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

 

I believe that the combination of both our ancillary tasks and our main film were very effective as they link well which helps to provide a way to promote and sell the main film.

It is important that the main product and the ancillary tasks have clear links between them because they are supporting each other. Out short film ‘Jeté’ is based around one girl and we wanted both of the ancillary tasks to reflect this. To do this, we decided just to feature her in the photos of both the poster and the review. This is because by viewing the poster or review, when watching the film, it would allow the audience to immediately link them and would allow them to identify with her.

We also decided on using the same image for both the review and the poster as we not only wanted a link between the ancillary tasks and the main product but also between the poster and the review; we felt that this was a simple yet effective way to achieve this.

There is the running theme of dance throughout the film and we wanted to be able to portray this in both of the ancillary tasks to be able to have a link between them. To do this, we decided that the protagonist should look like a dancer. We decided on having her hair in a ballet bun in the photo. We had also tried several experimental shots of her with her arms in ballet positions, however felt that they didn’t work well in the frame.

Originally, we used a picture from a screen shot of the film for the picture in both our review and our poster as we felt that this would help the audience link directly to the film. The main picture showed the principal character, Faye, in mid audition dance, holding a pose. We felt that this was effective because it let the audience in on what the narrative of the film was. However, after feedback, we decided against this as the final image because it was not good quality and looked altogether, unprofessional. We also decided that we wanted a simple design for both the poster and the review and this is yet another reason that we chose the design above as the final design as it is very clean and simple with the white background and one main picture.

Another key theme of our film is the protagonist’s passion and love for dance. This is shown in the film through her determination to achieve her goal no matter who or what stands in her way. We also wanted to show this in the ancillary tasks and we have done this by the use of the colour red for some of the writing as this is a connotation for passion and love. This also helped aspects such as the title to stand out, as it is a striking red on top of a white background.

I feel that overall, the combination of the main product and the ancillary tasks were effective as we have tried to link them well so that the audience can identify them together. This helps in the promotion and selling of our film which is the main purpose of a poster and review.