Question 2 - Media coursework
- 1. Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- 2. Main product and Ancillary Texts The combination of our main product and ancillary texts has proven to be very effective and all have been carefully put together to promote our film, using a teaser trailer, magazine front cover and a poster. We concentrated on basing our Brand Identity around “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and by using an affective font, background colour and main characters. The genre for our Trailer is “Teen Drama”, so we used all the conventions of a Teen Drama and the Unique Selling Points of our film and implemented them into our three different products. We did this so that the film would be able to attract and keep the audience engaged and interested in the film.
- 3. Branding A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business. A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, colour combination or slogan. A legally protected brand name is called a trademark. The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity - it affects the personality of a product, company or service.
- 4. Why is Branding Important? Branding is a way of clearly highlighting what makes your product or service different to, and more attractive than, your competitors'. There are four key elements in a successful branding project: The big idea - The big idea is the starting point for any branding project. It is a summary of your business' or product's 'personality', and what makes it different. To find your big idea, you must first look very carefully at your business and the marketplace you operate in. Vision - An understanding of where your business is going, or where you want it to go, so you can plan your journey. Your vision may be large scale - such as switching the emphasis of your business from one core area to another - or simple, such as offering an existing product in a completely new way. Values – Clarifies what your business stands for. Your values are an important part of how people see your business - however, it can be tricky to communicate values. Personality - When you start communicating your brand to consumers, you will also be expressing the personality of your company through the tone, language and design you use.
- 5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower Poster Analysis There are the names of the actors at the top of the Poster n a very visible font. This is done to get the attention of the target audience as they would have a high interest in the film. This is the slogan for the film. It’s very short and catchy. The slogan is designed to target the minds of the audience causing them to think deeper into the meaning of it. The title of the film is very powerful for different reasons. It is written in a handwriting font to help portray the Teen Drama theme of students. Tagline and Credits The back ground of the poster is very basic. This is done so that the attention doesn't’t get diverted from the main image of the three characters. This is an image of the three main characters in the film. This straight away shows the audience who are the main characters.
- 6. My Film Poster Analysis For our Poster we decided, much like the POBAW poster, to include the actors names at the top, so you can clearly understand how many, and who are the main characters. We also decided to keep the theme shown on the real media product, of having the three main characters shown on the front cover. With our background we decided to try and replicate the typical teen diary, with the scribbles and different objects that had been drawn. We also, like the real media product, added the credits with a tagline to further induce the audience to watch the trailer. We also added the production company ident, like that on the real media product.
- 7. Film Poster Analysis It is associated with the film trailer and magazine cover. This is mainly shown through the main character (me) being on the front of both posters, on the film poster it is the three main characters which catches the eye of the audience and provides synergy by being the same character (me) that appears on both posters and in the trailer. The film poster features an image with other main characters in it as well as me to create more of an appeal for the audience.
- 8. The Magazine Cover After researching, analyzing and annotating magazine covers for different types of films especially “Little White Lies” I made the decision that the poster should be able to include the USP of the film and the main character so that the audience our able to make links between the cover, poster and trailer. I choose Little White Lies magazine because it is famous in the UK, better suited for more unknown smaller films and is the best way in terms of attracting the target audience. I think the magazine poster displays effectiveness in being able to combine with the other products, as it continues to portray the image of the main character being the odd one out and there being something different about him that is yet to be found out. It adds emphasis to the Teen Drama genre of the film and it gives the audience reasons to buy the magazine, as the fact that no-one knows the reason behind the main character being different it stimulates an enigma towards the character and the film.
- 9. Little White Lies magazine poster As you can see from this magazine “Little White Lies” there is a big image of one character, which we thought was perfect to show who was our main character.
- 10. My Magazine Poster We decided to include our own title onto the magazine cover to furthermore promote our title, and make it more obvious what the magazine cover was promoting, otherwise if our audience look at the magazine without the title it would be hard to justify what it is. We decided to move the barcode from the bottom of the magazine to the top with the Little White Lies logo, as we found out with the dark colours at the bottom of the magazine it would not be seen too well. We decided with this image to replicate it from a scene in the trailer when the main character Sam has his hands over his ears. We found this to be a very good piece of enigma as it stands out and signifies that there is voices inside his head. We also decided to use a cartoon theme to the poster, because it helps implement the “Teen Drama” theme with it’s comic book look.
- 11. Our Products In our products, we used the font called “Ninoshandwriting” which we found from “dafont.com”. We were able to use the font across all of our posters and trailer. After researching what type of fonts are in Teen Drama’s we decided that this font was the closet to what we wanted. They look handwritten which is what we wanted to achieve.
- 12. The Genre – Teen Drama After researching teaser trailers, (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) I learnt that the trailer is the basis for which the themes, characters, images, colours and symbols of the film and its synergy campaign are first taken, as it shows parts of the film. Overall I think that our trailer adds effect to the overall package, as it includes the same characters, colours and themes as the magazine cover and film poster. For example, there is a shot of the main character with his hands over his ears, and this is also shown on the Magazine Poster. The repetition of this image meaning the audience would know they are part of the same film by looking at the three media texts. The font that is used in the titles of the trailer is the same font used in the film poster, which also creates a link for the audience across the media texts.