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

Distribution of the film is incredibly important when looking at the success of the film. Identifying the target audience is almost as important and also deciding a release date and promoting the film in the allotted time is all time consuming tasks but necessary to the success of the film. These are all important when creating a target audience or fan-base. Also an example of what a film distribution company would do in order to attract their target demographic would be to release I children’s film in the holiday half terms so it is more likely that they will go see it. Advertising company’s use lots of strategies to get the word out about their film, this includes: posters, billboards, bus signage, TV adverts, radio adverts, websites, social media and trailers. The more media platforms you use to advertise the film the more people will hear about it will be more likely to go see it. The trailer I have produced would not be shown during the day as it is not suitable for younger children and children normally watch TV during the day. Once the target audience has been decided you can advertise you’re product to suit the target audience. Some examples of this would be…

As you can see from these four different film posters that there is a huge difference between children's film posters and adult's film posters. The most obvious difference between the top two film posters and the bottom two film posters are that 'Shrek' and 'cloudy with a chance of meatballs' have lots of bright colours like green, red, yellow and many other colours. And the other two film posters are 'The Last Exorcism' and 'Crimson Peak' these are intended for a higher demographic and this is clear to the audience as it uses a completely different colour palette; mainly low key dark colours like black, grey, red to signify blood and white to break up the colours. By creating a product that is easily recognisable by the target audience then it is likely that the film will do well overall.




Magazine cover's make a big difference in the overall outcome of the film as it spreads by word-of-mouth about the new film. Also it is important when creating a magazine cover that it converges to the genre of the film but also appeals to the target audience. For example...

As you can see from these four different magazine cover's that the top two are aimed at a completely different audience than the bottom two. The top two is possibly aimed at a wide audience consisting of both old and young and also males and females. Laura Mulvey's male/female gaze theory could be applied here as both 'Film' magazines have a male and female as the image for their front cover. This could mean that males might be slightly more inclined to buy the oz magazine cover, whereas females might be more inclined to buy the avatar magazine cover. It is clear to the audience that the bottom two magazine covers are aimed at a sightly higher demographic, this is because they use a scary image as their cover and also the colour palette chosen is full of dark ambient lighting and colours. For example both horror magazine covers consist of black, red, white, purple and grey. The top two magazine covers consist of light blue, black, red, yellow and white. This shows the diversity for there chosen audience.

when designing a magazine cover it is a good idea to keep in mind the narrative of your story as it could give a clue to the audience as to what to expect from the film. Todorov's narrative structure theory could be applied here as it is often found on magazine covers that it lets you in on some of the narrative. Also these magazines usually have a featured article telling the audience all about the up coming film.

 

This YouTube video is annotated in 'Adobe Photoshop CC', then uploaded from a JPG into 'Microsoft Movie Maker'.