Evaluation Question 2

“How effective is the combination of your main products and

ancillary texts?”

Companies Using Synergy

Most companies use synergy when advertising/marketing their films. It is a way to make a product its own, create the products own brand and it enables it to be recognized by something as simple as logo, colour, font or style.

This something I wanted to achieve for all of my products. I kept this in mind throughout the planning and making of my main trailer, as well as my poster and magazine cover.

My influences using synergy

I had three main influences during my project, Hot Fuzz, The Heat and Johnny English. Each very different to each other, The Heat was more of an American western film but nevertheless they are all great films that had a lot of success.

Hot FuzzHere are some examples of Hot Fuzz using synergy in their trailer, film poster and also when they were featured on the cover of a magazine.

To the left you can see one of the main characters and partial director of Hot Fuzz Simon Frost on a shared cover of Empire, a very well known film magazine. Underneath is the Film poster, the one that gave me inspiration for using flames on my film poster too. Immediately you can see the similarities between them. The character looks almost exactly the same in both cases, wearing his signature police officer uniform costume.

On the background of the magazine poster there are flames and the poses are mid action shot just like the poster. This is an obvious play on synergy, it kind of if you like groups the two products together and next time a viewer sees police uniform and flame explosions they will most probably think of the Hot Fuzz brand. This is a great way of making your film memorable to members of the public and film community.

The combination of ‘feelings’ that my products gave

In all three of my media products, I thought it important for an audience member or even a random person off of the street to be able to identify the genre of the film Hot Heist from just looking/watching, one of my three media products. I felt that it was equally important to be able to recognize the same genre from each product.

So you could recognize the mysterious/crime/action genre of the poster, I made sure to include certain things like firstly, the image I captured to use I knew I wanted to be close up and I specifically asked the actor to pose in a certain way in order to give a mysterious feel to it. The film poster too, straight away you can tell its an action

movie. Not only are the characters posing in a cocky secret agent way holding an otherwise illegal weapon which reflects the crime aspect but there is also an explosion in the background which will make the viewers suspect some sort of action is packed into the film.

My trailer too, as soon as you hear the trailer soundtrack and the dialogue by the characters it soon becomes clear that the trailer is for an action film with secret agents who are very clumsy. The comedy aspect of the genre should just comes naturally off some scenes.

My Consistencies in Costume

For all three media products, the costume has been kept exactly the same throughout that project and consistent amongst all three media products. For example: Below shows both the characters in the trailer, on the poster and the magazine covers (only Louie on the cover shown but James is featured on his own cover as part of the “2 covers to collect” deal).

Focusing on Louie’s characters costume, you can see that it has been kept consistent the whole way through all three media products. He is wearing a suit to represent the complexity of his characters job, and if he is not wearing glasses he has them in the left breast pocket of the suit.

By keeping the costume the same, it allows the audience to make a connection between the different media products and they become recognizable as a form of synergy.

Combining my Media Products

A way in which I made my products look like a combination of the same ‘brand’ is by the text I used. Not only did I have a colour scheme of red, white and black – making sure that whenever I used text is was these colours but I also wantes to make sure whenever the name of the film appeared in my media products, that it was always in capital and white writing.

The only thing that I would perhaps change if I were to go back and change anything is maybe use the same font for each of the products, even if not all of them, definitely one or two the same. Although I used the same fonts throughout the three making stages, I think that the titles would also benefit from being in the same font too just to emphasize the fact that they are all related.

An example of this kind of synergy from my influences is from the film Johnny English. Whenever the film title is displayed it is almost like its logo because it is in the exact same style every time in order to make it recognizable. This is not rare, in fact it is seen regularly in many blockbuster films where the name is displayed in the same font and colour on all of their products. This isn’t just covering the digital aspect but also on their merchandise like a DVD or if a picture book was released afterwards etc.

This is the Johnny English logo

You can see here the logo of the film used on the DVD and Bluray covers.

Logo displayed on on of the many film posters

Displayed on the merchandise too

Combining my Media Products

My favourite way in which I combined all of my media products as a form of synergy is the fact that I used my film poster in the magazine cover.

I thought this would be a great way in which to show that the two products are related. They are basically side by side so that the similarities and the relationship between them can be recognized straight away. By both products being promoted at the same time it results in an effective combination of the Hot Heist ‘company’ or ‘brand’ if it were.