Evaluation Questions 2 - Mollie

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

We wanted to create a create a synergy between our media products so that we could create an effective promotional package. I am confident in the effectiveness of my trailer and ancillary texts as I cover the codes of conventions of real media products.

Colour Scheme
It was important to create an effective colour scheme that we could use throughout all our media products. This would have made them fit together as part of a promotion package. We chose the colours black, white and red. We chose this as they mirrored parts of the British flag, as well as adding a gritty sense to the images and typography that we used. We kept to the colour scheme throughout with aided use of the final typography.

This was used on all of the media products to make them appear more professional and make the package fit together. We also relied on this colour scheme heavily on our website as we felt this would be the place where our target audience was able to easily access. We therefore chose reds and whites on the links as black was hard to see for the user against the time lapse.

This compared to the poster ideas post that I created we can see the inspiration that I took from this especially with the layout for our final poster to promote our trailer. The colour scheme from Shank was one that we took huge inspiration from as we liked the action film genre coming through with the contrasting red against a darker background. 

Layout 

A good poster must include text that stands out on the page and an eye-catching image that will give an insight into the narrative. We took a few test shots of our main protagonist before deciding what we needed on the poster to make it more professional. We tried close up and long shots, we liked the close ups against a graffitied wall, but after considering it's placement on the poster it appeared unrealistic. We therefore went with the image of the protagonist in front of a block of high-rise flats, giving more of an insight into the narrative. 

With my poster deconstruction we can see how the image is the focal point of the poster and this links in well with the teaser trailer as many interpretations can be gathered before the trailer is even watched. 

With my website production we can see how the layout is effective to create a user friendly website. In addition to this I kept with the genre of the teaser trailer and used parallels throughout my products for example using the same colour scheme throughout my media products. This is done with the typography, and the link colours on the website. I edited the time lapse of the website on Final Cut so that I could add this typography that was the same in all of my media products. 

Tagline
After extensive research and planning , we knew that a successful urban drama movie had a gritty and attention grabbing tagline.

We researched into this and came up with a tagline that would create awareness of our film whilst giving a slight insight into our narrative. We based our final tagline decision so that we could support Tudors theory that ‘a genre defines a moral and social world’ We used this tagline on all our media products, we used the tagline on our website by putting it at eye-level with the audience and kept to our colour scheme so that it was easy to read. 

We also did this with our poster and placed the tagline at the top of the poster, which was a common convention of all other film posters. We had to portray our tagline within our trailer so after researching credits we decided that a much more effective way would be to place a voice we recorded a voice over with the help of our protagonist.

Location
After researching and deconstructing various urban drama trailers, we knew that a good location was vital in creating a realistic nature of the film. 

We did extensive location scouting and surveys to decide what was best for our trailer. After the survey we decided that the combination of an estate and based in London would be best for our trailer. As we were located in these areas it was easy to find suitable locations for our needs. We took a variety of test shots to make sure that lighting wasn't an issue in these areas. We filmed the bulk of our trailer in the same area, but if we needed a more secluded space for our scenes this was easily accessible. This took several weeks to film in it's entirety due to the transition between light and dark being very quick to film all our montage shots in. 

We filmed the time lapse in a nearby area that was less crowded with high-rise flats as we knew we had to position our typography and links around this image. We also used the same high-rise flats on our poster as this was easy for me to work with on Photoshop. By using the same gritty areas for our filming locations, this created a consistency between each item of the promotional package and highlights the brand awareness that we were trying to create.

Combination

On our website we created the effectiveness more by having the teaser trailer play automatically on the website to reinforce the brand that we created and help them identify between our media products.

Evaluation 

If I had to improve the ancillary texts to meet the standard of our teaser trailer I would have the time lapse on the website move more to create a more outstanding effect. However I am confident in the combination of the poster and the teaser trailer; the poster gives an insight into the genre quickly and easily, which is vital and easily figured out as Miller suggests ‘the number of genres in any society depends on the complexity and diversity of society’ therefore we can judge the appropriateness for the target audience. However I believe that my media product and ancillary texts all fulfil their purpose effectively.