This document analyzes the branding and marketing of the film "Black Swan" and compares it to the student film "Misconception". It finds that both films use similar colors of black, white, and red in their posters and magazine covers to create contrast and draw attention. Both films also incorporate symbolic elements from their titles - Black Swan uses images of swans and feathers while Misconception uses a mirrored reflection. However, Misconception's poster takes a simpler approach than Black Swan's heavily edited poster. The document also examines how the films' trailers establish their brands through consistent fonts, taglines, and an emphasis on their unique selling points like dance for Misconception.

1. 2. HOW EFFECTIVE IS
THE COMBINATION OF
YOUR MAIN PRODUCT
AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?
BY CHLOE CHORLTON

2. INTRODUCTION
This question looks into how well we have established our brand identity
and how well we have marketed our products.
A brand is something that has visible and stand out colours, design, name,
symbol or anything that customers will be able to identify or distinguish a
particular brand with.
This is also a type of marketing that all companies and products will use to
make their product recognisable. Marketing is the action or business of
promoting and selling products or services. These include the market
research and also advertising.
It is important for companies and products to be branded and be able to be
associated through one as this makes it easier for customers and
consumers to identify that product or company. Branding should also be
used for copyright reasons as they want to be able to keep their product
safe. Having a brand also increases sales as customers know this is real and
as they recognize the brand they are more likely to reuse that brand which
creates a CONFIDENT product.

3. BLACK SWAN
Our film influence was ‘Black Swan’ and its way of Brand Identification and
Marketing had a large input into our own film creation – ‘Misconception’.
Like all production and distribution companies, the creators of Black Swan
wanted to make their brand identifiable and stand out.
Within these images collected of Black Swans poster and magazine
covers, there is immediately 2 stand out features.
The first is colour. There is a reoccurring theme of black, white and red
which is prominent in almost all images. The black and white that is used
creates a contrast between the 2 sides that the main character has. It also
allows a finer detail to be put into the image, than if a photographic image
or coloured drawing was used. When red is put into the images, it is
striking to the eye and draws you as a consumer more into the image and
leave you wondering.
The other aspect that distinguishes these posters and magazine covers is
the use of the Swan and Feathers. As the title of the film includes the word
Swan, this is incorporated into both the posters and magazine covers
through either and actual swan or feathers. These are not used in the film
but they are a big brand identification as you would instantly think of the
animal when you hear the name, so also being able to see links to the
animal on the poster is a good way of getting people to remember the film.
The Swan is a big USP for their brand but is only used in their posters and
magazine covers. Their other big Unique Selling Points are that this is a
dance film and that they do have largely known actors. These points can
be seen more in the teaser and official trailers.

4. MISCONCEPTION
Our Brand Identification is similar in many ways to Black Swan but also very
different. As Black swan has a large budget, they were able to make many
different poster and magazine covers.
One similarity that we can see with our magazine cover and Black Swans are
the same use of the colours, black, white and red. The use of black and
white again creates a contrast which is needed for our magazine cover as
our film is also based around a split ‘personality’ through possession. The
black and white also allowed us to draw more detail into the picture which
was again needed to be able to show the difference between the normal
character and the possessed one. The red eye creates one bold stand out
feature to the magazine cover, which again like the black swan helps to draw
the audience in and wonder about the film and why this is there. The red eye
also just adds colour to the poster as it would have looked a little boring just
all black and white.
We also used the same magazine to market our film by as this magazine is
more commonly used for ‘indie’ genre films. It also suited our film more as
they create dainty magazine covers which reflects our dance USP.
However, unlike the Black Swan, our poster is very different
to the magazine cover. The poster that includes Natalie
Portman’s face for the Black Swan, is heavily edited and so it
still goes along with their dainty theme. Our poster is clever
as there is not a lot of editing done but the simple editing
that is in place, makes a big impact. There is editing on skin
such as covering blemishes and merging the 2 images
together to create the mirror image, but this is all. Another
thing that is different in our poster is that we have a tagline
written above the title, which the Black Swan does not. We
also use the same font throughout which again Black swan
does not. Both these factors can also be seen in the teaser
trailer.

5. TEASER TRAILER
Although magazine covers and posters are a huge way that films can be
marketed, a teaser trailer is what sticks in mind when deciding whether the
film interests you or not. In order to create a good trailer, you must have
your target audience and USP found. We had two types of audience,
younger viewers for the psychological thriller side to our film and an older
audience for the dance and theatrical side to our film. This links with the
Unique Selling Point as the main focus and attraction is that it is a ballet
dance film as there are not many of these out at the moment. This therefore
instantly creates a brand identity for the film and gives us a great backbone
to work off.
Like said in the introduction, brands are something that have visible and
stand out colours, design, name, symbol or anything that customers will be
able to identify or distinguish a particular brand with. In our trailer we
decided that the font would be one of these main factors. We used the font
named ‘Assassins’ in every piece of text that can be seen in the teaser
trailer and also the poster and magazine cover. The reoccurring font will
allow the viewers to be able to recognize this as Misconception the film. We
also made the font white; which is carried throughout all the products and
again is easily recognizable.
Another feature that is used in both the film poster and the teaser trailer is
the tagline – ‘Do you trust your reflection?’. The may not stand out as much
as it is writing that the audience will have to process, but having something
to go back on will help the audience make that link between the tagline and
Misconception and therefore is a brand identification succeeded. The
tagline is said in the trailer but written in the poster and so when people
read it, they will read it in the characters voice and vise-versa.
A tagline and the same font