Evaluation Part 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The main idea behind my ancillary products was to sell the handheld feel of the film, while also establishing Elliot’s possessed killer as an iconic character. I achieved this in a variety of ways. For both the poster and the magazine cover, I decided to use red font as this would connote blood and danger which is a very dominant theme for the horror genre. For my magazine cover, I stuck to the red and white colour scheme to give it a coherent feel, I also did this because the colours contrast dramatically with one another, making more of an impact when you first see it. I only used one font throughout the whole of my magazine which as Arial, the reason for this was I didn’t want it to look to busy and then become hard to read. The language used on my magazine cover was intentionally simplistic, and to the point, this was to make sure that it captures the attention of the audience and easy for them to understand. The focus point of the magazine is our main character Elliot, the image is after he has been possessed which gives the audience a little insight to what they can expect to see in the film but without giving too much away. On my magazine I decided to change the main image to black and white because I thought that the image would then portray a more low budget, handheld horror feel that reflects the genre of The Possessed accurately.
For the poster I decided to layer two images that I had taken on my camera whilst we was shooting together and change the opacity on Adobe Photoshop so that Elliot's eyes would appear through the landscape image of the forest with a silhouette image of Elliot below in the forest just before he becomes possessed. This ties in with the text of the tagline, but is also uncomfortable for the viewer as it seems like Elliot is watching us. Again, this tied into the voyeuristic handheld feel of The Possessed.
I have used two different fonts on my poster; I used Charlemagne Std for the title, tag line and any extra writing. Then I used Arial Narrow for the credits at the bottom of the poster. The poster gives the impression that there will be restricted narration in the film as Elliot has got cuts, bruises and writing all over his face, and as there is no evidence on the poster how these have been created. This makes you start to think about what’s happened to him and how he got possessed, creating viewer anticipation. This mystery also comes across on the image I have used on my magazine cover. As the magazine Total Film suits more of a mainstream audiences, having a horror film advertised on the cover is rare for Total Film but they do have it for more mainstream horrors. There haven’t been many horror films on the cover, therefore I chose this magazine to break the CDI and target a wider audience.