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

During this course I produced a trailer for a horror movie and then a film poster and magazine cover to go along with this. These 3 products work together to help promote the film 'Awakened'. 
In the world of distributors there are a number of ways in which they try to maximise intake from a film. However there are three main ways in with distributors go about doing this. These ways are, advertising, publicity and promotion. My three products are examples of advertising and promotion but they work together in a way that also acts as publicity. The poster acts as the central marketing image for the campaign and this will be used in a variety of locations all around the country whilst promoting the film. The poster would also no doubt be present at any publicity events that are held for the film. A film distributor will need to generate favourable publicity which means the products will need to have a good image, promote the film well and not have anything inappropriate on them. For a more detailed look at the role of the distributor see my previous post here.
All of the products are linked in some way so that it is clear that they are all promoting the same thing. There is a colour scheme of red that is continuous throughout all 3 products, however it is less prominent in the trailer. The title of the movie in the trailer is in red, and the film poster and magazine cover are also mainly red. I used the colour red because it is often associated with blood and danger, two things which horror films are filled with. The poster also links closely to the trailer as the image on the poster is an actual still from the trailer. The tagline on the poster is also relevant to the inter-titles that are in the trailer and the story of the film. I also worked to make the film poster to look as much like a horror poster as I could. The person is engulfed by darkness which is also very prominent in the trailer when the monster is shown.

All 3 of the products that I have produced would be an important part in the marketing campaign of the film. However, the trailer would be the most important one of them all. I feel that the trailer does overall work effectively as a trailer for a film in the horror genre but I feel that the overall quality of the trailer is lacking. I feel this is compensated for by the film poster which I also feel work effectively for a film in the horror genre but I also feel that the quality of it is much higher than that of the trailer. One thing I feel that I should have done to connect the two products more would be to use the same font on the film title in the trailer and the title on the poster. I feel that the sense of the film that the trailer creates is also created by the poster, which is good because you don't want them creating conflicting senses. The magazine cover that I produced would also be an important way of promoting the film. Getting coverage on a magazine cover would allow film buffs to learn about your film and also any occasional buyers of the magazine would also learn of it. Including the title of the film in a large font makes it stand out and it would be easily readable from a distance. Having promotion across a number of media formats allows for much more publicity and for a greater number of people to learn of the film.

The job of a marketing campaign for a film is to maximise intake by ensuring lots of people know about the film and ensuring that it targets the films desired target audience. The trailer we produced is available on youtube, much like trailers for actual films. Our target audience is made up of people who use the internet a great deal so a perfect way to target this audience would be to have the trailer online. Another way a marketing campaign promotes a film is through promotional posters. These need to be clear about the genre of the film as they are usually very simple. They also usually include a tagline, which acts as a hook to make people want to see the film. I feel that the poster I produced makes the genre of our film very clear and the tagline works well with the film. 


I do feel that the trailer and poster work very well together and the combination of the two of them is very effective. The magazine cover also works as a source of promoting the film but I feel that it would be less effective because not everybody looks at film magazines. It would help to promote the film amongst avid film watchers who read film magazines though. The overall combined colour scheme helps link the three products and they all fit together as a pack well.