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

The film distributor is the person or company who is responsible for releasing the film, whether it's for in the cinema or releasing on DVD.
It's important that the distributor comes out on top, therefore has to compete with other film distributors to make their film the best. This would include advertising and promotion campaigns to gain the audiences interest at greatest. For example, billboards, trailers, internet websites and trailers, radio adverts, merchadise selling.

The way the film distributors advertise will vary depending on who the target audience is. For example, older audiences wouldn't necessarily appreciate merchandise, a trailer and radio adverts would appeal to them more, and to promote further interviews with characters. Where as, for a teenage audience distributors use social network sites, for example, Facebook. The particular audience are able to become 'fans' of the film or even of the cast. This also applies to twitter, where the audience can follow their favourite stars and keep 'in the know' with their actions. These sites can also feature competitions for the audience which keep the attention of them until the films release. But most of all these are held responsible for the word of mouth, if people post about the movie, or show interest others are likely to pick up on it and then want to view the film themselves.

When it comes to an audience of young children, or young teenagers merchadise is a more successful way of promoting the film to them as they are more likely to show interest than through written text or listening to adverts or interviews. A great example of this is the way Disney and other film companies use McDonalds to promote their films. This is not only a way to gain the childrens interest to collect toys for the upcoming film but it makes them want to eat here especially for the toys they receive in the Happy Meals Mcdonalds sell.
Another example of merchadising is when the Twilight films were released not only could toys be purchased but accessories including bags and also t-shirts could be purchased. The companies can then monitor these sales and use the amounts as a guide to how well they have done into promoting up until and after the film is released.

This image of the Twilight merchandise shows a variety of clothing and accessories but also the posters they used. A poster is one of the most important ways to the audience because its image based and this alone will draw the attention of the audience in. They can then chose to read the inserted text or discover the release date once the image has caught their attention. Each poster will follow the conventions of a film poster which includes detailed mise-en-scene, to give them a guide to the film. A tag line or slogan to make the film memorable and billing block.


Audience research is very important to film distributors so they know they are aiming in the right direction to attract their target audience. They use ways such as Questionnaires and film previews to let the audience have their opinion which can then become feedback to the distributor. This then makes them aware of what the audience are looking for, what they want to see in the film, so they become a successful target audience.
Before producing our trailer, in pre-planning we created a brief questionnaire to ask the audience what they found most scary in a horror film for example, men, women, children or animals and also what setting they find most successful, for example, a basement or graveyard. We then had a stronger idea on what to create to reach our target audience.

Ive chose these to posters to analyse because they are two different genres of film. This shows the different techniques distribtors use depending on the genre.
The Notebook poster immediately gives a way the genre of the film, the couple positioned on the front connote this. The fact it's raining on top of the image refers to the romance genre and the kick some people get from the 'kissing in the rain' saga. Soft colours are used throughout which relates to the mood of the film. From this poster we recognise the target audience is likely to be female because of the way the image is addressed.
Where as on the Hostel poster, dark, bold colours are used hiding the image in focus just with a faint amber light which draws attention to the subject. This poster is more likely to appeal to an  older audience because of the horror style and conventions used. This also is more likely to be a male audience because of the scarce approach to the image and its features.


An advertising campaign is a series of linked advertisments usually through various media channels. This focuses on one particular product or production that are directed to a particular target audience. Successful advertising campaigns achieve far more that sporadic advertising and can last for weeks, months or even years.

www.youhavebeenwarned.co.uk

This viral campaign for the horror film Hostel appears effective to me because they use the correct conventions to reach their target audience. This includes games and creepy clips from the film for the audience to get involved. Also supporting the launch of this they had support from email and advertising in NME and Kerrang and other websites. This shows they used further sources to attract their audience not only to view the film/trailer but also the viral campaign that had been produced. This enables the audience to gain further interest and keep 'in the know' with the film and also the characters. When entering or downloading from the site you have to 'agree' that you are 18 as it states, 'stictly for adults' sticking to the certificate of the film so the same age as there target audience.

The unified identity of a film is important because it makes the film recognisable to the audience through themes and logo's. This enables the audience to link the trailer to the poster they see on a bus for example, or merchandise they see in a shop. This is used by the presentation of colour schemes and logo's which help the audience recognise and immediately associate.

An example of this is the 'Shrek' films. The marjority of the text used is in a green font relating to the Ogar in the film. They also use ears on some of the letters which also connote this. The audience can then recognise and associate these texts with the film and also the characters which could also feature on the posters and merchandise.

The classification we used for our 'Alice' trailer was '15'. We used this because it gives us a wider audience to target and advertise to. This age made it simple for us to follow similar conventions from other films and help us relate to the audience we were after. We had to consider the horror side of our film as in our thought it seemed a terrifying plot but when producing it needed work to effect the audience for this genre.

For our film 'Alice' is our unique selling point. The young girl we used in the trailer has the biggest effect on the film so I have used her on both my acillery texts.