror, thriller) allowed me too be much more relaxed in terms of needing to relate my ancillary texts with the main product because that type of genre has a lot of room within which you can play around with blazing obvious let offs about the storyline, or barely show anything on the other texts and still make it exciting and eye catching.

5. Ancillary Texts - Poster • The ancillary texts I have mentioned is referring to the other part of my coursework which was to crate a poster and a magazine cover. • I’ll begin with my film poster, with which I tried to be as obvious as I could that the trailer was linked to the poster. • The colour scheme was an important factor to me for my trailer and poster because if I had mixed and matched with many different colours then it could have got confusing for the audience. So I stuck with the black and dark red/burgundy throughout which I thought worked well for my genre to, to create atmosphere. • I used the same font for the title ‘ The Hunter’ for my poster and for my teaser trailer in order to have one thing about both that was obviously similar and that people could relate to. • The relationship between the teaser and the poster was more significant to me because I associate a trailer to come injunction with a poster but not so much a magazine cover.

6. Ancillary Texts – Magazine Cover • With the magazine cover, I saw an opportunity to be a bit creative and to produce something a bit different to the average magazine promo front cover. • To me, film magazine covers tend to be a large picture of the main character(s), which in all fairness I have, but then the rest of the cover more often than not is advertising for other films and other events that shouldn’t really be included on the front cover. • So, based on my thoughts and opinions I decided to make my cover all about my film and main character. I know I have the writing behind the main image but it is there to fill out the background makes no sense if taken away from the image so is there purely to accentuate the image. • Although the writing behind the image makes no sense, I made sure that it was all still relevant to film which is why famous actors names and films can be read. • I again have run the same colour scheme through my front cover, in order to keep a bit of fluidity between all texts I produced and think by doing this it makes the texts all look as part of one marketing campaign.

7. Marketing the Products • If I were to market my texts as genuine products in order to get the most from them, they need to be released at specific times. • Personally I would release the teaser trailer before the other products because it gives the more initial ‘wow’ factor in comparison to the poster for example. • The teaser trailer allows people to be more easily influenced by what they see because they don’t have to do anything other than consume it and form an opinion whereas, by releasing the poster first I think it makes the audience read initially too deep into what the film is about. • It may seem strange but I think that the poster sometimes gives away more about the film, depending on the genre, than the teaser does which is why the more incomprehensible text would be released first. • What they look for is the name of the trailer in order for them to easily recognise anything else that is released from the same film.