Ancillary Texts Ideas and Research 1

For our first piece of Ancillary Text, me and Conor are going to create a poster to promote our film, this will be different to the teaser poster created earlier on into the project because this poster will give a way a little more about the film. In this poster we will show our cast and props from our filming, rather than just showing an idea of what we may use in the film. 

Initial Ideas:  
The poster will be created when we shoot our filming and will show the camp site that has blood on the tents and show the camping gear scattered around the camp site. I think it would also be a good idea to show the arm hanging out of the tent to signify a death has occurred here, we will not show the identity of any character on the poster so the central protagonist will not be shown, even though it is traditional to do so, we believe our character should not have too much given away about him before watching the film, so we have chosen not to show him on our poster. 

Research Into Posters: 
Me and Conor have looked at a couple of horror film posters, and a couple of posters from short films, we have fully analysed them in order to pick up some ideas and techniques from these posters, notice that all the posters reviewed are from recent films, this means they have the technology, only for the high budget films, to create extremely amazing posters which me and conor do not have the software or ability to make. However we can use the techniques and create a good poster ourselves.

The Fourth Kind: 

• This poster uses lighting to its advantage to draw attention to the floating body. As this one person is the only character on the poster, this could signify he is the central protagonist.
• The poster keeps the character as anonymous by not showing his face, the face of the body actually hangs off the poster, as if by mistake. The poster wants us to focus on the mans body rather than his face.
• Because we can not see facial expressions of the person, the designer of the poster has made the body look very tensed up to show his emotion, this signifying that he is scared/panicking 
• The tag-line is in the window, this creates the sense it is the words uplifting the body, this signifying a Sci-Fi influence. With the light beaming the window this signifies an alien encounter. The font of the text used in the title also signifies a Sci-Fi genre, with the words glowing like neon lights on a UFO. 
• The letters of the poster are slightly stretched to create the impression that they are being lifted into the air just like the body of the male. 
• Usual production team shown on bottom of poster.

Friday 13th (2009): 

• The male in the centre of the poster is made to look strong and powerful by using a high angled shot, because he is at the centre of the film poster we automatically assume that he is the central protagonist. 
• Because the central protagonist has a mask on we get no sense of identity or emotion from the character, and can not make any assumptions on what the character is like, other than the mask and the machete signifying he is a serial killer. By wearing the mask the audience feels un-eased by the character, and are drawn to watch the film to find out more. 
• With the red font and the machete used in the poster, this signifies a slasher genre, which will contain a lot of violence. This is connoted from the red blood used to signify death and blood. 
• Blue tint used in the background of the poster to signify a supernatural, this connects with many horror films which use the very popular technique.
• The woods in the background signify an isolated setting with 'no where to run' for the victims, this makes the central protagonist look much more powerful than if the background was the centre of New York at 3 in the afternoon. 
• Dark background with moonlight illuminating central protagonist is a great technique used to light up the very dark poster.

Dead Snow:

• Immediately from looking at the poster you are drawn t head on the floor, with the blood over the snow and on the chain-saw, this signifies a horror/slasher genre and violence!
• The head is wearing some kind of military hat, this signifies a war film, which is anchored by more soldiers in the background of the scene.
• The snow and mountains in the background signify the setting of the film.
• Narrative Enigma created, because you can not see the head of the man standing, it leaves the question, 'Is that his head on the floor?'. Because he is holding a chain-saw with blood on, this man clearly chopped off the head, but did he chop off his own?
• The head of the character eyes are still wide open and looking into the eyes of the audience, this signifies he is still alive and signifies a zombie!

The Collector:

• The person in the centre of the screen is clearly signifying the central protagonist.
• By wearing the leather gloves and a mask the central protagonist is clearly trying to remain anonymous as for he is showing no facial features and keeping his hand covers to stop himself creating any fingerprints. This also signifies that he is about to commit crime. 
• The house in the background signifies this is a victims home, as the male is putting his mask on wile he enters. This could show he goes from house to house killing.

Short Film Poster's:

The Unstoppable: 

• The majority of the poster is taken up by the image of a butterfly shaped image, normally this would signify happiness and not be used in a horror film poster.
• Title in bigger font than other text which helps it to stand out a lot more.
• Even though it independent film, production team is still shown, showing cast and crew.
• Name of director shown as 'A ??? Film' which stand out above the rest of the production team, and signifies most of this persons ideas and thoughts went into the film.
• Not many colours used to keep it to a theme.

District 9:

• Red font signifies blood and death, on the number 9? This links the number 9 to death in the film, and gets the audience questioning why, creating a narrative enigma. 
• Gun shots signify gang crime and an urban scene rather than rural.
• Date of release shown in bold to help it stand out. 

Codes and Conventions of Posters:
From looking at the above posters which I have researched I have been able to draw up some ideas as to how a poster should be formed and with this in mind be able to start thinking of ideas for my own posters. 

In a poster there is always one image in covering the whole poster which will be focused on ever an object or a person, this will be made clear because the object will be centred in the middle of the poster. If the central image is a person, one should assume that this is the central protagonist of the film, and if the image is of a person, one should assume that this objects plays a big part in the narrative. For example in the Friday 13th Poster, the male in the middle of the poster is assumed to be the central protagonist.

The text which should stand out most in the poster is that of the Title of the film, this will be centred horizontally, and positioned ever to the top or the bottom of the poster. On a short film poster it is quite conventional to see the name of the director/writer (usually the same person in a short film) above the title, this will be seen like this (A Film by **Alex Jowett**). Other text on the poster should include a slogan for the film, for example on the poster 'District 9' the slogan is, 'You are not welcome here'. This slogan should give a good hint to the audience what the film is about without giving away too much about twists or endings. 

Final Ideas:
After looking at these posters and drawing up some conclusions, and with some great ideas by me, Conor and our media teacher, we have now come up with the final idea for our poster, I will outline here just how it should look, however this depends on whether I can apply these ideas into my editing.

The back image for our poster is going to be of the campsite that we have used in our filming, this image will be taken during filming so that the image is exactly as shown on film. The central protagonist will be in the center of the screen, and using a low angle shot, will be made to look very tall and powerful, in the background will be a victim lying dead on the floor. This idea has an inter textual reference to the Friday 13th poster.

Ont the poster in block capitals, will be the name 'Norman'. We will not use a special font for this, as the whole purpose of using the name Norman, is that it does not give away a lot about the character. Above the title will say 'A Film By Conor Potts and Alex Jowett'. AT the top of the screen will be the tag line, which we have not though up yet (this post will be updated when we do). A full listing of cast and crew will be added to the bottom of the poster in a small greyish font, we do not want this to be too visible, but should be able to be read.