1. For my advanced portfolio, I approached my ancillary work with all of the information that I was
given in class as well as additional research processes outside of class. However, this year I also used
previous knowledge and experiences from my AS year that meant my media text would shape better
in the end.
In class we first researched conventions of the horror genre including dark colours, thrilling music
and conventional characters such as the final girl. We then began to discuss sub-genres and the work
of Susan Hayward. Reading up on the sub-genre “unnatural” helped me to consider conventional
elements that I could use in my coursework. I researched into Silent Hill (2006) and The Wicker Man
(1973), as they were unnatural in their form and had themes of cult and so gave me inspiration for
my ancillary coursework. I then began to look at past students work as I knew that this would seem
more achievable and I knew what I could work towards to get a higher grade. This taught me that my
poster should include a certification badge, the film website, star name, a credit block, and much
more.
It was also important for me to research in to conventional tag lines. I wanted a tag line that made
my film seem thrilling and captivating to the audience. Silent Hill featured a variety of taglines and
two that caught my eye were, “Enjoy your Stay” and “The Game is on”. I liked that both of these
were short yet told the story in its simplest form. With this conventional research, I thought about
the element of the film that I wanted to express in my promotional texts. This element was the use
of strangers and that anyone could turn evil (something that is most scary to an audience). From this
I decided to use the tagline “Be Careful who you Trust”.
As a group, we liked the idea of cult within a village as we felt this was original and we had seen films
in which we could draw inspiration. This was different to my AS year as we thought about the
inspiration we could use before we began our production, meaning that we had much more of an
idea.
To create my ancillary work I then had to consider the ideas which I could draw from our main idea. I
looked at Silent Hill (2006) and The Wicker Man (1973), as they were unnatural in their form and had
themes of cult. I liked the original poster layout for Silent Hill as it was very simplistic and so I
decided to use this as inspiration. I also liked how the poster and the website used a house style to
make them highly identifiable. I had an idea of creating a wooden “Welcome to Woodwich” sign,
similar to the “Welcome to Silent Hill” sign. I used this as a prop in my poster and also as the header
on my website. I feel that although I took inspiration from another film. This idea was original and
creative.
I feel that my A2 work successfully engaged my audience and provoked interest due to the fact that
it was original. Evidence of this comes from my audience research feedback, the website “links well
to the poster” and “the picture as a background makes it simplistic”.
I used Adobe Photoshop in the post-production process of my film poster. I had already taken the
photos and made mock ups of how I wanted the poster to look. I began by choosing my favourite
picture and uploading it as a PSD. I made the colour of my picture brighter by controlling the
“brightness” and then used the “contrast” tool so that the colours looked spooky and unnatural.
Using the brush tool with the colours dark blue and black allowed me to make the sky look darker.

2. Once I had done this, the “smudge” tool helped me to blend this colour around the end of the poster
making it look sophisticated.
Once my picture looked good, I started to add conventional elements such as the title. I wanted the
cast names to appear at the top of the page and so it meant I had to move the original picture down
along with the title so that they were visible and that none of the picture was covered. To do this I
had to use the “clone stamp tool” to create the same colours that appeared in the sky, making the
picture appear bigger. The “1250” brush tool helped me to finish this off by adding blood around the
title so that it looked conventionally horrific.
In the post production process of my website, Weebly allowed me to make sure that the layout was
easily accessible yet eye catching. The original theme that I chose featured wooden panels that
added to the village theme and matched my banner which was a wooden “Welcome to Woodwich”
sign. However, the central layout of this theme was white. I considered changing the HTML of this
theme so that it occurred black and looked more horrific but I couldn’t find a way to do this. Instead
I chose a plain black theme that looked more conventional.
I feel that overall the post production that I did made both of my pieces shape to become
professional promotional pieces. I took my AS experience of planning before I got to the post-
production process and applied it to my A2 work.
I noticed when researching into Silent Hill (2006) and The Wicker Man (1973) that the promotional
texts were very animated and eye catching. I then began to look at past students work as I knew that
this would seem more achievable and I knew what I could work towards to get a higher grade. I
noticed that the higher graded students had used professional cameras and this was noticeable with
the quality of their pictures. I used a Kodak digital camera to take my pictures and they came out
very clear. I also noticed that the editing of the posters was very creative in the higher graded work. I
used Adobe Photoshop to edit my poster using tools such as the brush tool and the clone stamp tool
to make the picture look unnatural and thrilling. Using programmes such as Banner Snack meant
that I could create animation much more easily. I used Banner Snack to create a promotional
“Coming Soon” animation that would feature on my homepage to make it look interactive.
I feel that I successfully used digital technology to make my texts creative and look more unnatural
so that they fell into the horror genre. I took the mistakes of leaving all of the work to the post-
production process in my AS year and applied them in my A2 work so that my product would look
polished at the end.
To gain knowledge in the horror genre and the texts themselves (homepages, posters and trailers), I
needed to see some for myself. In class we first researched conventions of the horror genre
including dark colours, thrilling music and conventional characters such as the final girl. We then
began to discuss sub-genres and the work of Susan Hayward. Reading up on the sub-genre
“unnatural” helped me consider conventional elements that I could use in my coursework. I
researched into Silent Hill (2006) and The Wicker Man (1973), as they were unnatural in their form
and had themes of cult and so gave me inspiration for both my ancillary work and coursework as a
form of research. I then began to look at past students work as I knew that this would seem more
achievable and I knew what I could work towards to get a higher grade. However, the most
important piece of research that I did was the primary audience research on my ideas and how I
wanted to interpret them. Getting feedback from a range of people that would fit into my audience

3. seemed the most important thing to do as they would be the ones that would find the texts
interesting and so then watch the film.
It was also important for us to plan our time carefully once we had enough research to create our
horror trailer. Before even coming up with an idea, we all gave our own ideas and put them together
to what we thought sounded best. The comparison of ideas made us plan what we wanted to do
with this idea in order to create a successful trailer. However, it also sparked up ideas for my
ancillary work and inspired me to plan how I wanted my mock ups to look. To get my primary
audience research feedback I needed to have a range of mock ups and conventions that I wanted to
use to show the people how I wanted it to look. This meant that I had to plan my time so that all of
my mock up work was ready for me to hand out questionnaires to my primary audience.
In this part of my advanced portfolio I realised that conventional elements are vital in attracting a
specific audience and looking professional. I have learnt that conventional research is very important
and I can prove that reading into the theorist, Susan Hayward, helped me understand how I should
layout my poster and website and the way that each text should look. An example of the way I have
improved can be proved in my mock up audience feedback, “it looks simplistic and easy to use”.
In my own opinion, I feel that my film poster is the most creative product in my advanced portfolio. I
like the use of naturalistic props such as the wooden sign and the car driving into the village. I also
like the way that I have edited my poster so that it looks delusional. I think this makes it different
from conventional posters and interesting to the eye.