Evaluation part 2 How effective is the combination of your main product ancillary texts.By Dayna Pendergast

Section A

For my poster I didn’t want to use a picture from the trailer so I customized a picture that could imply a hint for the trailer. I took a picture of a bloody hand in front of a green screen and placed it so that it looked like it was emerging from a grave. This is using the mise-en-scene of the graveyard and the iconography of the gravestone clearly suggest where my horror trailer is set and the fact that there is a hand popping out if the grave suggests it’s something to do with the undead which clearly connotes zombies.

Another key aspect that I used in my poster was the colours. I included the black and red font. Black connotes that there is evil and darkness involved, whereas the red connoted danger and blood. Together these two colours are very commonly found in horror posters as you can see in the Day of the Dead poster with the font in bright red and the very dark background. A similar aspect of the two posters would be the reaching out towards the coming soon it creates anticipation for the film and adds a bit of excitement.

The clouds moving in from the right hand corner is the use of pathetic fallacy which connotes impending doom and that something is coming. This is similar to the Day of the Dead poster as the background is very cloudy and looks distorted.

From looking at my magazine cover the redness just catches the attention, which is a conventional strategy used on magazine covers. I used the red colour to connote blood and danger as this is very common with most gory horrors which is what my trailer was aiming for. The black background is something that is also a key aspect of horror magazines. The bleakness of this connotes death and evil, which are everything you’re going to get in a gory horror with zombies. Just like the magazine cover beside mine I have used the archetype of a female; however you cannot actually tell whether they are the “final girl” or the victim. In my poster I have included a phallic symbol which is an axe which represents power and strength.

I used the technique of listing the contents of the magazine down the side, which is very similar to the Joker Empire magazine, however on the opposite side and less of them.

I also had the idea to use more than one image so I put together three zombie images together to fit in with the theme of my trailer and fanned them out to give it a more interesting look.

I wanted to make my magazine look like a very popular magazine that reaches out to a wide range of audiences. I did this by using the catchphrase at the top “UK’s greatest film magazine”. I placed a head in front of the font which was conventional as can be seen in the film magazine cover and the Empire cover.

The main focus is the face which can be seen in all three as well even though in mine the girl is not looking straight at the camera that was so that I could get the angle of the arm swooping round as if to go and kill her and as we can see the hand is covered in blood which gives of the impression that it could be a zombie but not giving away too much.

My poster, magazine and trailer all link in together quite well. They link well with the mise-en-scene of the horror trailer. I used pathetic fallacy in the trailer and carried it on over to the poster. In the trailer shot it is a shot of the graveyard and the zombies and it looks very gloomy.

The graveyard is shown in both the trailer and the poster which shows that it is going to be a frequently visited place in the film which links to iconography. The colour schemes throughout the three pieces are very dark and dull colours utilising reds and blacks which connote danger, death, blood and evil.

Another colour that occurs a lot is green and grey. Green connotes a sickly colour but also links to the natural location (woods) of my Ring Rosie trailer and intended film.

Section c

The audience that I am aiming at is people at the age of 15+ this is because there is gore but not enough to class it as an 18 certificate. I would say in terms of horror fans it is going to appeal to the sub-genre that would make up zombie/action horror fans which are into gore. The success of World War Z shows there’s an audience for this.

There is definitely a dominant subculture right now as many horror films and series are getting a lot of attention. This includes American Horror Story and The Walking Dead, which receive excellent viewing figures. I would Ring Rosie also appeals to more women than a general horror fan as the main characters are women and it shows them in a stronger and more “badass” light.