Evaluation question 2:How effective is the combination of our product and ancillary texts?

As a film distributor it is your job to do the marketing for your film and may set the release date and decide the way in which it is to be shown to the public. There are many ways to advertise a film, for example you can upload a trailer to YouTube, show it on TV or in a Cinema. There could also be promotional videos or interviews by stars of the film.

Before advertising your product you need to figure out who your target audience is. For example, if your target audience were teens, you would probably advertise on social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube as that is what they are most likely to use, which means you are more likely to reach higher numbers of your target audience. However, advertising isn’t just getting people to know about your product, it can also help improve it. Audience research is very important when it comes to developing your product and you should probably think twice about releasing a product if you haven’t carried out any audience research beforehand. If you are making a film for example, you can organise screenings where you ask a group of people from your target audience to come and preview your film before it is released and then ask them to provide feedback on what they liked and didn’t like so much. You can then use this information to change your film (if it needs changing) and improve it in the hopes that it will better appeal to your audience and bring in more revenue.

If we take this poster for ‘American Pie: The Naked Mile’ you can straight away see that this is not going to be a children’s film. The name itself including the word ‘naked’ suggests that too, and sometimes names do play a part in advertising too. If we look at the image on this poster it further backs up the idea that this is definitely not for children. There are half naked women and guys in their underwear and a male in the middle has two females with their hands on him. The way they (females especially) are sexualised in this image suggests that it is done that way for the purpose of appealing to the male gaze which might mean that their target audience is younger males, perhaps early to mid 20’s? Sexual themes are strongly suggested too and, if anyone knows of the American Pie film series, then they know that the film is going to be mostly sexual, and while the poster doesn’t really reveal much in the way of plot, maybe the distributors are counting on people recognising the film series and wanting to see it from that. ‘Unrated’ might also encourage more people to go see it as they think it may be more sexual/crude/funnier than if it wasn’t unrated.

The next poster is of a different genre: Horror. As many of you know, the SAW franchise is a series of gruesome horror films, yet when this poster was released, no one knew what the SAW films were as it was the first out the series.

However the clean white background suggests something clinical which could connect with the audience and bring out their fears of places such as hospitals and dentists. As many of the other SAW film posters, this only has one image on it; a hand in the center of the poster. You can see that the hand is slightly dirty and if you look at the wrist, you can see that it looks as though it has been cut and sewn up as there appears to be thread falling from it. This certainly fits in with the horror genre and the torture themes that SAW is now known for. The name ‘SAW’ also connotes violence and horror as it is also a sharp tool which fits in with the torture side of things. All of these factors combined together make for an intriguing poster and would definitely appeal to the horror fans. Whether this would be for age 15 or 18 is unclear on this poster, but I would say, even if I hadn’t any knowledge of the SAW franchise, that it would be more towards the 18 age rating due to a feeling that it is going to be quite gruesome.

While I am on the subject of the SAW franchise, I think it is very important for a film to have a unified identity because if it didn’t that could lead to confusion amongst the audience and could end receiving bad reviews as it wasn’t what people expected. When it comes to SAW, not only do all of the posters and trailers fit together, but the posters and trailers for the entire SAW films complement each other and follow on the themes that the films are associated with. Having a poster that is followed by a trailer that follows its themes allows more information to be fed to the audience and reveals more to them, as a poster is just an introduction, a teaser for the trailer if you like, and then you could have the teaser trailer which gives more information than the poster, but intrigues people to watch the full trailer and then finally the full trailer reveals more information and leaves the audience on the edge of their seats waiting for the release of the film. 

Both my poster and my magazine cover have quite dark images in the background and in both the girl looks either angry or in pain. I wanted them to be like this as it goes hand-in-hand with the theme of our trailer. Whereas my magazine cover makes her look more angry, i wanted to create more speculation and mystery with the poster so i chose a picture where she could be thought of as angry or in pain. Our trailer then backs both of these up as she gets murdered and so is in pain, but wants revenge on her killer. You can't see it clearly, but for the magazine cover, i did use an image where the girl (one of the main girls in our trailer) is leaning on the handle of the shovel which ties in with the way she is killed in our trailer (hit over the head with a shovel). However i wanted the poster and the magazine cover to create mystery and not give much away and then for it all to be revealed/made clearer in the trailer.