This is evaluation question 2 for my A2 media studies

1. Evaluation QuestionTwo
How effective is the combination of your main
product and the ancillary texts?
James Bentley

2. AncillaryTexts
An ancillary text is a vital component when distributing a film. It is a good way to show
your product to a wider audience. And this carries great importance as without an
audience there would be no point in making a film, and the film industry would not be
what it is without audiences.
As a group we had to create two different ancillary texts, to distribute to our target
audience; both male and females aged between 15 and 30 and fans of action and crime
films. Our products obviously had to relate to the film that we had created, and needed to
be made in such a way to interest viewers into a desire to watch our film, so we wanted to
grab their attention but not give too much away.
Although there were many media platforms we could have chose to create an ancillary
text from, we chose to create a poster and a radio trailer in order to advertise our film.
With research into similar posters and radio trailers, we knew what things should be
included in our ancillary texts.

3. Posters
A poster is a very effective way of selling a product as they can be accessed, viewed and
interpreted by a wide audience.This is due to them been seen in places like, cinemas, bus stops
and buses themselves, online and on billboards to name a few places.As the amount of people
that would see this is high, and because the volume of posters out there is high, it is important to
create a poster that stands out among those of its competitors.
As a starting point, I began researching and finding similar examples, of other films similar to ours
and their posters, in order to give me inspiration for the design for a poster I wished to create.This
meant looking at fonts of titles, graphology that should be included and the taglines, which are an
imperative part when advertising a product as it is something that sticks in the mind.

4. Poster Analysis
As part of my research, I chose a poster from a
film with a similar genre to ours. ‘Skyfall’ was the
poster I chose to analyse, this is the poster with
my analysis on it, which gave me a good
understanding of what makes a good poster.
From this poster I decided to take a ‘less is more’
approach to my poster design as is the case in
the poster I analysed.
As well as this I made sure to include the key
components of a poster such as the title, the key
production names and roles and the release date
as well as images of the lead characters.

5. My Own AncillaryText
This was my rough design for a poster, and I stuck
to the idea of leaving much to the imagination of
the viewing audience.The large font was simply
chosen to stand out and the three images are of
the main characters, the one in the middle being
the focus as the main character and the other
two smaller and further in the background
looking in on the main image, to represent that
the whole film revolves around the middle man
being cut out.
I also made sure to include the important aspects
such as future release date, the key production
components and the age certificate of 15.
It is important to remember that this is only a
rough draft of an idea and not the final film
poster.

6. The Final Poster
We took these photos separately to shots
from our film so that we could get the best
quality out of the shots. As it turned out
we took all three drafts into consideration
and created a poster with elements from
all three.
We inserted separate images from online
sources that we used as props in our film.
This adds a specific element of what is to
be expected in the film as it is clear to see
from the poster that the film will involve
guns, blood and therefore presumptions
of death.
Finally the things we made sure to include
were a tagline at the very top, reviews that
help to sell the film, as good ratings make
for a good film, and the cast, film name
and production members as expected
from film posters.

7. Evaluation of our Film Poster
Personally I was happy with the poster we created as a group. It has the look of
intensity that we intended to create and the look of a crime/thriller poster with
the aspects we included.And as we created a poster relevant to the genre of our
film I think that we definitely made a successful poster.As this poster is true to
the genre of film we created I think it successfully helps to sell our film as the
audience would know what to expect when viewing the film from what they
have seen on our poster.
I think that we could have improved the poster by including reference to the film
we made in our AS studies as this would have brought together the two years
and projects we did, as well as showing a progression fromAs to A2.
Furthermore I think we could have improved the poster by removing one or two
images or by possibly making it more simplistic, as we could have fallen into the
trap of overloading the poster which could be too much for a viewing audience.

8. RadioTrailer
Radio trailers are very similar to posters as they can be a very effective way of broadening the target
audience of a product.They can be heard on a variety of radio stations. And with the volume of people
that listen to radio over a range of platforms it is a good way of advertising to wider audience.
To research for radio trailers, I found some examples of different types of radio trailers and listened to
the radio to see if I could pick out some film trailers, but due to the number of adverts on radio
stations it was easy to miss some advertisements.
For an idea for our ancillary text 0f a radio trailer I thought it was a good idea to simply have a range of
dialogue from our film and sound effects such as gunshots, followed by key information about the film
and its release date.

9. Our RadioTrailer
Our radio trailer followed the same idea to mine in a rough aspect, however some effects of a
technological difficulty was added, as if the radio station had been taken over by the team behind the film.
This is from our final radio trailer upload, which can be heard onYouTube, we put a black screen
with the explanation on to assure viewers that the video is audio only as it is a radio trailer.
Below is a link to the radio trailer:
http://bca2media2015group11.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/radio-trailer.html

10. AncillaryTexts Evaluation
In conclusion I believe that ancillary texts are the best way to attract an
audience to a film.They can reach a large number of people in a large
number of ways. Posters and radio trailers are two of the best ways to
reach a vast potential audience and for that reason I think we have
succeeded in creating two successful ancillary texts.