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Evaluation Question 2

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

Jade Fogg

The overall aim of our short film Saving Grace, was to truly catch the attention of

the audience and to get them to ask themselves questions. We wanted to create what Rick Altman described as ‘Intellectual

Puzzle’, one of the pleasures that entertainment gives you. In order to do this

we made the audience believe the Antagonist was one person however it is revealed to be a different person. We also wanted to aim for a similar style with the

Ancillary texts, in order to grab the audiences attention even more and in addition have the poster etc. make the

audience ask them selves questions as to what happens, making a unique selling point. In order to do this, we researched

multiple film posters and gained ideas from these. In order to keep the Ancillary texts similar, we created the tagline “Have you ever woken up not knowing where you are?”- a line picked from the short film

itself, not only does this create synergy but it also creates suspicion for the audience

and tells them about the film itself without giving much of the storyline away.

Poster Our group decided to search (using Google) for other

thriller film posters, and we found specifically the poster for ‘Black Swan’. The black background made the main character stand out as they were also centre shot, we took this idea and made our main character grace centre shot and created a black background. However, we decided to make our character look somewhat different to the main character in the poster for ‘Black Swan’, as the character looked focused in their poster, however the character in our film has a change of state and has little awareness, we tried to display this in our posters. We individually created film posters to put our ideas together and create a final poster. In my example of a film poster for our film Saving Grace, I added spotlights which focused on our main character, this is to give the audience an understanding that the film is about that particular character and what happens to her. The example posters were created on Adobe Photoshop which made it very simple to edit photos to desire.

The overall aim of the poster was to attract the attention of the audience and to ask themselves about the story of the main character, which is the selling point of the poster. Our final Official film poster for Saving Grace (to the right) was created using Adobe Photoshop and was created to be minimalistic, having a colour scheme of Black, white and red. The colour red contrasts against lack and white but also connotes evil. The title of the film was edited in a specific way to make it look like a logo rather than a title, in order for the film to be more recognisable. The poster for our film had the tagline “Have you ever woken up not knowing where you are?” –which is a very significant line in the film as it tells the audience the choice to make their own connotation of what happened in the film.

Poster (Official & finished)

Poster (Official & finished)To create the effect on the poster, a spotlight was shone on our main character, which made it easy to keep with our colour scheme of black, which and red whilst also focusing attention on our main character, in addition to her being centre shot.

In addition to other editing, research into other thriller film posters influenced ours (such as Black Swan) as it is minimalistic and focuses the colour on the character and had none in the background which makes it intense.

The poster for our film has a black background,which exaggerates the focus on our main character, suggesting that this particular character is in fact Grace.

The title of the film was madeto look almost like a logo, whichmakes it more memorable. Underneath the title is the tagline “Have you ever woken up not knowing where you are?”which is very significant in the film. Both of these texts are written in white making them contrast with the background.

The date of release and the agerestriction of our film as these are two important factors for our audience to see, as not onlydoes it tell the audience when the film is being released but it keeps the younger audience safedue to the age restrictions by the BBFC.

The purpose of our film ‘Saving Grace’ was to shock people and create tension and also confusion. We reflected this in our Ancillary texts by creating tension within these also. Our film poster is very similar to different types of thriller films. For example the poster for ‘The Blaire Witch Project’, as the main character is centre shot and the contrast of the picture has decreased, the character also stands out from the background as the background is primarily black, a colour which represents Darkness. In addition to this a light is being shone onto the main character from the right side, making the character look powerless as the light is from a high angle. This would make the audience feel as if they want to know more about the character and what happens in the film. Another film poster similar to ours is for ‘Silence of the Lambs’. This poster is similar to ours as a character is the focus of the poster and the black background makes them more significant. In addition to this the colour scheme is also identical; Black, White and Red. However our film poster is very different to both of these posters as ours lacks contrast, this is due to the effect that our main character Grace has on her, she cannot see clearly due to her change of state which is portrayed to the audience through change in contrast of the film poster.

Poster (Comparison)

As a group, we thought it was very important to gain audience feedback from the Ancillary texts as well as the final film itself, allowing us to gain overall feedback. We asked 30 people inside and out of college (making a larger demographic) multiple questions about themselves (age, gender & occupation) and what they thought of the poster. Questions such as “Is the Thriller genre represented well in this poster?” and “How likely would you say you were to watch this film after seeing the poster?” were asked, ranging from open answer boxes to likert scales. These examples (to the right) represent the answers of multiple ages, even those outside of our Target Audience, of different genders and of different occupations, the most common occupation being a student however being within our target audience. The feedback we gathered from the audience were generally positive.

Poster (Audience feedback)“How likely would you say you were towatch this film after seeing the poster?”

“Is the Thriller genre represented well in this poster?”

In production of our Radio Advertisement, we decided we would create synergy and also include the tag line: “Have you ever woken up not knowing where you are?” however we included the whole quote from the film, this was to create satisfaction for the audience. Our Radio Advertisement included a male narrator with a deep voice, which is typical for a thriller film, this also creates tension and fear within the audience, an aim of ours. Our group understood that it would be difficult to portray the struggle that is in the film in the Radio Advertisement as it isn’t visual, however to represent the violence we included a clip of one of our main characters Becky, screaming “Grace”, portraying danger as she is shouting for Grace. In order for the audience to gain a greater understanding of the film and it’s story line we also included sound effects and music from the film that we thought represented the Thriller genre well and also presentedintensity. Our Radio Advertisement Trailer was uploaded to YouTubein order to reach a larger demographic.

Radio Advertisement Trailer

You will find our Radio Advertisement Trailer if you copy and paste the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C12Qm4g-C2g&feature=youtu.be

Radio Advertisement Trailer

Similarly to our poster feedback, we asked 30 people within and without of our target audience different questions about our Radio Advertisement Trailer in order to gain feedback and to be able to analyse it. We asked questions such as “How likely would you be to watch the film after listening to the trailer?” and “After listening to the trailer, is there anything you would change/improve on?” results were analysed. It was found that only 2/30 would’ve changed the Radio Ad, one person of the two commented “I would’ve added more upbeat music in the Radio Ad to represent certain scenes within the film”. Results from the other example question told us that although some people would’ve made the Radio Ad differently, every person that took part in the questionnaire would watch the film after listening, which was the main aim of the Radio Advertisement Trailer.

Radio Advertisement Trailer (Audience Feedback) “After listening to the trailer,

is there anything you would change/improve on?”

“How likely would you beto watch the film after Listening to the trailer?”

In addition to the poster and the radio advertisement trailer, we also created Teaser Trailers, which are similar to television advertisements however much shorter. Our teaser trailers give the audience a little understanding for the film and leave them guessing as to what is happening. The overall aim of the teaser trailer was to get the audience to watch the whole thing by making the teaser trailers intense and to include actual footage from the short film itself. We created 2 different teaser trailers in order to gain experience in editing but also to create more ancillary texts for the audience in order to show different parts of the film, these were also uploaded to YouTube to gain a larger demographic.

Additional Ancillary texts

The same questions as the poster and radio advertisement were used for the teaser trailer however slightly differently worded in order to make it relevant. Some of the questions that were asked were “After watching the teaser trailers how likely are you to watch the film?” and “Which teaser trailer did you find made you want to watch the film the most?”, these questionnaire results were analysed. Results showed that the teaser trailers weren’t as effective as the Radio Ad and Poster’s were, however still successful in persuading people to watch the short film. The second example question represents that the first teaser trailer was more successful than the second, however the same amount of people thought they were equally as good. This feedback evidenced that our other Ancillary texts were more successful as the audience gave better feedback on them, even though still being positive.

Teaser Trailer (Audience Feedback) “After watching the teaser

trailers how likely are you to watch the film?”

“Which teaser trailer did you find make you want to watch the film the most?”