The document discusses the effectiveness of combining a film project with two ancillary tasks of a poster and radio trailer for a media course. The student aimed to create continuity across the projects by basing them all in the horror genre. For the film, they chose to include stereotypical horror conventions and themes. Both the poster and radio trailer were designed to represent elements from the film and intrigue audiences to watch the plot unfold. Key links between the projects included using music and imagery from the film in the trailer and poster.

1. How effective is the
combination of your ancillary
production tasks with the main
production?

2. For my A2 Media coursework I was required to make a film
within a group, and combine said film with two ancillary tasks
(poster and a radio trailer).
We decided in our group to make the film a horror, and thus
tried to typify our productions with stereotypical conventions
and themes to match our genre as much as possible. I did this
because I wanted continuity throughout all three of my
coursework tasks in an attempt to unnerve my target audience.

3. Creating My Film Poster
I tried to base a great deal of my film poster on the posters above, as all
three are successful horror genre films in their own way. In contrast to a
lot of genres, horror films rarely show the protagonist on the poster. A
more common theme amongst this genre is a symbol or connotation of
death instead, trying to intrigue the audience into following a plot
instead of a character.

4. My Poster
This is the poster that I created myself
and as you can see I’ve tried to stick to
the horror genre as much as possible
through the colour scheme and the
background picture. I made the age
requirement for the film a 15, put a link to
the site on, added the release date and a
rating from ‘The Independent’ to try and
entice my audience into following the film
and getting into the plot.

5. Creating My Radio Trailer
Creating a radio trailer at first seemed quite difficult and out of the ordinary
for me, however after some time on garage band I felt like I was able to
develop a horror genre radio trailer to a good standard. The background
music to the trailer fits in with our short film exceedingly well as the music
really compliments the type of film that we are trying to convey. I, personally,
recorded the voice over for my trailer and after some time I gathered all of
the sound effects that were required too.
I was trying to represent the ghost from our short film on my radio trailer, so I
talked in a loud whisper and enhanced my breathing to create an eerie effect
(or try to). I looked into several radio trailers, however I couldn’t find any that
actually fit into this type of genre that were not a film trailer with voice over.

6. What Are the Links Between the
Film, Radio Trailer and Poster?
In my opinion, my radio trailer, poster and short film are all in tandem with one another. The
background picture on my poster is a picture taken from where we shot the ‘present’ section of
our film, at an abandoned hotel. The abandoned hotel is important to the plot of the film as
that’s the ‘Orphanage’ that our protagonist returns to in later life.
I think that the two are well linked because my poster displays the abandoned hotel in a very
chilling manor, as the black and white picture causes the hotel to seem more frightening than it
actually is.
My radio trailer links very well with my short film because the eerie music used throughout the
trailer is similar to a great deal of the music throughout our short film production. The voice in
my radio trailer was trying to represent the ghost in our film, that also plays a key role throughout
without ever actually (in person) being at the scene.
My radio trailer and poster link well together because they both depict the horror genre very
well. The two are very good for advertisement purposes, as both tasks add a different dimension
to the film in an attempt to draw in more of an audience.