1. How effective is the combination of my ancillary tasks

2. Introduction For my A2 media studies coursework it required my group and I to create a film trailer and with that an ancillary task of formulating a film poster and magazine cover for a promotional package. The film sub-genres we selected for our trailer were slasher horror and teen horror. This is why I researched the different codes and conventions of slasher/teen horror and looked at several posters to give us an idea of our unique selling point. The main purpose of a poster is to advertise a film. Therefore we had to make sure we followed all of the typical conventions of a film poster in order to give our audience a good impression on how effective our film is by including effective images, actors names, tagline, background image and other features that complete a film poster.

3. Poster research Before we created our film poster I researched different types of horror posters so that this could give me a rough idea of how they look and the similarities they may have.

4. Comparing our poster with ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ A film that inspired us to make our film a teen horror was ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ (directed by Drew Goddard in 2012) we thought this film interested an audience of our age and older. Although when it came to looking at the poster we thought it looked quite plain and didn't look like something that would appeal to us as an audience. The reason for this was because of the colours used and the image itself didn't seem so effective. Even though it was a picture of a cabin that is sort of deformed denoting that the Cabin in full of places you are not aware of and you would leave in a sort of mess if you enter it. We wanted our poster to straight away draw in our audience, therefore we didn't follow this poster as a guideline in creating our one.

5. Inspired by ‘Friday the 13 th ’ As we were also inspired by ‘Friday the 13 th’ (directed by Marcus Nispel) as we focused on the new version of 2009, this was the one we looked at for inspiration because it was also of a teen horror/ slasher horror genre we thought it would be best if we used the Friday 13 th poster to help us create our poster.

6. Spot the difference

7. When we first saw the image on the Friday 13 th poster we thought it looked very effective the way his body was postured in the middle of the page so that the audience can focus on him particularly. The background forest and lighting used to merge together give a sort of unsettling feeling that makes you scared when you see the poster. We wanted our audience to also get this sort of impression when they first see our poster. However we also wanted to put our own twist to it. This is why when we took the image of our antagonist we told him to face his back towards the camera and have a knife and his mask on both of his hands. We did this so that when the audience see it they are confused and question themselves as to why the man is holding a mask in his hand, is he a killer? And why does he wear a mask?

8. In terms of the title our title font is completely different to ‘Friday the 13 th ’ as they use red clear font in capitals. Although we thought it looked quite simple and serifed however we thought it would be best if we stuck to the same titles we used for our trailer credits. Furthermore we believe the font we used looked more weird and creepy and this is the kind of hint we wanted to give the audience when they see the poster. At the top of the title we followed a convention we saw on Friday the 13 th where it has the producers name. Instead of including the producers name we said the director of ‘The Follower’ as this is the name of the opening sequence I created for a film last year for my AS level. In ‘Friday the 13 th ’ you don't see the tagline in the poster. However we included our tagline on our poster.

9. One of the most important parts of a film poster is all the small print information which contains the name of the director, producers, actors, soundtrack, production company, screenplay, as well as the rating, a website link to find out more and sometimes images of the production companies of the film (production blurb). The information on posters is very small, so attention is not diverted from the image and other parts of the poster. Although as all posters include a production blurb we knew it was necessary to add one as well.

10. Extras on our poster After looking at many posters we were able to add different elements to make our poster look more realistic. These aspects were not included in the ‘Friday The 13 th ’ poster, although we still added them. These included a twitter link to make our audience aware that they can follow the twitter page and find out more information about the film. The reason why we used this is because, as our audience are teenagers and adults they tend to use social networking a lot therefore they would be interested in following the page. We also included what quotes of recommendations were made by newspapers as this is also a general poster convention you would see. With five stars at the top indicating our film has been given high ratings by critics. Lastly we also included our certificate rating which is 15, the reason for this is because the content maybe too inappropriate for people under aged 15 as their is use of strong language and killing scenes.

11. What was good about the poster I believe overall our poster was quite successful as when I showed people the poster they were astonished by the way it was structured and really liked the idea of the man facing the wall. The reason why I believe the poster was effective was because of the main image and the way it was all spread out. The reason for this was because the image is very eye-catching and in a poster it is vital that the main image is centred in the middle and is very powerful. By not showing the antagonists face is in some way a unique selling point for us as we want them to find out themselves and this is why they should go to the cinema and watch the film. As slasher horrors usually include the antagonists image in the poster we stuck to this convention. As half of the poster is faded into the black background I believe this is a strong feature as it draws the audiences attention to the film title and the tagline.

12. What was good about the poster For the background we included some lines as they gave it a more edgy feeling when seeing it for the first time as in plain black and white it looked quite empty and as if it needed something to it. We made the background colour black and white as it gave you more of a feel that the film is a horror film whereas with colour it looked quite cheap and not that effective. As the audience cannot see our antagonists face this creates a sense of mystery as it raises questions in their heads as to who the character is and why he takes the mask off, this makes our antagonist more complex in comparison to an average psycho slasher killer. I also think our tagline has a positive effect on the audience as they can interpret it in several ways “you never know your true blood until your true blood comes for you.” The main idea behind this was that the teenage girl goes looking for her father who is her ‘true blood’ but she comes across her step-brother who isn't her true blood which indicates he is the killer. The audience will understand this tagline after they watch the film, whereas before that they might think it is indicating the killer is her father or that she is the serial killer.

13. What could be improved on the poster I believe there are some areas of improvement in our poster such as: The font of the title- When we first created the font it was red colour and looked quite childish this is why we changed it to grey however I do still feel it looks kind of childish and there are ones that could suit our sub-genre better. Although the plus point was that it did fit in with the rest of the poster and as we had to go with the same font we included in our film this wasn't such a big issue. Another thing we could have included could have been additional links such as facebook links as I have seen them on some posters. On the other hand the reason why we didn't include too much of these were because some posters tend to be plain and just have one image to grab the audiences attention on it. In addition we didn't want to add too much writing as it would lose the viewers focus off the main image. One more thing we could have included would be an image of the protagonist as well or the other characters so that the audience can see who would be starring in the film and so they can understand it is a teen horror.

14. Film magazine cover

15. Introduction After we had created our film poster we had to start on our film magazine. So then we started off with our research by looking at typical conventions of a magazine cover which are: Reviews, title, image, background, banners, release date of magazine, extras on the page about other releases or interviews, barcode, the film title and magazine title.

16. Comparing our film magazine to Friday the 13 th As we mostly looked at Friday the 13 th for inspiration when it came to the film however we didn't look at this magazine cover. The reason for this was because it was published on a ‘FANGORIA’ magazine. The issue with this is that Fangoria magazines are ones that are read by people who are addicted to horror films. However these people were not our target audience. As we do not want to appeal to a specific audience as we want to target a wider audience. As our film magazine we selected is ‘Total film’ they tend to have teenagers and adults aged 16-30 as there target audience. Our target audience are 16-24 teenagers and young adults they are the biggest audience of film along with an family audience as well. Furthermore I believe the main audience for horror are people aged 16-30 as they tend to be people who enjoy horror films the most.

17. Magazine research We looked at several ‘Total film’ magazine covers to help us understand how they usually put their film magazine covers together. This gave us an idea of how we should create our one and what conventions we need to follow.

18. Spot the difference The front cover for total film for the ‘Transformers’ film really grabbed our attention when we first saw it this is why we decided to follow the same structure as it.

19. Our magazine As you can see we used the same font used in a original ‘Total film’ magazine and included the same titles and subheadings because we liked the structure of them but just changed what some of them said so they fitted into our film correctly. Original magazine

20. We used other features we saw in the same magazine released for transformers. This included the release date of the magazine, the barcode and the banner on the top corner. Original magazine Our magazine

21. Extra aspects from Spiderman cover After forming our film magazine according to what we saw on the ‘Total film’ magazine cover released about ‘Transformers,’ we still wanted to add a few more things. We got this idea from another ‘Total film’ magazine released about ‘Spiderman.’ On this magazine it included a few things we wanted to add to our film, such as the stamp which states total film have ‘The worlds best movie reviews.’ The line at the top of the title ‘Total film’ as we believed it looked quite empty without anything and we preferred our banner to be on the right top corner so we done it like this film magazine.

22. Our magazine Here you can see that our font we selected for the title in ‘TOTAL’ is the same as the Spiderman one and so is the ‘stamp.’ Original magazine

23. What was good about the film magazine I do believe there were some features that made our film magazine look like it had really been published by ‘Total film’ these were: All of the extra aspects we added to it such as: the banner on the top right, the headings that were different in comparison to the film title, the different titles and sub-heading we added, the stamp, the background colours used and the image of the main character as it is a mid-shot of him directly looking at the viewers.

24. What could be improved on the film magazine In some way even though many people told me the image on the film magazine scared them, I do think it could have been more scary. Or we could have included a long shot rather then a mid-shot. The reason why we didn't go with a long shot was because we are aware that horror film magazine do not usually have long shots of the main character as for slasher horror they tend to be more close-ups or mid-shots. Another thing I believe we could have made better is the actual image we could have included an image of the four friends instead as I saw some magazine like this, although another issue we had with this was that as our film was going to be published in ‘Total film’ they usually have the main antagonist/protagonists image on their front cover and we didn't want to reject this convention. On the other hand film magazines like ‘Empire’ usually have images of all the characters on their front cover. Lastly I don't think an image of all of the friends would look as powerful as a image of one main character.