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

I wanted my poster to symbolise the psychological sub-genre of our trailer rather than gore and action, as I felt it was the most effective aspect of the film. The text I used for the poster was

downloaded from the website ‘dafont’ and emulates the idea of a ‘broken mind’ as it is jagged and not in a straight line.

I chose to use black as it is a bold colour and also connotes darkness and death, which leads on to the tagline ‘the

darkness comes to life’. I chose this as the tagline because it shows the general narrative of what actually happens in the film without giving too much away, because the dark

parts of Leo’s (Oliver Butler) mind come to life in the form of demons. The actual shot of Leo is over-the-shoulder

with half of his face showing. I chose to do this because it connotes schizophrenia and the idea of having two

personalities. Also, it allowed the interesting effect of having a low opacity reflection. I was in two minds about

this idea because I thought it could come across a bit cliché and obvious, but I now like the symbolism of it and I think

it adds a different mood to the image.

For the image, I wanted the colours to be quite faint and monochrome as the film isn’t bright and happy, and so I think this helps to promote the horror genre of the film. The brick wall as the background also brings interesting

textures to the image rather than a plain wall. It also connotes a more gritty, urban setting which is in keeping

with the fact that Leo (Oliver Butler) is a police officer who has killed a suspect. I added a subtle gore effect (blood

coming from his ear) to the image just to show the different horror sub-genres within the film, and I think it

works quite well in that it doesn’t draw too much attention away from the psychological aspect but still adds a dash of

realistic power.

For my magazine cover, I wanted it to be visually different from my poster to

draw in a different section of fans. Combined together they should pull in a wider variety of people to watch The

Evil Within. The connotations of the monochrome colours are still present

and the cover is quite dark and horror-like but it is more professional looking.

The image I used for the cover is a mid-shot of the main character Leo

looking serious and ‘broken’ in a sense because he has sadness in his eyes,

which gives clues as to the film’s narrative. It is a typical image that

would be seen on real-life magazines and it is similar to the horror magazine covers because of the low key lighting

and plain black background.

I decided not to have a more interesting background for the magazine cover as I did on the poster because I wanted the focus to just simply be on the character whereas with the poster, I wanted it to look more intriguing. For the masthead, I used a simplistic sans serif font called ‘Verdana’ as it makes it stand out from the rest of

the text even though it isn’t the largest text on the page. I also used white text consistently throughout the magazine cover as I felt it contrasted nicely with the black background and stands out well.

The headline for the film ‘Broken Mind’ is the same font I used for the poster. This helps combine my promotional campaign together and I like that the text is also ‘broken’ as it isn’t in a straight line. I

chose to use grey because both black and white didn’t work as the other colours on the page are black and white and I didn’t want

there to be too much of a contrast. Beside the headline, I added a little description of the content relating to the film which says ‘Oliver Butler talks playing mental ex-cop in the new anticipated horror film ‘Broken Mind’.’ This was influenced by the front cover of an edition

of ‘Entertainment Weekly’, and this is something they do consistently on most of their magazine covers.

My poster links more to the trailer for our film than the magazine cover does which I expected anyway because the magazine cover is more of a general

piece and isn’t necessarily just about the movie. In the poster, I was about to foreground more themes from the narrative and I could interpret genre much more clearly as it was more specific to the film itself.

The main link between my main trailer and my ancillary products is the psychological aspect of the

film. I feel that my poster really captures the pain and how Leo’s sanity is broken, which is the central idea

of the film. The mood of the poster is also quite dark and mysterious, and I feel that the trailer has this

mood as well. Our film is about a schizophrenic ex-policeman with mental problems due to his past

traumatic experiences and so the campaign had to be very downbeat, as befitting the conventions of horror

films. The audience I was aiming for were the more mainstream horror fans, as my film is the typical

psychological horror that seem most popular within the horror genre at the moment. The style of the magazine cover is similar to that of popular film

magazine ‘Empire’ which was my inspiration for this ancillary product.