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

By Kellly Shanahan and Laura Mandeville

The key importance in our project was producing an effective horror film trailer, however we along with this we had to produce an accompanying film poster and magazine front cover. Since creating a horror film poster and magazine front cover are just as significant, as they are just another way of persuading the audience into going to watch the film.

As we felt the trailer was the key factor out of the three tasks, we decided to link the poster and front cover back to this. Therefore firstly our poster included a central image of the little girl who features in the film’s trailer. We used an image that was extremely unfocused this meant that the little girls face was very hard to make out, which is something that we intentionally did as we did not what to give what the looked like away in the poster, as we thought it added to the mystery to the film. This is an idea that we got from analysing ’30 Days of Night’ since in their poster the audience are unable to make out what the vampires looks like, which creates disequilibrium as the audience will need to go to see the film in order to find out who the antagonist is and what they look like. This feature of not giving away what the character looked like is something that we continued using in our trailer as we only showed the little girl for a two shots in our film and for quick snapshots.

We came to the decision to use the little girl in our poster, as we felt that she definitely brought a creepy and disturbing feel to the poster and would hopefully make the audience want to go and see the film. Since people go to watch horror films to be scared and this poster should show them that this film is going to be chilling and scary. The way that we positioned the little girl on the poster means that the audience are made to look up at her, this immediately gives the girl authority and a dominance over the audience as she is at a higher angle.

When it came to our magazine front cover we decided to use the young girl ‘Elizabeth’, as she is the main character in the film and we thought that it would be good to use her as it would give the audience a chance to recognise her as a significant character in the film. Also we made sure that the image we used of the character ‘Elizabeth’ was one that made her look vulnerable and innocent, which should hopefully make the audience feel a connection with her and care for her therefore making them want to come and see the film to see what happens to her. In addition to this the way that ‘Elizabeth’ stares straight at the audience should emphasise her desperation and again create a connection with the audience.

Another way we linked our film poster and magazine front cover was by using the same font for the title of our film “The Message”, we did this as we felt that it would help the audience to recognise the film, so for example when people see the magazine they will straight away relate it back to the film poster and be more inclined to read the interview, which will help make the film more popular as the audience will learn more about it and be more inclined to go and see it. Also by keeping the font the same it will help brand the film as it will be something that people automatically recognise, which should hopefully make the film a success.

We added a filter to the film poster, which we think gave a really great effect to it as it completely darkened the whole image, this therefore gives it a creepy and eerie feel to it, which should give the audience a feel to what is to come if they go and watch the film. Also we used a burn tool when it came to creating our magazine poster as we wanted to darken it but not make it completely black and white. The burn tool allowed us to just darken the background, which made the image of the main character ‘Elizabeth’ really stand out and be the main attraction on the magazine this should therefore grab the attention of our potential audience and convince them to purchase the magazine and them go to see our film.

Finally another way we linked our trailer and poster together was by have the words “He’s Coming” on the poster, this correlated to our trailer which has the character finds scribbles with the words “He’s Coming”. We think that it was a good idea to put the words “He’s Coming” on the poster as it should help again to create a brand for the film and a slogan of “He’s Coming” is memorable and catchy for the audience.