1. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
By Josh Howlett

2. THE TASK AT HAND
The task I had to complete was a professional standard promotions package consisting of two ancillary texts, a film trailer, with a supporting film magazine cover and a film poster which are related using synergy. The combination of the trailer and ancillary texts are intended to create an realistic advertisement for an upcoming film.

3. Why synergy is key for our promotional package
Synergy is “the interaction or cooperation substances to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects”
So therefore creating features that are clear and recognizable and identical across all media products creates a “brand image” that can be instantly recognized from anywhere.
Using synergy also increases the size of potential audiences, because if they eye is caught, for example by a logo that they know, they may stop to read the poster and end up viewing the film.

4. Title
In an attempt to create a ‘brand image’ that can be applied to our trailer an ancillary texts we made sure that our film title was single ordered, so that this title can be used as headlines on posters and magazines, which is why we chose “Espionage” as not only is it relevant to our film, it is simple, striking and easy to remember. It can also be produced more bold on a poster, so that it stands out more and becomes a recognizable title, unlike “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the lost ark”
To create a title that was memorable for viewers we need to make sure the font was not basic and caught the attention of viewers, as well as keeping the same font, color and size across all media products, creating that combination between our products in an attempt to draw in a larger audience.

5. Here are my final products featuring the synergized ‘title’
Play the video at the bottom right of the slide to see how this title is incorporated into our trailer
The end of our trailer features a large white title in the ‘Helveticue Nue’ font in bold, with a typewriter plugin which creates typing effect and a glitch plug in to creating the stuttering. A feature on Adobe After effects allowed to create the broken screen VFX which creates the lines across the font to make it look like a billboard sign. i.e New York Times square.
As a poster and magazine are 2d images and not videos, the title that I wanted to create that synergized across all of our media products is not possible as the glitch effect is a video effect. Therefore in Adobe Photoshop I used the same font and colour and typed Espionage, and using the smudge tool create lines in the text to make it look like the glitched text. Using smaller fonts I also added random letters and numbers around the bold letters to represent the effect seen on the title in the trailer.
Overall this meant that we had a instantly recognizable logo which combined with the trailer and ancillary texts creates a ‘brand image’
The white coloured text also stands out over the black background and suit, which increases the change of ‘eye catching’

6. Production and Distribution Synergy
After completing over 20 deconstruction across all the necessary media products for real life promotional packages, it is clear that posters and trailers for the same film feature logos of the distribution companies.
The deconstructions also made it clear that the production company that would produce a film like espionage is ‘Columbia Pictures’ which can be seen in detail on our production and distribution page on our blog.
So therefore to continue with the professional and realistic approach, to improve the effectiveness of the combination between my media products, at the start of our trailer you see the Columbia picture productions logo, as well as having it written on our poster. Columbia pictures is also mentioned on the front cover of our film magazine.
Columbia pictures being a recognized brand also will increase the size of our audience as it is a respected and established brand.

7. Location Synergy
To keep the running idea of making all of my products link, as it is a teaser trailer I wanted to leave some mystery behind the film to increase the tension within the audience whilst waiting for release date. So I made the film poster using a shot of me in a suit and silhouetted it out so it was the shape of my but all black, and using my Photoshop double exposure warping skills mould a skyline shot of New York into my body that I took on by business trip
As the trailer is set in New York, which is seen in the opening establishing shot, as well as the car scene. This also means that setting my poster up as a film about a man in New York who the audience don’t know is actually a spy agent creates a mystery around the film, especially with the title being ’Espionage’ which correlates too ‘traitor’. Locating our film in another country also makes it look like a high production Hollywood film too. Therefore adding the location into to poster could potentially increase our audience size too, showing how to synergy between my media products is very succesfull

8. As you can see here is my film poster, a man silhouetted out and warped into a skyline shot of New York, along side screenshots of footage in the trailer of New York.

9. When you rotate my poster 90 degrees it simply looks like a skyline shot of New York, this is a great movie poster due the mind games it plays on your eyes, and hopefully increases the hype/buzz around the movie as it will create talk between the public.

10. Slogan/Catchphrase Synergy
The slogan for the film ‘Espionage’ was ”Don’t Trust Anyone”. We used this slogan as it adds to the mystery created by the silhouetted man on my poster, as well as the meaning behind the word Espionage. This also combines with the fact that there is no clear characterisation or plot telling in our teaser trailer. A title in our teaser trailer also says “This Summer, don’t trust anyone” Therefore leaving the audience intrigued and confused, increasing our audience size.

11. Conclusion
Overall, I think I successfully applied synergy between our film trailer and my ancillary texts and in turn this has created an enticing promotional package.
Creating a brand image was the most important factor for me, as I wanted a film that across all three packages could be recognized by one feature, this was the title.