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

My combination of the three products, which are my magazine cover, poster and the teaser trailer, as a whole package of promotion of a horror movie.

My blogpost on the role of distruibutor

I have explored the role of the distributors and understanding their progress to advertise the products. The distributors would produce a press pack for the product, for example, here is an example that I found online. A press pack of a short film. In the press pack, there some detailed information about the movie, such as some basic information about how long the duration is and audio (p.1 of the press pack), 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. To produce a press pack to introducing movies and for promotion purposes is useful because a press pack tells everything about the movie, however, it doesn't show the clips of the movie. So, distributors also make trailers, posters and magazine covers.

I have produced a magazine cover featuring an interview with the horror girl, and some backstage information of the movie, which I think that would help to promote film because magazines are launched in public, and magazines have a large amount of readerships which means that a lot of people would read about the article or maybe seen the magazine cover and they would be interested the horror movie, although the distributors cannot control the magazine companies. To gain publicity, the distributors would also get the stars on tv shows, organise premieres events, and merchandising, such as toys and tshirts.

A real existing movie magazine cover featuring Inception.

My magazine cover featuring my horror movie - Awakened. My magazine cover follows the conventions such as a big masthead on the top of the cover filled with sharp colours, in which case I have used red as my masthead. The featured coverline which is coloured in yellow and has the second largest font on the coverpage. The coverpage mainly contains three different coloured fonts - red, yellow and white. I have also put a giveaway line above the masthead which could draw audience attention. At the bottom of the page, there is some photographs from the main feature article and I have put that there because it could target more audience and promote my new horror movie and create publicity. The feature article has a different font as the other coverlines which is because this magazine cover shares the same font with my film poster which makes connections between the two products, and it could be an advantage for the audience to recognise this font and think of the movie. I have chosen a rough texture as the background for my cover which is because I think that this type of texture would fit the horror theme of this issue.

The marketing plan that for my horror movie I have also produced a poster for the horror film. To produce a poster of a movie, it is important that the poster gives away the genre of the movie, and the main image is the main character of the film, adding a tagline on the poster would able the audience to understand and to gain more information about the movie before they watch it, or maybe to target more audience, and to advertise it more to the public. For my poster, I have used a screenshot of my trailer which addresses the genre of the movie straight away with the dark background of the poster and the effects around her face. I have also put a tagline as a little introduction for the movie.

This is the poster of a new horror movie called The Devil Inside. A nun is placed in the middle as the main subject of the poster which can suggest that she is the main character of the movie which is similar to what i have done. There is a upper tagline which says 'inspired by true events' and a lower tagline below the title saying 'no soul is safe' which both are scary phrases. Some red effect around the right side of the poster and some crashed texture which are also similar to my poster.

I think that the crashed glass texture works really well with the title Awakened which is in red and filled with blood effect. The glass texture is layered on top of her face and the photograph is only showing half of her face, which clearly suggests the genre is horror. Placing the tagline on the very top which is like an introduction for the poster. The tagline includes the word 'secret' which is connected with the trailer where the word 'secret' appears in one of the intertitles. Moreover, the word 'secret' involves a lot in the movie because the storyline of the film is about three teenage girls discover the secret about the ghost girl and weird things happen to them. I have picked white as the other main colour for the font because white is also widely used for my magazine cover.

I think that the most effective of advertising for the movie is the teaser trailer. The teaser trailer gives the audience an idea of what is going on in the film, and it is on youtube for public to see. Moreover, a trailer is cheap to make because the clips are from the whole movie but being put together as a trailer. In our teaser trailer, we have put some horror moments to address the horror genre, such as the monster hanging herself in the graveyard with low key lighting, and towards to end when she is stabbing someone and the camera drops, i think that scene creates tension for the audience in order to make them interested to go to cinemas and watch the film.

Here is a screenshot from my trailer of the title towards the end. The title is also coloured in red and this feature is shared between the trailer, magazine cover and the poster. I think that the three products share the same feature such as same coloured font would create connection.

Another screenshot of the intertitle where the word 'secret' appears on screen, it is also used as tagline on my film poster.

A screenshot from my trailer which is a fizzy tele effect that we are inspired by Paranormal Activity.

A Closeup of the ghost showing towards the end of the trailer to build up attention.

This is my favourite trailer, Paranormal Activity 3, because I think that the soundtrack and voice over has created a lot of scary moments, and specially the soundtrack works well with the CCTV editing. During the CCTV editing, the fizzy effects work well together. This trailer doesn't give away much about the storyline however Paranormal Activity is famous and world known. There are some jumpy bits from the whole movie which may target more audiences to go and see the film.