Evaluation Question 4 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Existing Media Products

• Before I started to create my poster and magazine review page I researched existing media products to try and get a good understanding of how to make a good poster and magazine review double page spread; and hopefully understand the codes and conventions and subvert them or conform to them

• I looked at the film posters of ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Inception’ as I knew they used one main image and had a lot of blank space in them; an issue I foresaw having when I thought about how I wanted my poster to look.

Research

• I looked at ‘The Dark Knight’ as it has clear blank space in the centre of the poster and I wanted to see how the designers of the poster got around this.

• The film used the image of the main character as the focus of the poster, with him appearing to be large and standing in the middle of the poster. They used a very striking image of the Batman standing in from of the bat symbol burning onto a building.

• All of the text is also at the bottom of the poster, and so all the focus is on the character and there is nothing to distract from that. This is a convention I will choose to follow as I want my main character to be the main focus of the poster

Images

• I used the image of the main actor from my film in both my poster and my magazine.

• This meant that the main character of my film would be instantly recognisable to the audience. It is also something I have found to be somewhat of a convention, as I discovered in my research that most films will place their main characters on the front of their posters.

Conventions and Combinations

• Magazines such as ‘Empire’ use the images of the actors who feature on the front of the poster in their magazine reviews. I based my magazine on Empire and so I will follow the conventions they follow.

• It will also helped me combine my poster, magazine and film, as the actor that has the most screen time in the film is also seen the most in my ancillary tasks.

Quoting my magazine

As can be seen here, I referenced my magazine on my film poster. The quotation is talking about an overall review of my film, that was taken from ‘Film Life’, which is what I called my magazine. This combination, then, is effective as it links the poster to the magazine, while giving the poster a genuine and realistic look, as posters often have quotations on them.

Actors

• The actors that is shown at the top of the poster, Todd Lamming and Ben Ayres (me), are also shown in the end credits of my film.

• The actors names are also referenced my magazine review when I talk about the plot of the film.

• There is a clear combination, then, between my film, poster and magazine review as the same names appear on all three platforms.

How effective is the combination?

• I made sure that I designed my magazine review and my poster after I had finished my film

• In doing so I could ensure that there was significant evidence of a combination between the three productions.

• I feel the combinations is very effective as I had referenced both my magazine and my film on my poster, by taking a still from the film and using it as the main image, using the actors names who appear on the credits of my film at the top of the poster, and by placing the quotation from my magazine review on my poster. I have also combined my film and my poster with my magazine review as I have used the image of the same actor on both my magazine review page and my poster, and I have use the character who has the most screen time in my film as the main image. I have also done a brief plot summary of the film in my magazine review and I have used the same names, and so there is consistent combinations throughout my productions