Evaluation Q2

2. How effective is the combination of your main task and ancillary tasks?

The combination of my main task and ancillary tasks are very effective in many ways, that each of my tasks work together in such ways that complement each other, especially the main product itself, the film. Firstly, one of the ancillary tasks is the Poster, a poster is made to advertise, persuade, draw and tap into target audiences by attracting them to watch the film using well thought-out image and text and combining these elements cleverly to produce an effective poster that fulfils its role. In my poster I had in my mind to show the main character as she is the main element of the film, to show the main props (red string) and to show a strong re-occurrence of the frequent colour scheme in the film, ‘red’, through Mise-en-scene and lighting. Before making the poster the ideas in my head was to include the main character in all posters, to also show the two men in a poster, to include the tagline which is seen in the movie through the cookie fortune, ratings of the film and also short positive verdicts. I also was imagining a contrast of colours in the posters light and dark colours to show the contrast of the two worlds, reality and abstract, which will link to the main product, in all, every film poster I want to produce with the same matching house style. The posters I made were based on many other posters but in particular ‘Two Lovers’ and ‘Last Night’, these are both romance films that carry quite similar story lines and the same genre a romantic drama. Two lovers has posters which shows themes of seduction and closeness through an image of bare arms of two people holding each other, this hints the element of temptation which the main character falls into, other poster images show the main character surrounding equally on each side (right and left) by a woman, his ‘two lovers’. This also shows he is equally tempted by both ladies and the fact that they wear black revealing dresses emphasises this point, it also shows the seductive themed atmosphere. Similarly, in my poster I have an image of the main character and the two men equally on each side, this shows her indecisiveness and equal temptation to both men, also the red colour of her dress (costume) links to the theme of ‘love’, the string is held between both her and the men and this is one of the main props that link the characters, with the title of the film together. In my poster my title is written similarly to ‘Last Night’ film poster, the way the colours of the names of actor/actress are half blue and white half blue relate to the whole night time colour that is associated with blue and black mostly, which, we see in the background image also. This creates a whole linking house style effects and links image with text through colour and content of text. Similarly I have used this style of linking the red colour theme through the dress (costume) that Delilah wears in the image and the props (String) to the title and names of actors and actress. This also helps in building familiarity of theme and film by creating a strong link between props, character and title and making it the most vibrant colour in the poster, showing its importance in the film. Like ‘Two lovers’ the positioning of the characters I found were significant but also quite basic and I expect that kind of positioning once understanding the film plot, the man is the main character who has two lovers, since he is the main character he dominates the fore ground, the two women are equal to him and both dominate the background equally to each other showing they are levelled, probably through the male characters view or perception of them being the same. Similarly my film uses similar positioning as the two men share the background equally and Delilah stand centre middle foreground in between both characters to show her control and to show she is the main character in the film. These aspects in which I created my poster in are similarly used to compliment the review, draw enough attention and curiosity towards the film in order to progress audience into taking further action, to read the review, as my poster creates curiosity by giving all the hints of the film but not giving the ending away it enables the audience to question the film, what is it about? What happens? Audience then look to the review for a more inside closer look, for the answers about what the film really is about and at the same time, I use the review to persuade the audience even more by giving them personal opinions and viewpoints on the film and verdicts. In my review I had a similar layout to Empire magazine, review of ‘The American’. I used Empire Magazine as I had found it to be the leading seller for film magazine in Britain and is known to have continuously outsell its market rivals such as ‘total film’, therefore due to the success of the magazine I trust it to be the magazine that I should draw my inspirations from and follow its line of achievement. I used ‘The American’ review because it was most eye catching to me, the layout and positioning of the images and text was enough to attract my attention and length wise the content was enough to ‘inform’ me without dragging it on, for example their was other reviews in empire magazine such as ‘monsters’, but I was disinclined to read the whole review as it was a 3 page long review and I wanted something that was quick, easy, informative and simply straight to the point . ‘The American’ had an image on the top right as that is typically the first place majorities of people look as they begin to scroll down, the image is used to show the audience something interesting from the film, a character typically or something primarily important about the film. An article newspaper styled writing surrounds the image, the reason being for this style is to resemble the newspaper style, this suggests the review is trustworthy like the way we would trust the news we should trust this review because it is just as honest! So audiences would trust the reviewer’s opinion and view towards the film and take their word for it. The review has the content which verbally denotes the film in a persuasive and divisive language whereas the poster denotes the film through less content of text and more of image. An example of the divisive language I use is the technique of using ‘chatty’ language which helps the reader’s interest and engagement with the review and reviewer as it seems like a friend’s unconditional opinion to the reader about the film. These two products are essential as they work together to cover different ways of communicating the film to our audience, through poster which is usually seen almost anywhere, from busses to billboards and then through reviews which is seen in magazines, film magazines (especially for film buffers), the internet etc.
This helps relate to the house style of my film, as the colour red links through these products to my main task, the title is evident through props in my film and the idea of the title is explained in the review, so it prepares audience to have more inside knowledge about the red string of fate, review image is taken straight from the film to show a solid link that this shot is from this exact film and this also helps the house style flow. The positioning of the men show how Delilah has control over them and that she equally has a hold on them, and the lighting shows the dark side the film turns into, relates to the abstract scenes, and the bright faded lighting shows her dream world which is far from reality, this links to the film and the scenes and colour and lighting we see.