Evalation question 2

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

Our main task was to create, along with our film trailer a magazine front cover featuring our film and a film poster promoting it. I have completed both tasks and they both make a good combination with our film and trailer as I used similar signs in all three. As the encoder I had to constantly refer back to my genre and target audience when creating my ancillary texts, but creating my trailer first helped me conjure a brief idea of what I wanted for the magazine cover and poster and the elements I needed to combine to anchor all three texts together. When I was creating all three products it was imperative that the film made a regular appearance in the magazine cover and poster so I kept a constant appearance of the protagonists and the name of the film ‘The Man in the Mask’ which is a great part of all three products.

All three texts must be intertextualised together through common themes and elements to get maximum satisfaction from my target audience. The advantage of creating my trailer first was that I already had protagonists and signs that I could apply to my two ancillary tasks to connect them to my film. In my magazine I decided to use a self taken photograph of the ‘Killer’ as my main image because it anchors the genre of horror that I am presenting in my trailer. In my magazine Poster I used a picture of all three protagonists found in my trailer, this intertextualises all three media products together therefore making it a clear effective combination. I followed the codes and conventions in all three texts therefore they all fit in together ensuring absolute acceptance from my targeted decoders. I included the name of the actors in both the magazine cover and the film poster to show that I was talking about the same film in both products to combine them effectively.  The film release date was mixed up in all three of my products but I corrected and now they all follow the same date therefore my target audience won’t be mislead by the wrong information and now all three products are fully combined.

The point of the ancillary tasks is to support the trailer to give the film promotion and advertising. By creating a magazine cover called ‘Drive in’ I ensured that my magazine applied to something to do with films; adding the tag line ‘Horror issue’ helped me combine the magazine with the trailer and the film it was presenting therefore it reached out to my target audience, people aged 18 -35 males and females. My magazine would be in newsstands in different shops and it would attract the right audience just by the magazine title and when they are engaged with the magazine they will encounter all horror genre signs that will encode the film and therefore back up my trailer. For my magazine cover I wanted to create a cliché mirroring of my trailer and my ancillary task therefore I used the colours red and black to signify the genre whilst using ‘Horror’ calligraphy to add to the terror I was trying to present. The codes and conventions I used in both ancillary tasks combine together with each other and with the trailer so they all present the same thing.

Overall I think my ancillary tasks and my trailer combined in an effective way, they all signified the same meanings as one another. I have used similar images, codes and conventions and themes throughout each task. I could have improved the coexisting of all three products by taking more time to create them and plan them but they are still effective.