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

Our aim throughout our whole project was to make sure that there was a continuity in all of our three media products in order to produce an effective promotional package and reach a degree of professionalism. During each of the necessary stages in developing the three texts we concentrated on the following:

• Fonts and Texts
• Facial Expression
• Body Language 
• Lighting
• Costume
• Themes/ Emotions

Fonts/Text

From the images above it is evident that we tried to keep the fonts of the film title the same, our reasoning behind this was so that people would then familiarize the Didot font with our film, much like individuals can clearly associate the white, bold, shadow-like font with the film The Woman In Black. The continuous use of the colour red was to help symbolize the aspects of fear, danger and blood from the victim's point of view and also, keeping in mind the antagonists; the red connotes anger and a passion to inflict pain on others for no connected reason. In contrast to the two ancillary texts, the colour black was used to display the film title in the trailer and this was to imply the thought and recurring message that people find comfort in the familiar and connect the unknown with fright and an anticipation that something dreadful will occur. 

When we were experimenting with colour schemes, we found out that one of the conventional colours applied to thriller products were black, white, grey and red. It was an immediate and respective decision to dismiss white as we felt that an audience could read into a major theme being innocence and whilst we did want to represent that subject, our main focus was to command the audiences attention to the fear, struggle and manipulation. 

Body Language

Each of the poses which the girl is holding expresses the notion of being vulnerable and manipulated by a force stronger than herself. The girl's body language in the poster reads that of having physically dragged down by the men as the torment has ceased and wearied her to the ground. Furthermore, this is reinforced by the contrast of the men's poses as they are seen to be standing strong and in command as if they are of a much higher status, both physically and mentally. Within the film magazine cover, even though there is the absence of the predators and she is not crawling on the floor, her body language signifies her unreadiness in having to direct herself back into the familiar and defending herself against her manipulators. This is shown by her hands, they are not clenched which shows that her reaction to the situation is somewhat delayed. Moreover, she has adopted a slight hunched posture which does not tell the audience that she is alerted by anything, however her facial expression does display that she has sensed something is not right. 

As the two ancillary texts have stationary poses and a trailer is in motion, it makes it difficult to choose a pose, however the snapshot of the girl running up the hill, I believe is a perfect motion picture summary of what the other two products demonstrate. It shows the interaction between the three of them and is exemplar in visually capturing the binary opposition theory. Good vs. Bad / Prey vs. Predator

Lighting 

From the collage at the top of this blog it is evident that we played around with the lighting aspect of all three of our media products. Within our Queensdown Warren trailer the light element is extremely important not just within the footage that we filmed, but also in our film title shot. The red light is significant as it surrounds the black text highlighting the mysteriousness of the unknown and makes the question ask "What will happen at Queensdown  Warren?" In conclusion, that shot is very effective as it is enticing our audience in and putting our title in their minds so that they would remember our film and want to go and see it. 

In terms of natural lighting, it was also useful in moving our plot along and helping to define that our trailer is not in chronological order, which is a convention in every trailer genre.

The artificial lighting, in both the magazine and the poster both are linked by the definition on the central girl. Whilst we were editing we had the ability to change the lighting focus at our disposal, and used it as a tool to strengthen our themes and message most importantly. This is effective, by homing in audience's attention on the prime example of someone who seems in control of their live, and then exploiting her reactions when someone else changes her life for her.  

- By Katie and Grace