Question 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

1. Question 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts? By Samuel regent

2. Ambition and reasoning for the products presentation • For all three products including the film, poster and article the ambition was to remain basic but dark in terms of editing and promotion of the products; focusing heavily on the main character in portraying his personality in a certain mysterious way. This was because we wanted to play with the audiences expectation through all three different products in portraying the films potential negativity and dark narrative through colour scheme and lighting for example as well as costume and character direction. This is a vital component within the genre of dark comedy as every factor within the main product and those that surround it should be used in order to play with the potential audience. In order to fulfil this, as a group we investigated independent and short films that follow similar intentions, such as focusing on negativity and darkness within lighting as well as presenting the products in order to gain focus on the main character of the film and their importance. In performing this we investigated a vast amount of promotional products of independent films, featuring within specialized independent film magazine ‘Little White Lies’. Eventually we decided on two poster products in which we would focus on due to their creativity and similar intentions, these were posters for the independent films of ‘0000’ and ‘Submarine’; we believed that the character concentration and discourse structure of these products would benefit within our own intentions for ‘ The Soft Stuff’. Basic colour scheme and focus on main character alongside facial expression and costume to display a character ego Loose frame dark lighted shot featuring a solo character, this instantly has the effect of attracting the audience through the focus of the character and the negative connotations when viewing this shot

3. The Article and its influences • When personally producing the article I relied heavily on inspiration from sources such as reviews within media of film, such as specialised sources including ‘Little White Lies’ an independent film magazine, and also more general but prestige opinions of newspaper distributors such as ‘The Times’. This gave me the capability of investigating the writing style of specialised professional film enthusiasts within ‘Little White Lies’ magazine alongside the creative and artistic approach in producing an opinion through the presentation of the article. In order to analyse this properly I focused heavily on the reasoning of couler schemes and visual effects within articles through playing close attention to the attempts in promoting the magazine visually whilst writing in a way that sells the subjected product. In addition to this I briefly investigated the writing within ‘The Times’ newspaper, through focusing on the use of standard English in order to attract an arguably broader range of participants. When conducting my own personal article my ambitions were to use a basic couler scheme but with however dark connotations, alongside this I used visual effects such as the presenting the text in a circular format; in order to shyly connote the subject of toilet role within my film ‘The Soft Stuff’. In addition to this I also focused on writing an a standard but specialised form of language, through using basic terminology and correct English as I felt this was important in attracting a mature but specialised audience such as readers of ‘Little White Lies’ magazine. Finally my intentions wer to almost mimic the design features within the ‘ Little White Lies’ magazine as their approach to selling and reviewing products has proven so successful; features of this that I focused on are displayed bellow. High quality photography that has the purpose of representing sn important figure within the product Graphological features such as capitalisation and embolden letters at the beginning of texts (professional) structured layout of text in order to promote the product as professional and prestige Filmography – a common feature within this magazine that states important figures within the films production; also further promotion the magazines professional approach

4. Key Style Modal and the reasoning for this Little White Lies Little White Lies is an independent film magazine that takes an analytical approach towards movies, in highlighting to the viewers the quality of new released films through ratings and in depth specialised analyses. The magazine is known to appeal to the film enthusiast that has an open mind approach to film in terms of foreseeing the blockbuster industry, as the magazine touches on independent films as well as low budget short films around the world; this is a great tool for writers and directors to publicise their products and skills to a large potential audience. In addition to this Little white lies is known for their high quality presentation and diverge artistic approach in constructing articles, as displayed on the left hand side within a 2012 addition of the magazine. The arrows indicate key features that I aimed personally to duplicate such as structuring the product professionally and including high quality work constructed within both adobe InDesign and Photoshop. This includes writing in parallel columns and also structuring the page efficiently, such as using space effectively and also taking care with detail on text sizes and fonts. Also I believe that Little White Lies pay great attention to the writers ambition of the product when constructing the article, this includes using colour schemes and suitable editing in relation to the mood of the film and its aimed influence on the audience; as this is also a selling tool for the film. This is one of the main influences that I focused on when constructing my own. Finally it is also important to present opinion in a basic form as well as in detail, this can be achieve through a graphological grading system shown in Little White Lies. In my own product I almost duplicated this strategy through constructing this manually, I believe this allows readers of the product that are not arguably as interested in the films specialised performance a chance to view its capability to entertain in a simpler form.

5. The three products of ‘The Soft Stuff’ and their impacts I believe that both promotional products for ‘The Soft Stuff’ including the poster and the newspaper article have the capability of highlighting the characters importance within the product, ideally leaving viewers perplexed on why this is. This was my intention for both the poster and the magazine article in order to attract attention and also play with the viewers expectations. In addition to the photographic aspects of these products, I hoped through dark shadowing and colour of these photos within the poster and article would also create a false sense of un-stability of the character, also contributing to playing with the expectations of the viewer as this is a key convention of the dark comedy genre; I hoped to do this through the negative connotations attached to dark lighting within film. In addition to this I hoped to mimic the writing style featured within ‘Little White Lies’ magazine as this gives analytical advice alongside giving a general opinion in order to attract a broader audience, I aimed to do this through using specialized media language with a simple graphological grading system of the film. Also within the article I aimed to promote the product through selling the characters performance alongside sharing positive views about aspects of the film including lighting and the films intended message to society. Finally in relation to the final product of ‘The Soft Stuff’ the film itself, I hoped to attack society through demonstrating this in a humorous way of how routine can be so important to people and the negative effects this has on relationships. I hoped to change the views of many through realizing that living life in a spontaneous fashion can relieve tension as well as make life less dull and tedious as shown within the routine of Zach's life within the short film.