Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of my main product and ancillary texts?

Film distribution

A film distributor is responsible for the marketing of a film whether it be for a specific target audience, a broader target audience or a large target audience. The film distributor creates a promotional campaign for the film. The film distributor also decides what platforms the film will be put out on and how accessible it will be i.e. cinema, streaming, DVD, TV etc.

Marketing campaigns for promoting the film are crucial and can be the difference between a successful film and an unsuccessful film. Nowadays social media plays a massive part in a film’s marketing campaign, trailers and posters can now be posted on everyday social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social media generates a much bigger audience and establishes a much wider reach of accessibility to consumers as the distributors can promote their trailers and posters for anybody to see at any point during their use of social media platforms. YouTube also plays a huge part in promoting films due to how easy it is to access trailers as and when and like all the other platforms mentioned above, share with friends and “followers”.

Deadpool

Deadpool is based off of the Marvel Universe comic book character Deadpool who was created by artist/writer Rob Liefield. The film cost over $100Million in marketing and distribution, mainly promoted through social media. Deadpool was very successful at the box office because of its big budget marketing campaign and use of social media in promoting it.

Deadpool was released on the 12^th of February 2016 and was marketed as a Valentine’s film, this was to appeal to a wider target audience by placing it and marketing around this holiday, couples would go to the cinema to see it, this could be seen in one of the official posters advertising the film which used the tagline: “Feel the love Valentine’s day”. Social media is free advertisement for films as posters and other promotions can be posted on Facebook pages and Twitter meaning that users can share and like the post furthering how far the post reaches, by getting cast member Ryan Reynolds to tweet an image of himself in the Deadpool outfit with the hashtag #Deadpool.

Like all movies, it was marketed with several teaser trailers and posters alongside fan made trailers. Ryan Reynolds dominated the posters with near enough all of the official posters starring only him as Deadpool, this could be because he is the main character and the most important, or it could also be supporting his character type of being an arrogant anti-hero.

The film was released by 20^th Century Fox meaning it got a lot more advertising than similar films in the Marvel franchise. Though marketed as a 15 to appeal to a wider target audience, to achieve this certificate violence and language was slightly toned down, however it was overall marketed as being an adult superhero movie.

Deadpool is another example of a comic book character being brought to life on the big screen. Being part of the Marvel Universe, Deadpool manages to make clear links with the X-Men franchise, further expanding to an audience of superhero fans. The 15 certificate rated trailer contains lots of violence and swearing with witty dialogue to get across the theme of comedy as well as action from the first minute of the trailer which helped to make the film more successful as by being a multi-generic film, it appeals to a wider mainstream audience.

My magazine Entertainment follows the generic conventions for a horror magazine by following rules on colour scheme and using obscure fonts and bold titles. I used similar covers to Fangoria as the use of red connotes danger and blood which are typical of the horror genre.

I placed the image on the right side of my page taking up 70% of the front cover, this is so it doesn’t drown out any headlines and is big enough to draw attention to itself from the target audience whilst still maintaining high quality.

I took inspiration from the Sinister 2 poster for my film poster, I really liked the effect they used on one of the boys’ faces that made it appear as if it was blurred and ghostly. I used a similar technique when creating my poster where I copied the image and lowered the saturation to create this ghostly effect. Also the use of the white text as the title stood out to me on the Mama 2 poster so I recreated this idea and instead of typing Eighteen as a word, I wrote it in roman numerals (XVII) as I thought the shorter the title, the more it would draw in the audience like how the Mama 2 title draws in its audience. The Woman in Black 2 poster has a young boy sitting up against a wall with a ghostly image of a woman behind him and a dark room surrounding, I took the concept of having a completely dark background behind my characters due to reviewing the Woman in Black 2 poster as I felt it made the images stand out more.

The magazine and poster are linked as they both have the same character on the front of them, however doing slightly different pose, this is to show that they are both promoting the same product. The reason I used the same model for both my magazine and poster is because she features as the main character within the trailer, this gives audience members a familiar face to identify with. My magazine cover and poster follow the same colour scheme, the colour scheme is dark, this is to connote the horror genre through the blacks, greys and reds, I used a different font on the magazine cover in comparison to the poster because I wanted the magazine to have a professional layout and be clear to read, whereas the poster is targeted at a niche audience so the obscureness of the font may draw in audience members.

The trailer links to the ancillary texts because it shows the character wearing the same costume which is worn within the trailer which has bloodstains on it. This connotes the idea of violence and horror and I wanted this theme to be portrayed in my ancillary texts as it is within the trailer. I wanted to give the ancillary texts a mysterious element by playing around with the lighting and creating shadows and only slightly highlighting parts of the model’s dress and body opposed to her face, this is so the audience don’t get too familiar with her face as within the trailer we try not to reveal too much as to who the final girl actually is.

By linking the ancillary texts with the trailer it has created a synergy. By doing this the advertisement meets a vaster amount of people which helps to expand the target audience.