The document discusses the effectiveness of combining a short film with ancillary texts, including a magazine review and radio trailer. The filmmaker believes the review and film complement each other well through the use of screenshots and descriptions of important elements. A test audience found the review accurately portrayed the film. The radio trailer uses a child's voice and extracts from the film's music and sounds to represent the silent film. While 84% of test viewers found the trailer accurately portrayed the film, some disconnect is expected between the formats. Overall, the combination of products was deemed successful at reaching wider audiences through different media.

1. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?
My main media product is a short film and then my ancillary tasks are a magazine
review and a radio trailer.
I think that the film and review go well together for a number of reasons. Firstly I think
one thing that worked particularly well were the pictures. I tried to use screen shots
that showed important moments in the film such as the Kassovitz inspired shot which
I thought would make people curious and then if a reader was to hypothetically be
flicking through the magazine and see that picture I think it could encourage them to
stop and read the article and then in turn go and see the film. I used a serious looking
posed picture featuring both people in black and white, I thought that this looked
realistic and was a contrast to how both of them looking in the screen shots. As well
as the pictures I also tried to include important things that make the product stand out.
I mentioned the fact that it’s silent, the music and the subject matter as I think that
they are the most significant aspects of my product and the things that make it stand
out. In addition, within the review I have tried to say only positive things so that people
reading it would be more inclined watch the actual film, I didn’t just do this because I
didn’t want to say anything negative about my film but because from the magazines I
researched they rarely say anything harsh or very critical, they more often just don’t
mention it at all.. After presenting my finished product to a test audience that had
previously seen my film review, I asked “Do you think the film was accurately
portrayed by the review?” and 100% of people said yes.
I also think that the film and the radio trailer work well together, because my film is
silent I knew that I would be faced with the challenge of finding either a voice or
dialogue from the film to use. I didn’t want to use the voice of one of the people that
were in the film because other than me, nobody would know who they are so it would
seem irrelevant and although I knew that any type of dialogue would sound out of
place so in a way it gave me more opportunities. I chose to use the voice of a little girl
because I think that is something that is universally quite scary and I liked the idea
that although she isn’t in the film, she could have seen what went on so when she
says ~”what would you do if everything you believed in was suddenly turned upside
down” she could be talking about either one of the main characters or even herself as
a witness. Although I said it would be pointless to include the voice of one of the
characters, I did decide to include the scream of one. I did this for both the scream
and the gunshot because with the exception of the ringing phone in the beginning,
there is no diegetic sound in the film so as I found when researching radio trailers,
although they don’t give much away they do include some form of extract from the
film. Also because of this I decided to include a sample of the music that I produced
for the film as the background for the trailer. I tried to choose a quite suspenseful
section of it so go along with the child’s voice. As I did with the magazine review, I
asked the test audience “Do you think the film was accurately portrayed by the
review?” this time only 84% said yes but I was expecting some people to say no

2. because if I was to hear the trailer and then see the film I wouldn’t necessarily think
that they go together but I think I would understand the connection.
To conclude, I think that the combination of my products was successful. I think that
by producing a radio trailer even though it is a silent would give the ability to reach a
wider audience as would the review. I think the magazine review is more effective
than the radio trailer but in terms of the audience I think it depends on what kind of
marketing they respond better to, be it visual or audio.