Question Two

Q2.

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

To promote our film successfully once production had finished, we had to create two out of three ancillary tasks. From a radio advertisement, posters or a film review, we chase the latter two as we they were the two most accessible. The first ancillary task produced for Switch was my film review for which I had to research several other file magazines to grasp the style and dialogue. Switch is the final product which audiences get to see, but in order for them to want to watch the film my review has to create hype and market the film in a way that answers questions and gives audiences the first view of the film. From my research of Empire, Radio Time and Total Film, I found a page from Total Film that show cased a newly released film and therefore had a large image and space for a longer review. I chose Total Film as the influence of my film review as I felt that the editors had very relaxed and colloquial language which would comfort the reader, whilst also using filmic terms. It was clear that the writers were avid film fan and knew what they were talking about, and that was the impression that I wanted to give when audiences would read my own review. There were also other elements on the page like the ‘Talking Point’ bubble which allowed me to give behind the scenes information for avid fans of the magazine. The overall layout of the magazine page was easy to replicate so using publisher I was able to make it look as if my review had came straight out of the Total Film magazine. As well as creating an effective housestyle I had to imitate the filmic and witty language used by the editors of such magazines. Puns and tone of voice has a lot to do with sustaining an entertaining vibe of the magazine that not only captures the world of our film but also our target audience’s attention. For example, as my film lies within the British crime comedy genre and is set within the East End of London, it was only fitting for me to use some cockney slang. “appy to join em”.

In addition to the language there were also credits I had to incorporate into the review, so mentioning the directors and actors name whilst mentioning their previous work. This makes them seem more experience and it tells the audience which other films they had made so if the audience had seen them they may like Switch. Similarly, I had a side bar on my magazine page called “See this if you like…” show casing Guy Richie’s classic Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels indicating and successfully promoting our film on the same level of brilliance as the previous blockbuster favourites. The image I chose for the film review is perfect as it is a clear two shot of the two main characters Frank and Charlie who is holding up a small bag of drugs to a dark gangster type, which automatically indicates the genre of the film. Whilst the facial expression of the two gives us an indication of their characters as Frank looks rather serious and straight talking whilst Charlie is standing dazed and scruffy. I also added an effect to the image using simple photo editing software to give it a grittier look and it rounds off the image nicely. The review overall does not give away the whole plot, it advertises its characters and genre successfully.

My second ancillary task was my posters. We decided to produce a poster campaign to effectively market our film, and so I created two posters and one billboard for Switch. The role and advantages of poster campaign give audiences a small insight into the film whilst advertising the institution, directors and actors. In order for my campaign to achieve this I had to tie in the posters with the review and film, starting with the housestyle. The main colours of black, white and red are seen throughout the film; Frank and Charlie’s suits, the drugs, money, special effects and fonts. Also they are the colours taken from my Total Film review page and so I used those colours on the majority of my posters. The background setting for my posters was something I had put a lot of thought into as I wanted to create a silhouette look much like Reservoir Dogs and Lock Stock posters. However, these posters does not reveal anything about the setting and since I mentioned the East End of London in my review it was important to show it, so in one of my posters I have the background image of a view of the estate that the film was shot. Nevertheless, each poster follows a very simple style with large black spaces and a light bulb graphic created with screen grabs as seen across each poster as it ties in with the film. The over simplicity of each poster, review and film is what we hope will interest, attract and intrigue our target audience by giving them a small peak into the world of Switch and from our feedback both our ancillary task does that successfully.