The document discusses the effectiveness of combining a main product with ancillary tasks to promote a fictional film called "Deadwood Grove." It summarizes the three promotional pieces created: a poster, magazine front cover, and trailer. The poster and front cover follow horror film conventions to look professional and promote the slasher subgenre. Features like the killer's mask and location title create consistency across pieces. While the trailer alone is most effective, the ancillary tasks enhance the overall promotional package by providing multiple exposure points for the film.

1. How effective is the combination of the main product and ancillary
tasks?
I feel that my three pieces of work work well together in order to make an effective promotional
package. I believe that they all contain a symbiotic link enabling them to look like the belong
with one another, which adds to the professionalism of the promotional package. This was
something I wanted to focus on, as if the three pieces looked amatuer, it is unlikely that
theywould draw in any attention and would instead be overlooked. Another aspect I wanted to
focus on was making sure that through my ancillary tasks, the narrative could be presented to
the audience in an effective way, but at the same time the storyline was not given away.
Poster
The first part of my ancillary task was to create a poster, when doing this the first thing I wanted
to do was following existing conventions in order to make my poster as effective as possible.
The inspiration behind my poster was Friday the 13th
(2009).

2. The image itself dominates the frame, the general mise-en-scene gives the audience a general
idea of the narrative based on the background location. The title is the biggest font on the page
and is presented in the centre of the frame, allowing the audience to see it clearly. By placing it
towards the bottom of the frame, it gives the audience more to look at regarding the main
image. The institutional information is placed at the bottom of the poster, well out of the way as
it is the least important text on the frame.“Coming Soon” rather than a specific date, acting as a
teaser so that the audience will continually be checking to see if a date has been given. It is
however, usually more conventional to see an actual date. Furthermore, it is also conventional
to have a tagline which will further indicate narrative to the audience. This is something not
present on my poster, but it something I could look into to further increase the effectiveness of
my work.
As Friday the 13th was such a popular and successful film, by following some of the main
conventions I believed it would help my poster look more professional and would therefore
make it more effective in promoting the trailer. Not only did I follow conventions, but other
similarities as well, such as the weapon being placed in the left hand, a low angle shot making
the antagonist look more dominant, having the location in the background and presenting a mist
to look it more eerie.
Front Cover
I believe that my magazine front cover follows typical
conventions. The main image dominates the frame, it
contains a main sell line as well as other sell lines, a
puff, a masthead and a skyline (tagline). The
conventions allow my front cover to look professional
as does the colors used. The colours used also help
to promote the slasher sub genre as it is
predominately black, white and red.

3. The mask plays a huge role in the main image, I believe that it is important regarding my
promotional package to have my killer presented in all three pieces in order to create a
symbiotic link to increase recognition of all my products. It is conventional in all slashers to have
the antagonist as the main focus, as that is who the audience fear the most but at the same time
are the most interested in, which is why I did not want the protagonists presented on the front
cover or the poster, as it would be less attractive as well as less recognisable as a slasher film.
Additionally, by having ‘Deadwood Grove’ both present on the poster as well as the front cover,
it allows the audience to put a title to the face, as well as creates another symbiosis between the
two. Furthermore, the presence of the word ‘dead’ insinuates to the audience that there will be
some deaths in the film, resulting in further to the slasher sub genre.
I personally feel that the main product is the most effective piece of the promotional package.
However, I feel that with the addition of my ancillary pieces it enables my overall campaign to
become more effective. Where as, if there was no main product and it was merely just the
ancillary pieces, they would not be able effective in promoting my film, Deadwood Grove.