Question 2

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

In the process of creating our three texts- the trailer itself, and the accompanying webpage and poster- we wanted to have certain things that linked the three and showed synergy in marketing.

In both the poster and the webpage, the same image in used- the picture to the side, of three of our protagonists lying on the floor in a park with a bottle of vodka, obviously drunk. The characters are all making gurning faces, in sharp contrast to the pouty, sexualised expressions conventionally shown in promotional media for teen dramas.Several things about the poster, such as the attire of the characters, the expressions on their faces, the prominence of the bottle of vodka and the picture being angled from above- as though someone were watching over them- tell us a lot about the characters. This was one of the primary reasons for us choosing the image to use in our promotional materials- we felt it conveyed the lighthearted tone of the film, and represented the core storyline of misfits being out of their depth.

We also tried to include common colour themes and similar fonts where possible. Unfortunately, technological limitations prevented us from being able to use exactly the same font in our materials, but we opted for the most similar we could find- the main thing we wanted was for a font that was big, bouncy and chunky looking, representing the humourous tone and youthful intended target audience for our film.

We also linked our poster and webpage by featuring the same reviews on them- 'A British Superbad' was one, giving the film instant credentials, as fans of that film will be drawn to this one via the comparison. We also used one stating that the film was 'a delirious, rollicking, roller-coaster ride of fun' giving an insight into it's comedic tone and also telling the viewer that it is exciting and twist-filled.

The webpage also featured several photographs of our actors together in real life- we felt featuring them all in different costumes, as they were in the trailer, gave further links between the projects, although we deliberately had the three depicted in the promotional material wear the same, prominent outfits (eg. the dogwalking fleece worn by Sophie) in all three of our tasks to create synergy.

However, we did deviate from norms of marketing in that we used different colour schemes in all of our products. In the trailer, we used a chunky gold font, to give the impression of 'cash'. On the poster, we went for a simple black and white theme. On the webpage, we chose grey and pink colourschemes. We did this because we wanted to convey all the different sides of the film- we did the chunky gold writing in the trailer to indicate it's comedic side, the simple black and white poster to show that it did have slight elements of seriousness as it tackles the problem of social classes within teens, and the pink in the webpage was used to bait girls into being interested because of the romantic side of the movie. We showed during our research and pre production that girls we sampled were more likely to be influence by a film's webpage than boys, whereas boys paid more attention to posters, so that's the way we chose to do it.