The document discusses the design process for a film poster and magazine review created to promote a student film. Research was conducted on real film marketing materials to identify conventions. The poster features the protagonist in color against a black and white background to convey mood. Continuity was maintained between the poster and review through matching font, color scheme, and feel. Feedback suggests the photos could be of higher quality and the review text could be more advanced.

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

2. Film Poster When looking into design ideas for our film poster, we decided it best to try and look at real media posters and see if there were any conventions that could be used in our own piece. We began looking at film posters that had been created by Warp Films, considering this was the film institution we focused on for our film. We found quite similar conventions between each poster but also contrasts too.

3. Both of the film posters have a collections of characters shown, making the poster look full and quite busy.

4. On the other hand these two posters are much more simplistic, focusing on one character (but not a detailed profile shot) and a basic background.

5. Colour Schemes With all of ‘Warp Films’ posters we could clearly see a consistent use of colour schemes in the poster, on the text, tone of the photos and even the costumes of the characters. We wanted to ensure that this was apparent in our own work and so when designing our poster we experimented with different shades and tones that we felt would reflect the feel of our film.

6. Poster designs

7. We then began to look at film posters of more of a wider range, to see what other conventions could be useful for our designs.

8. On a lot of the posters we found that a frequent convention was to have a comment from reviewer that will give a positive outlook on the film.

9. Final design Here is our final design in which. We wanted the picture to project the same tragic feel that linked in with our film. We felt that the use of a colour scheme would help create this low mood feel. We felt that the photo of our protagonist was highly appropriate as this is how we see her in the film, the contrast in her being in slight colour whereas the male figure on black and white we indicate to the audience that there is a more significance with the girl. Our main aim when creating the poster was to attract attention, we feel that the use of a bold title and simplistic layout will allow this to happen and the use of the white text against the dull background will allow relevant information to stand out and be read.

10. Final design We believe that we have successfully managed to capture the appropriate conventions used in real media products that we researched and this has resulted in an effective piece of work. We feel pleased overall with the outcome of our work but, if we were to change anything about out piece it would be the quality of the photos we managed to get. We feel that there is a slight problem in the photos and figures on the page looking slightly stuck on to our background. However We feel that with the equipment and software we were working with, we have been able to work to the highest standard possible.

11. Magazine review Along with the film poster, we also had to create a magazine film review for our piece. We researched into several products such as magazines and internet reviews, we also found virtual magazines which became very useful.

12. We looked at different layouts of photo and text and how it was arranged onto the double page, This review used the whole of one page for its photo (a still from the film) and on the second page filled with text. This was one layout we were going to consider.

16. Final design Here is our final magazine review, After looking at the research and the conventions used in other real media products, we felt that we could take some of aspects from the other design that we saw effective and use them in our own product. Firstly we saw that in every review, the photo that was used came from a shot that was present in the film. We decided this would look effective and so took a photo of our protagonist in a pose that is shown in our piece.

17. Final design Secondly we felt that out of the two different page layout, that for our piece using a photo across the whole spread would be most effective, allowing our review to stand out and also helping with the continuity of our film poster, which also has a background, the continuity also being another convention we wished to follow. To ensure this happened, we used the same font and title for poster and review, the colour scheme was exactly the same and overall we felt the feel of the review and poster would both then reflect the tragic feel of our film. In all the layouts which consisted of a full double page background, the text was always in a contrasting colour. We felt that this too was an important aspect to take on in our own piece, not only because it would allow our text to be read with ease but it also stuck with the continuity of the film poster title being in a contrasting colour. It also allowed our text to stand out on our page and attract an audience to want to read our review.

18. changes We are overall proud of our final magazine review design, however if there was anything we could change it would probably have been to add still shots from our film to surround our text. The layout of the text is rather quite basic too, and if we had had the chance we should have possibly wrote a more advanced and fuller review, even maybe asking someone else to watch our film and review it for us.