Audiences are often known to change their interests; therefore it is normal for them to become fed up of the same type of film being produced over and over again, using the same conventional story-lines or the same genres. Distributors have no choice but to take this into consideration when producing a new film as it has to be appealing enough to the audience to remain on the market.
When a poster is created to advertise a new film release, it normally follows some set conventions. The examples are that it should-
- present the new releases title
- include a release date
- have a unique feature to set it apart from different movies coming out at the same time
- present the genre of the movie
- have a tag-line which links in with the movie itself
- use images linking to the film
- a list of credits to present those involved in the production of the piece
I had to produce my own poster for one of my ancillary tasks. Trailers and posters work together in a co-ordinated fashion to become a kind of brand identity for the film as well as being the central advertising images; therefore it is important for them to both match up with regards to themes, colours, fonts, images etc. so that they are effective in combination. I do believe that my poster is both successful in coinciding with the themes and conventions of a typical horror film poster and my trailer...
This is the poster for the horror movie "Friday the 13th". This horror poster was what inspired a number of ideas I used during the creation of my own horror poster.
Comparing this my own poster to the professional one shown above, there are many similarities regarding the conventional horror themes and the layout. In the professional one above, a rather large and intimidating man is placed in the centre as the main subject of the poster which can suggest that he is possibly the killer in the movie, as he is in possession of a sword, which is similar to what i have done. For my poster, I have used an image of a young child, who is supposed to be a representation of the killer when he was younger. The professional poster shows blacked out edges which fades into a lighter colour, emphasizing the subject in the centre, which is similar to what I have decided to do with the image of my poster. This makes it appear more eerie and more like a horror.
Within my poster, I have conventionally used a tagline which relates to both the film's title and story line however I have only placed one at the top of the page, ascribing "If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big..." which works as an introduction to the film's title and the poster as a whole. I have also contained a clue as to when the movie is going to be released, with the writing 'coming soon'. This tactic is used to keep the audience aware about the release and want to find out the official date of release. I have integrated credits to present everyone involved within the film's production, contained within the billing block. Beside this, I have given evidence of the age certificate of the film, which is also very conventional. The title of my horror film I have made very clear for the audience. It is in red so therefore stands out against the background which is black, thus drawing in attention. This use of red has also been used to connote a sense of darkness and danger to my audience.
In terms of the image I've used for the poster and the the clips within the horror trailer, this particular snapshot of the child on the swing is also used at the start of my horror trailer to introduce a step back in time. I thought it would be effective to use this particular image on my poster and have it being the first shot in my horror trailer as it made both media platforms work coherently together to create a unified advertising message for the film. I thought this image would work well as the audience aren't supposed to know during these first clips of the horror trailer that this child is the killer; therefore this poster doesn't give anything away the he is going to be the killer either. Both products work together to make this character appear very mysterious at first. A further way my horror trailer and ancillary task of the poster could be combined is through the choice in colours. Throughout our horror trailer, we made use of a series of blackouts and for a great deal of our scenes which involved extreme close ups, we put a darker shade around the edges to draw more attention to what the extreme close up was of. This is exactly what I have presented in my poster. I have tried to give it a sort of half blackout effect to coincide with some of our clips. I have also kept the black and white effect for the image on my poster to make it look older, just like what we tried doing at the start of the trailer. The use of white coloured writing has proved to be a recurring factor in both our groups' horror trailer and my own horror poster. White has been used for every piece of writing in both tasks as everyone found that it stood out the most clearly on a black background. My poster and the groups horror trailer also coincide together through the use of the writing "coming soon." We used this to present to the audience that both media platforms are advertising teasers; therefore are not the main advertisements. The reason I used a shot of someone from behind for my horror poster was because we included so many close-up behind shots of characters in our horror trailer. We did this in the trailer as we found it created a further mysteriousness to the work in not seeing character faces; therefore I wanted to create a similar sort of effect on my poster to loosely combine the two.
Other ways in which I could have combined my main product and ancillary task would have been through first and foremost, including the same tagline on one of the inter-titles in the trailer that I used on the poster. This would have presented a much clearer combination between the two products. I feel I could have also used the same style font for both titles; however because of the number of people in our group, it was difficult to include aspects which suited each person's need. I could have also connected my poster to the group's trailer by using a billing block which stated the same production company/director/actors and so on. This also proved difficult due to the number of people within the group.
Producing the advertising material for the cover of a magazine would not be something a distributor would create. The distributor would try to generate favourable publicity and might send a press pack to the magazine publisher.Within this press pack, usually there involves information regarding the movie, basic information regarding the duration, a synopsis, an interview with the director, some still images during the progress of filming, some quotes from the movie, a list of credits and some notes about inspiration. Press packs are useful as they give information about the whole film. They don't however reveal any clips from within the movie. This is why distributors also make trailers and posters.The magazine cover I decided to create was also was also influenced by previous professional magazine covers dedicated to horror movies. I took a look at a selection of magazine covers and decided that, for mine to look as conventional as possible, I would have to-
- use extremely bold types of writing which stands out
- present a colour scheme, consisting of no more than four different colours which are appropriate to the horror genre
- names of the protagonist stars appearing in the movie to interest the audience
- a central image which would tie in to the style of magazine and which would link in with the horror movie
This is an image of a "Total Film" magazine. This particular magazine was what inspired a number of ideas I used during the creation of my own film mag.
Before commencing work on my film magazine, I had a good look at a number of different professional film magazines on google from "empire" and "total film" so that I could get a better idea of how to do my structuring and layout. I found this one extremely appealing to help guide me through my own creation.
When I look back at these two magazines together, it is clear to see where I got my different ideas. I would say that with this ancillary task, I also followed the bullet points above to make it as conventional as possible. My magazine uses an extremely bold masthead which stands out due to the bright colour choice of red which I have used. The coverpage mainly contains a variety of four different colours, which are red, white, black and green. The feature article has a different font and colour as the other cover lines which I decided to do as it is the main story on the page; it will therefore stand out to the audience. The justified cover lines round the edges of the main article on the magazine gives information about a series of other film releases which fall under different genres to horror. I chose to include extra films that were non-horror related as I wanted the magazine to be portrayed as an 'mixed-genre' magazine, instead of just horror to follow Total film's conventions. This would also attract a bigger target audience. I have included really famous actors names on the front which will interest the audience as these actors will be so well known, therefore well respected in the film industry. I have used an image of the 'final girl' of our groups horror trailer on my magazine; however this isn't made clear to the audience. They will be able to tell that she has something to do with our film "Surprise" as the name of the film is covering over her, which is similar to what the vast majority of professional magazines do. I have chosen to use a black background for my magazine cover as I feel that this particular colour, having mysterious connotations and being associated with fear and the unknown, ties in most adequately with the horror genre.
I tried to create a combination between my film cover and the horror trailer; however this proved to be an extremely challenging task to undertake as I felt I had to make the magazine less personal and less focused on my one film. I thought this because it obviously isn't the job of the film's distributor to create the magazine cover; therefore it advertises a lot more than just one thing. To make the magazine remotely combine with both the poster and the trailer, I decided to maintain the themed colour trend of black and white (and also a little bit of red). These colours again were used particularly with the writing and background. To try and maintain a further link between the magazine, the poster and the trailer, I also used a black background behind the subject on the magazine front cover which I was hoping would link in with the recurring theme of blackouts in the trailer and obviously the also black background in the poster. There was also a link shown between the characters as both the magazine and the poster included an image of a protagonist character from the trailer; therefore the audience would hopefully be able to recollect where they have seen them before. I do however feel that I could have combined the magazine more clearly with the trailer by having a different character from the trailer on the front cover; possibly an image of the killer to make the magazine look more like a horror themed magazine. I would have also liked to have included the protagonist actors names from the horror trailer on the magazine so that the audience would be given a little bit more information about the film being advertised.
In hindsight, I do strongly feel that the co-ordination of my three products could have been better created, and had I have gained a deeper understanding of the functions of a distributor before starting work on the tasks, I feel I would have shown clearer links as I wasn't aware beforehand that distributors have to follow the same themes and trends throughout all of their advertisements. I think that all three of my products do contain recurring themes, colours, fonts, images etc. however these recurrences aren't made very obvious. It is therefore more difficult to make the film appear an identifiable and memorable one. This goes to show just how much importance a film's advertisement has on the eventual credited success of the film itself.
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