Q2 evaluation (Draft)

Question 2

For my advanced portfolio, my partner and I created a short horror film for our main product and created a radio trailer and a poster for our ancillary products. Through the creation of both the radio trailer and poster, w am using above the line of advertising devices to market our film to our target audience, because these ancillary products are traditional methods of advertising to reach a mass audience. Moreover, the creation of these ancillary products to accompany our main product (film), is a conventional practice in the film industry and is important, because it is through these ancillary products that give our target audience an insight as to what our film is about, thus helps in encouraging our target audience to spend their time and perhaps money to view our film. As a result, this highlight how our main product and ancillary products link with each other, because essentially our film is dependent on the cheaper radio trailer and poster to encourage viewership.

As I have mentioned previously, it is the ancillary products that help our audience decide whether my film is worth viewing or not, because all the products contain similar elements, but our ancillary products miss out certain elements that can only be figured out if our film is viewed. For example, similarities that can be emphasised between our film and radio trailer, would be the use of dialogue and sound effects. This is because, our radio trailer contains dialogue spoken in our film, for example “this should’ve been done last week” and “yes sir I’ll get right to it”, therefore this gives our audience some information as to the types of characters in our film and may give them content to decide whether they can relate to the characters, which may increase the likelihood of viewership, as it offers our target audience a glimpse as to what our film will be about. For example, we obtained audience feedback on a draft of our radio trailer and one individual argued that she understood the narrative was about a possession and a ghost. In this case, you can apply the uses and gratification theory by Bulmer Katz, as my audience felt “excited” to watch our film after listening to the radio trailer, because we “didn’t reveal much”, thus the ambiguity of our radio trailer entertained our audience. However, despite the radio trailer containing dialogue from the film, the radio trailer lacks a continuous narrative, because the narrative is broken using sound effects, such as heavy breathing, banging on the door sounds and clock ticking sounds and some of these sound effects are also found in the film. This creates an enigma code and the use of enigma codes is conventional to both the horror and mystery genre, as both these genres are based on legitimizing audience “concerns, questions, and pleasures” though the use of enigma codes that can only be figured out if our film is viewed, which as a result may increase viewership of our film.

The use of music in our radio trailer also contains textual music, from the score of our film, for example when the door is rattling and when the dialogues “this should’ve been done last week” and “yes sir I apologise I’ll get right to it” is said, the use of dramatic textual music, helped to indicate that these dialogues are important to the narrative, thus as a response our target audience may produce a preferred reading, as considering the information they received from the radio trailer, they may begin to construct their own narrative surrounding the conventions of the horror genre that they aware off and the dialogues from the radio trailer. Moreover, in our radio trailer, the tagline of our film was mentioned “if you see yourself run” using a demonic tone of voice right after a female character says, “help me” and in this section of the radio trailer the mode of address rapidly changes, from begging to threatening. The juxtaposition created by the difference in tone and mode of address, connotes to the binary opposition of good vs evil and the living vs the dead. The word “run” is also mentioned in our film several times and it has been extracted from our tagline, using the same demonic voice, to which our audience may link to our radio trailer. Thus, this provides our audience with more hints as to what our film will be about, raising excitement and curiosity.

Secondly, similarities between poster and my film would be the use of colours, as in our poster, the background image of a close up shot of Richard Williams (the 1950s-main protagonist), has a sepia filter over the image, while the foreground image of a close up shot of Alan Smith (the modern main protagonist) does not have a filter over the image, instead heavy artificial white lighting lights the image, as a result from this our audience may infer that our film is perhaps based on two different time periods, which may target our niche target audience who enjoy history as a sub-genre. This is like our film, because the entire 50’s section of the film has a sepia filter over it, while the modern section does not. Moreover, the use of a pitch-black background is conventional to the horror genre as well as the mystery genre, as it connotes to the absence of life and truth, thus death, which links to our film, because our film is based on the dead who turn into vengeful ghosts and spirits. In addition, the title of our poster is in the colour white, but behind the white writing is red writing and the colour red represents blood, which is also found in our film, because blood is iconographic to the horror genre, as well as the use of ghosts and spirits. This is because, blood connotes to danger and death, which is a running theme in our horror film. On the other hand, my poster does not explain why the background image and the foreground image if of the same man, but in different time periods, which creates another time enigma code that my audience can understand if they watch my film. Therefore, it is very clear as to why ancillary products aid the advertising and perhaps viewership of our film, because my ancillary products tease our audience in a way, to tingle their curiosity and thus feel encouraged to watch my film. Our audience gave verbal feedback to us on our final poster, as they argued that the use of “a filter to represent time was cleverly done”. In addition, we used survey monkey to conduct a small survey whether our poster looks better with our without a hand clock between Alan Smith and Richard Williams, to which 80.00% said they preferred the poster with the clock, for several reasons, such as the clock “represents time and links with the title”, thus we decided to leave the clock in our poster as not only due to audience feedback, but due the idea that the clock is symbolic in our film, as in our film we have a time skip.



To distribute my film, I will be releasing our film through the incorporation of below the line of advertising, which are non-traditional methods of advertising to reach niche audiences, as well as using traditional methods such as the use of our poster and radio trailer. Considering, that our target audience are between the ages of 12 to 21, who fit in the demographics table of D and E are studying and mainly unemployed, it is important to consider that such individuals are likely to have several social media accounts and use social media regularly. This means that, we will upload our film on social media platforms, such as twitter and Facebook, because these social media sites have video viewing properties. We may not choose to upload my film on Instagram, because the time limit for videos does not stretch to 5 minutes and over. Moreover, I will upload my film in video streaming and sharing sites, such as YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion, this is because these video streaming websites are what many individuals within our target audience obtain their form of entertainment from instead of the traditional TV. Therefore, our film is more likely to gain views in these social media sites and video streaming websites. Furthermore, you can also describe individuals within our target audience as civic journalists, because as well as well as consuming entertainment from social media sites and video streaming websites, gossip and debate is also created, which may mean that our audience are likely to share our film with their friends and so on, thus garnering greater viewership due to word of mouth advertising. For our traditional audience, we would distribute our film to independent cinemas, such as Genesis and Arthouse cinema, because often the magnitude of fear is increased when watching a horror film in cinemas, therefore this would attract our traditional audiences that enjoy the thrill of watching horror films in the cinemas.