When creating the three products, it had to be taken into consideration which of the products were released first, second and third; how promotional this would be, and grabbing the attention of the target audience.
I decided that I would release the teaser trailer first, this is because it is conventional to release a teaser trailer at least a year before a film is released anyway; therefore this would tempt the audience to keep up to date with the films development.
The next element that I would release to promote the film would be the poster, this would be a deliberately obvious choice as it would be the most promotional component of the three and would be displayed on the walls of cinemas, and on the streets.
Then finally as the full length trailer is released, and it was a few weeks from the actual cinematic release date, would I release the magazine front cover. This would be because by this point, the target audience will have seen all of the promotional products prior, and would be more inclined to buy the magazine. If I released the front cover just before the actual release date, this would also promote the film to other types of people who read the magazine but are not necessarily a part of my target audience and encourage them to see the film.
We realised that our trailer, poster and film magazine front cover, would have to have some form of correlation between them. It is obvious that using imagery would be the easiest and most effective way to connect all three of our tasks together; and we would have to find a theme that not only links these three tasks together but something that is a convention in existing horror trailers, posters and front covers.
It was clear that after looking in detail at existing trailers that we were beginning to take influence from, for example; ‘The Haunting in Connecticut’, ‘Sorority Row’, and ‘Friday the 13th’. We then looked at the film posters that went with these films, and we began to find the conventions of posters, and the sorts of things that linked the trailer with the poster. So we began to build on our poster with the knowledge that it was usually the images displayed on the poster, or the text displayed on the poster that was the same, or linked with the trailer. However when moving on to find these conventions in the magazine front cover, we struggled to find any for the trailers we had looked at; and most horror films were scarce to find on magazine front covers.
For the main product we created a teaser trailer, for a made up film we named ‘Game Over’. After we had looked at other trailers, with the genre of horror; we also looked at all of the conventions and forms. Not only was it this that we were looking for, but the way each shot was set, the lighting, the clothing and overall mise-en-scene. This enabled us to begin to plan and film our trailer, and making sure that it looks authentic, and realistic. After deciding all of this we had to then link our front cover and poster and interlink it all together. We knew we wanted to make our trailer to be bold, and to show snippets of a killer. We wanted to use the convention of introducing the characters to the audience, but then suggest them all being faced with a question: “would you kill to save yourself?” Finally the last thing we want to ensure is that they audience is left in suspense and wants to know what will be going next, and how it will pan out in the end. However the main component we wanted to be the brand identity across all three products was the typography of the ‘X’ is the papyrus front; and tag lines all linking to the title of the film. (Game Over).
The next thing we needed to do was to achieve these same conventions within our magazine front cover. We wanted to show an image that could easily be connected with the visuals of our trailer in both the poster and front cover. However we initially decided on the wrong style of photograph and so the imagery did not fit with either the trailer or the film poster and this was due to lack of planning and sensibility. So we began again with new photos, these of a girl from the trailer, we made her look quite sinister, by lowering the sats of the picture. We also ensured that her eye make-up was black and her eyes staring into the camera. We felt that by using these pictures it allowed all three of our tasks to correlate well together. We decided that we wanted to use ‘total film’ as our magazine, so we looked into finding out some of the conventions of this particular magazine. We found that the colour schemes were always simplistic, and the font styles not to exceed two or three different types. Therefore we decided that there should not be lots of different fonts and to use a simplistic colour scheme would be the best, and that is how we came to the decision of red, white and black. We thought that this too was appealing for our target audience, using a black and white image and then using a crimson red to grab the attention from our audience. We feel that the use of text and phrasing entices the audience to see the film; not only does the text entice the audience but helps to link the three together. To create the idea of keeping the typography of the ‘X’, and the linking tag lines, we decided to create a pun connecting with the Game Over.
The final thing we needed to do was find a way to convey all of these conventions in our poster, and we knew that from looking at existing film posters and trailers that the main feature of the poster had to be the imagery and the text used. We began by using an image of one of our actors tied up and gagged; however after beginning to edit it all together, we felt that the image didn’t fit the trailer at all. Therefore we re-evaluated the pictures, and this time planned the new pictures to fit the trailer. So we decided to take some photos using the same clothing, make up and compositions as our front cover, this helped to make the poster fit both the trailer and front cover. By using these photographs we felt it links well to the question in the trailer, as it suggests that this particular girl has gone slightly mad possibly, or that she has been captured. We want the audience to still be guessing what is going to happen. This helps to keep the element of suspense within the film and poster. It also helps to keep all the themes we show in the trailer and conforms to the conventions of a horror film poster.
For both of the ancillary tasks it seemed obvious to go back and look into the research that I had done into magazine front covers and posters, due to the fact that both of the images for the two tasks are very similar I wanted to check to see the correlation between covers and posters to see if using similar pictures is at all a common feature.(please enable the fullscreen option to view the text):
How the images used in my front cover and Poster link to an existing front cover and poster.
Finally we knew we had to link all three with a brand identity that ran through and linked together all the products. The visual effect of the three products has a big impact when linking them together, and that is one of the reasons that both the still images are black and white along with the trailer as well. We had already decided we wanted to link them all through the film name, with the typography of the ‘X’ in the papyrus font separating the two words ‘Game Over’. All three also have a tag line that links with the film name: ‘When the game is over, who will be left standing?’, ‘The game begins’, and finally ‘Can you find the pieces to fix the puzzle’.
Below you can see all three of these tag lines:
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