How effective is the combination of your final product and the
ancillary texts overall?
Our project aims:
The Uses and Gratifications theory can certainly be applied to demonstrate
our projects aims. The short Sci-Fi Comedy we created was designed to entertain
the audience, which is one aspect of the Uses and Gratifications theory. In
order to entertain our audience we included many comedic aspects to our film to
entertain the viewer and keep them laughing and engaged. We created a film
poster and radio trailer to both advertise and promote our film.In order to create successful ancillary texts such as our films posters and radio trailers we first had to conduct enough research and comparisons to real media texts to ensure their success. This is why we formed guidelines through research and followed these to advertise our film effectively and in a consistent way that properly represented our film. We connected our products successfully through synergy creating a large advertisement platform both visual and audio. Both ancillary texts also clearly represent the films genre of comedy.
Film Poster:
Film posters are an important part of marketing for a film and have been for years. The internet has only strengthened this due to the proliferation of devices with a connection to the internet and the cross media convergence for devices such as smartphones being able to access the internet, particularly movie sites and social media where the posters are most likely to be viewed. In order for a film poster to be truly realised, it needs to capture the attention of the audience. That’s why for our poster, I wanted the primary colours to pop, making them yellow and red.
How does my poster reflect the intentions of our film?
The yellow was mainly for the Fidget Spinners and the text to have synergy with the film as those are the colours of the spinner and text in the film too. I think the light hearted nature and comedic themes of our film can be clearly interpreted through our poster due to the expression on the main characters face which is clearly in view on the poster due to him being the main focal image of the poster. The bright colours also add to this light nature as well as the comedic title "Winner Winner Fidget Spinner", a play upon the saying " winner winner chicken dinner", something that is actually in the public eye right now for many, and for our main demographic of teens to young adults due to the videogame Player Unknown's Battlegrounds popularising the phrase.
This adds another piece of attraction towards the poster, making the viewer more likely to engage with and watch our film. The reason the Sci-Fi elements don't pop up much in the poster is because they are not as big of a factor in the film as the comedic elements are. It is one of the main reasons we decided to go with my poster instead of Dan's as the intent and relation to the film in my poster is much clearer and more representative of the film as a whole.
For inspiration for this poster, I was mainly inspired by the poster for
Her (2014) and Volver (2006) as can be seen in the positioning of the main
character as the main focal image of the poster, as well as the red background
and related items such as fidget spinners rather than flowers, the positioning
of the title and the selected image.
I also used an image of Liam from the film to keep synergy and used positive 3 and 4 star reviews like a real world poster to keep that faux reality to it. That's why I also included the company logo (the dinosaur Carebear in the bottom right) and a fake website address for the film at the bottom.
Synopsis:
Our film is a Sci-Fi Comedy, rated a 12A. It includes themes of implied
violence although it is never physically shown. Our film was inspired by many
films and forms of media such as The Simpsons, Twin Peaks, Back To The Future
and The Evil Dead.
We also made a questionnaire about the multiple film posters that we made.
80% of the audience said that they enjoyed my poster the most which is another
main reason as to why we ended up choosing it in the end. When asked about who
they thought the target audience of our film was, just based off of the poster,
60% of those asked understood that we were aiming for many different types of
people and the rest of those asked understood that the film was aimed for at
least one of the members of those audiences. This just further showed that the
poster correctly reflected the intentions of our film. A lot of those asked
what they liked about the poster noticed a lot of the small details and
appreciated that, as well as how it fits with our film and looks professional,
all things that I tried to create when making the poster; meaning that my
intentions were met.
When asked if they would watch the film just based on the poster, 60% of
the audience said yes and 40% said maybe with 0% saying no. These are good
figures and certainly meant that the poster was successful if 60% of people
wanted to see the film based on just that alone. However, just a poster
wouldn’t do…
Radio Trailer:
Through research into radio trailers we discovered key aspects which ensure
the success of a radio trailer:
- Quotes from the film
- Music from the film
- Sound effects from the film
- Voice over to provide release information
Below is an example:
Similarly to our films poster, our radio trailer must include synergy to
represent the films themes as well as successfully advertise our film. Of
course, some films don't do that and market the film completely differently to
what it is like in Deadpool, however, that still gets the satirical themes of
the film across, just in a different manor. We just did the straight forward
thing though, opening with music from the film (I Am by Blunted Beatz) then
narration with information about the film. I was the one narrating and tried to
do the typical gruff narrator voice, mixed with a childish delivery to capture
the comedic elements of our film as well as the child like ones such as the
production company being named "Dinosaur Carebears". There's also a
hint of the way Frank Reynolds from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia delivers
his narrative lines in the way I do which adds to the informal nature of the
trailer and the film.
Dialogue from the film is also featured in memorable lines to act as a 'sneak peek' such as the classic "OH MY GOD!" and "It does work". I tried to incorporate these in a comedic sense rather than taking a typical; approach to it, replacing original lines of dialogue meant for the narration with the lines from the film; just further adding to the comedic aspects. This is also done to entice the audience so that they want to know more about the film, a successful aspect of the trailer. Music and sound effects from the film are used to connect the ancillary texts. Narration (recorded on a H1 Zoom Recorder so that the audio would be clear and without background noise interfering with any of the mix) clearly defines the trailer as a film advertisement and states important information in regard to the genre and release date: Narrator: "Starring Liam Bowskill and Richard Grainger, coming June 2nd 2018."
When creating the radio trailer, we used already existing radio trailers in
order to learn the tropes and conventions of them; as well as to use that new
found knowledge when creating our own trailer so that we could incorporate it
and wouldn’t be completely lost on what we needed to do. The main trailers that
we analyzed and took inspiration from are the Star Wars trailers that can be
seen below. From this, we then understood that we wanted clear narration, sound
effects from the movie and music from the film.
We edited the trailer using Audacity as I was already familiar with the
program and find it far easier to edit audio in than I do Premier Pro. In
there, I just added the music, synced it up with the narration; and then added
the sound effects and audio from the film. After that, I just added images to the audio on Premier Pro and exported it as a video. It was a short process.
No comments:
Post a Comment