Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When we were making our trailer, poster and magazine cover we would try to make the three link together as much as possible through the use of different elements. This would include the use of; props, costume, hair & makeup, colours, fonts and the main characters themselves. These different elements would be shown throughout the three different ancillary texts.
Firstly, with the use of props. When making the trailer and poster we would include the use of the main prop which was a gun, this is because the gun shows the action genre of the film and having this link with the trailer and poster is vital as it would look stupid if the trailer and poster were both suggesting different genres for our film. With the magazine cover however, we didn't want to include this, as we wanted to show the actors of the film, and having them with a gun wouldn't necessarily show the fun side of the actors and instead would show the actors as being serious which didn't work in our opinion.
The costume of the two protagonists are shown in the trailer, the poster and the magazine, this is the red and blue hoody which we have aimed to make iconic for our film. By showing it in the trailer, the poster and the magazine cover, we have made both ancillary texts and the trailer link together well. The costume is important because we wanted people to think of these characters when they see a red or blue hoody, and showing it in all both ancillary texts and trailer would help the audience when they associate a red or blue hoody with the characters.
In the area of hair & makeup we wanted to make sure that this was kept the same in the trailer, poster and magazine cover for continuity reasons. For example, as you can see, my hair is kept pretty much the same in the trailer, poster and magazine cover, without the length drastically changing to give it an obvious difference. This helps the continuity of the trailer and gives the ancillary texts a better look just because it helps make them look similar which is what we wanted. A drastic change in hair or the makeup would make the poster and magazine look like it's from two different movies on first glance, and we want people to immediately link the two when they seem them, even through the similarities in the actors and characters appearance.
Colour was a big part of the trailer, poster and magazine cover as we used two colours in all three. Blue and Red, these are the colours we used, we did this because we wanted the colour to be iconic, this would then mean that whenever someones sees the colour of red or blue, they could associate it with our characters. This works a lot in different kinds of super-hero films with the same colours (Spider-man or Superman) and this could possibly also work for us which would be a great thing to do to give our film more appeal.
Fonts were also a big part of the trailer as this helped us also keep continuity of the poster, we used a similar font in each ancillary text and in the trailer to make sure this continuity progressed, this then helped us make sure that each part linked with each other. This would then mean our audience could associate this font with our film as they would of seen it in three different areas and this font could easily be put into their heads. Font was also important as we had to make sure the font we chose was relevant and suited the action/comedy genre, so choosing a gothic type font or a very artistic font wouldn't be a great choice to use because this could be misleading to the audience on what genre our film is, in the end however we think we got the right font for our genre.
Lastly, the main characters themselves were a massive element that we included in the poster, magazine and trailer. These two characters give the ancillary texts and the trailer life and make them what me and jai both wanted. The characters help link these three together as they are portrayed in each, however in the magazine we decided to portray the actors instead of the actual characters, however it still links with the trailer and poster due to the fact that the actual people that are being shown are still the same as the characters, so this will still give the ancillary texts and trailer a visual link because the people still look basically the same, with the exception of different clothing and body language.