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

This is my movie poster that I designed on Photoshop. The picture is of the 'monster' in our horror trailer Asylum. Most horror films do not reveal the monster of the film on the poster to make it more of a surprise or shock when watching it. When making the trailer and the poster for advertising we had to identify our target audience. There are loads of things to think about when distributing a film like the release date, advertising, target audience etc.  We did some research and found out our target audience were men and women aged between 18 - 40. There was also a mix between male and female but males seemed to like the horror genre a bit more. To make our film known advertising is one of the most important parts of the development. Billboards, buses, TV adverts, posters, radio, internet are just some ways to advertise your film. But the most powerful way to advertise is word of mouth.

People see adds everyday of their lives but don't really pay attention to them all. Whereas word of mouth is a more direct way of advertising and you trust people that you speak to rather then checking out some reviews or rating online. The magazine cover is another way of advertising a film. Having your film in a magazine like Empire is a great thing for a film company, but on the other hand if your film is a flop then the magazine will exploit this. Promotions are another great thing to do when releasing a film. Tie ins, games, soundtracks and other merchandise are brilliant ways to promote a film. Film studios will invest in expensive marketing campaigns to maximize revenue early on in the release. Studios also do promotional tours which consist of the film actors, directors and producers appear for TV, radio and print media interviews, sometimes they show a clip from the film or an outtake. During filming interviews can take place on set conducted in person or remotely. After the release of the film the actors, directors and producers make appearances in major cities and major events to promote the movie even more.   

Both the magazine cover and the film poster feature the same image on the front. This reinforces the movie and lets the audience know what the monster is. Some may say that this ruins the suprise and suspence of the monster but I think it works well in this case. The tagline, "The End Begins" only features on the magazine cover and not the poster or trailer. This is because i didnt want to put too much text onto the poster so it wouldnt be too cluttered. The font on both is also different. I wanted the magazine to look more formal because it was for the front cover of a magazine, on the otherhand I wanted to edit the title on the poster becasue it was an offical poster for the film.  Black, grey and red seem to be the dominant colour in each product. I chose these colours due to the film being a horror. These are typical colours for the kind of horror that we wanted to produce. To get the film noticed, the publicity team will arrange media interviews with available cast of the film. There will also be screenings for the critics before the film is realeased to the general public. In addition we will try get the trailer to be advertised on digital channels and outlets that our interested.