1. MY A2 MEDIA EVALUATION
PART 2
By Jack Bricknell

2. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
Section A:
With my poster I chose to challenge the conventions of horror posters by using a
protagonist instead of an antagonist, I thought this was a good idea because there
is no lead antagonist in our film whereas films like ‘Nightmare on Elmstreet’ and
‘Friday the 13th’ have very iconic antagonists that they can use on their products to
keep their brand identity. I chose a protagonist because it gave me more freedom
on the layout of the poster but if I chose a zombie I don’t think I would have had as
many options. For the main photo used in the image I used a medium shot to the
right of the centre to fit in the whole weapon. The weapon used with the stance that
CJ is in gets across the feel that he is getting ready to fight and is looking out of
frame to an unknown danger which gives the audience something to think about
such as ‘will he survive’.
Although I haven’t featured a zombie in my poster I did get across some hints that
they are in the film through the use of the font I used on the main title which has
deformed hands reaching out within the gaps in the letters. This text is very similar to
the font used in the ‘Shaun of the Dead’ film once again hinting at the influence it
had on me. You could also say that the slogan ‘This time we’re on the menu’ is
another hint towards the zombies, I also put ‘we’re’ in red which connotes the
danger that the characters are in. My Butchered Poster

3. Continued
Another aspect used in my poster is the style which I think is quite
unique among other horror posters as it only uses three main
colours (black, white and red) which makes it simplistic but
effective, by using red highlights on points of interest in the poster I
can draw the audiences gaze to make things like his weapon
stand out. If you look at the poster I find that I am instantly drawn to
the main title because of its size then I go to the slogan because of
the red used in it and then down to the weapon in the main image
which is exactly how I hope my audience will look at the poster so
they can see all the key aspects.
Before I edited the main image used in the poster I used low key
lighting and focused most of the light onto one side of the actor.
When it came to editing I used the threshold tool to make it black
and white giving it an extreme chiaroscuro effect with how
drastically the contrast from light to dark happens. The overall
effect gave it an artistic value which was influenced by the artist
Olly Moss who has made posters for many films.
RoboCop poster by Olly Moss

4. Magazine
For my other ancillary text I made a magazine cover, the
masthead suggests that it is of the horror genre and so does the
font, I chose to make the whole magazine use horror elements so
that it stood out from other magazines in the class which were
mostly based on existing magazines such as FILM.
I used a close up shot for the main image and used direct gaze just
above the centre of the frame to draw the attention of the
audience. The main photo is just over to the right side so I could fit
in the taglines, I didn’t overlay the two because of the contrast in
the colours which are black and white so it was hard to find a
colour that would stand out on both of these. The angle of the
image is slightly low angle to give the character a more
intimidating presence. The taglines use a white outer glow to give it
a ghostly look to it adding to the horror feel of the magazine. I used
the title of our main product as my sub heading as a way of using
convergence to promote our film through other media.
I started off by loosely basing the layout of my magazine on the
existing horror magazine ‘Fangoria’ but ended up going my own
way after several attempts of trying to make it work.

5. How does your poster and magazine tie
into the style of your trailer?
Section B:
Our main product is a gory horror with elements of comedy, both of my ancillary
products can represent these aspects but they are emphasized more on my poster.
The poster ties in well with this by using the blood splatters and red highlights that are
scattered around the poster to represent the gore that will be present in the finished
product. The font used in the main title for the poster is similar to ‘SOTD’ which connotes
that there will be some comedy in the film however this is only a subtle hint so it may
only be noticed by those more familiar to the genre. The style of the poster fits in well
with the Butchered trailer because it shares a similar style with the scrolling text we used
in the trailer which both had some inspiration from the ‘Planet Terror’ film and posters.
The poster should appeal to middle class 18 – 25 year old males as the target audience
because I think that the genre of horror is most popular among the middle class and
appeals to teenagers and young adults because they can relate to a lot of characters
used in them.
The magazine ties in with the Butchered trailer by using a character from the trailer as
the main cover image, the character is also a zombie which are increasingly popular
among most horror fans today which will appeal to the target audience. The font used
in the masterhead for the magazine has a more psychological horror feel to it but the
butchered sub heading has a gory feel to it, using both of these on my front cover has
given me a chance to appeal to a larger target audience.