The poster represents the psychological aspects of the film rather than action or gore. It uses jagged text to symbolize a "broken mind" and the tagline hints at the narrative without revealing too much. The poster image shows the main character from over the shoulder with half his face, conveying schizophrenia. It includes subtle blood to represent different genres while keeping the focus on psychology. The magazine cover is meant to attract a different audience than the poster with a more professional look while retaining dark, monochrome colors. It features a mid-shot of the character looking sad and "broken" to provide clues without an intricate background. The font, text placement and description were influenced by entertainment magazines to seem typical of the

1. Evaluation Question 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?

2. I wanted my poster to symbolise the psychological sub-genre of
our trailer rather than gore and action, as I felt it was the most
effective aspect of the film. The text I used for the poster was
downloaded from the website ‘dafont’ and emulates the idea of
a ‘broken mind’ as it is jagged and not in a straight line.

3. I chose to use black as it is a bold colour and also connotes
darkness and death, which leads on to the tagline ‘the
darkness comes to life’. I chose this as the tagline because
it shows the general narrative of what actually happens in
the film without giving too much away, because the dark
parts of Leo’s (Oliver Butler) mind come to life in the form
of demons. The actual shot of Leo is over-the-shoulder
with half of his face showing. I chose to do this because it
connotes schizophrenia and the idea of having two
personalities. Also, it allowed the interesting effect of
having a low opacity reflection. I was in two minds about
this idea because I thought it could come across a bit cliché
and obvious, but I now like the symbolism of it and I think
it adds a different mood to the image.

4. For the image, I wanted the colours to be quite faint and
monochrome as the film isn’t bright and happy, and so I
think this helps to promote the horror genre of the film.
The brick wall as the background also brings interesting
textures to the image rather than a plain wall. It also
connotes a more gritty, urban setting which is in keeping
with the fact that Leo (Oliver Butler) is a police officer who
has killed a suspect. I added a subtle gore effect (blood
coming from his ear) to the image just to show the
different horror sub-genres within the film, and I think it
works quite well in that it doesn’t draw too much attention
away from the psychological aspect but still adds a dash of
realistic power.

5. For my magazine cover, I wanted it to
be visually different from my poster to
draw in a different section of fans.
Combined together they should pull in
a wider variety of people to watch The
Evil Within. The connotations of the
monochrome colours are still present
and the cover is quite dark and horror-
like but it is more professional looking.
The image I used for the cover is a
mid-shot of the main character Leo
looking serious and ‘broken’ in a sense
because he has sadness in his eyes,
which gives clues as to the film’s
narrative. It is a typical image that
would be seen on real-life magazines
and it is similar to the horror magazine
covers because of the low key lighting
and plain black background.

6. I decided not to have a more interesting background for the magazine
cover as I did on the poster because I wanted the focus to just simply
be on the character whereas with the poster, I wanted it to look more
intriguing. For the masthead, I used a simplistic sans serif font called
‘Verdana’ as it makes it stand out from the rest of the text even though
it isn’t the largest text on the page. I also used white text consistently
throughout the magazine cover as I felt it contrasted nicely with the
black background and stands out well. The headline for the film
‘Broken Mind’ is the same font I used for the poster. This helps
combine my promotional campaign together and I like that the text is
also ‘broken’ as it isn’t in a straight line. I chose to use grey because
both black and white didn’t work as the other colours on the page are
black and white and I didn’t want there to be too much of a contrast.
Beside the headline, I added a little description of the content relating
to the film which says ‘Oliver Butler talks playing mental ex-cop in the
new anticipated horror film ‘Broken Mind’.’ This was influenced by the
front cover of an edition of ‘Entertainment Weekly’, and this is
something they do consistently on most of their magazine covers.

8. My poster links more to the trailer for our film than
the magazine cover does which I expected anyway
because the magazine cover is more of a general
piece and isn’t necessarily just about the movie. In
the poster, I was about to foreground more themes
from the narrative and I could interpret genre much
more clearly as it was more specific to the film itself.
The main link between my main trailer and my
ancillary products is the psychological aspect of the
film. I feel that my poster really captures the pain
and how Leo’s sanity is broken, which is the central
idea of the film. The mood of the poster is also quite
dark and mysterious, and I feel that the trailer has
this mood as well. Our film is about a schizophrenic
ex-policeman with mental problems due to his past
traumatic experiences and so the campaign had to
be very downbeat, as befitting the conventions of
horror films. The audience I was aiming for were the
more mainstream horror fans, as my film is the
typical psychological horror that seem most popular
within the horror genre at the moment. The style of
the magazine cover is similar to that of popular film
magazine ‘Empire’ which was my inspiration for this
ancillary product.