- There are a number of different ways in which the combination has been effective in creating continuity between our texts. However i also think that there could be further elements to create a greater effect.
The image on our poster is of a male wearing a hoody holding a knife about to stab the female central protagonist, but his facial identity is hidden which creates a narrative enigma, this develops to an image of Ben (Ben Crossley) wearing a hoody but this time holding a phone on the magazine front cover, therefore the audience will draw conclusion that because there is continuity between the two anxcillary texts of a male in a hoody standing in a similar stance (as they're both holding something) we therefore know the killer is Ben. This works in well with the film teaser trailer which anchors this idea with Ben being talked about as paranoid and then spying on his girlfriend in the same hoody to connote him as the killer, which is what we want the audience to think, therefore we accomplish the false sencse of security that we know who our killer is until the big reveal that the killer wasnt Ben all along but Lewis (Ben Illif) whose one of Caties friends who she tutors, this unerves shocks the audience.
We were able to connote this as you never see an image which includes Bens identity (his face) and hands holding a weapon in the same image, either his face is scene or a figure in a hoody holding a knife, the hoody is the costume/propp that keeps continuity between each causing you to think hes the killer further anchored through dialogue, this also helps to leave a little mystery which is emphacised as shock in the audience when the true killer is revealed.
The images on the poster connote both violence and sex, from the signifiers of a hooded male with a knife and a naked gril in the shower, these factors link into the BBFC rating of '15' which we have given to our teaser trailer and the film if it was made for the reasons of it including scenes of a sexual nature and intentional violence without humour as described for a 15 BBFC classification rating, which is the national governing body for films released foror public consumption in the UK and Northern Ireland, and also because we researched similar horror films within this genre and found the majority to also be classified a 15, such as 'Prom Night'. Below are two rough cuts, the first shows a scene which can be construed to have a sexual natue including mild nudity {the female in the bath is not actually naked but wearing a bikini and then covered by bubbles as she was not yet 18 and yet we had hers and her parents consent to film} and the second is of intended injury as a result of violence.
(sexual nature/mild nudity)
(violence)
- The poster also links into the film as although being inspired through the iconic shower killing image of 'Psycho', its also has been used to connote a horror film with female deaths, this is one of the key conventions of horror and so was used in our film trailer. The Magazine does the same but with the convention of a male killer being used and incorporated into both our magazines main image and film teaser trailer.
- All the characters are carfully arranged on the poster in a group around the killers knife the denotation of this is that they're the vitims creating more of a narrative enigma to who the killer really is, Ellie is at the top of the pyramid shape of characters nearest to the girl in the shower, to help connote to the audience the girl is her and that shes the central protagonist.
- After audience feedback we realised the less educated reader of a media text ie(general public) may not understand the concept that the victim is stood in the shower, so we took many pictures of shower heads chose one and cut, re-sie and rotated it to fit into the poster on 'Adobe Photoshop'.
- Our film logo also fits into the theme of bathrooms whilst kept simple, we used the letters 'A' and 'J' to make an arrow shape which links to media being full of connections whilst also applying to us as theyre the letters of our first names, the object of a different shower head was also added to link into the poster and manipulted to compliment the letters through the process'Filter-artistic-neon glow' when added it looked more of a complete shower, becomeing more of a phalic object which is commonly used in horror films, also tapping into the ideology of patriarchacl society commonly accpeted as the dominant ideology, and in this one too as the killer is the one with control and is a male, until the end when the funal female finally escapes although the male has still ruined her life and murdered all her friend hence has the control.
- We added water drops, as when consulting audience eedback we discoverd it was such a simple shape that it was quite unidentifiable as a symbol of a shower head intertextually linked from 'Psycho', the drops we did in a darker blue to connote the darker aspect of our film, ie that we're a film production company which specialises in horror films, this logo was then added to our teaser trailer, poster and magazine to help create continuity between the three.
- To make the anxcillary tasks of a magazine and poster work even better with our final product of a teaser trailer, we could have increased the continuitythrough colour for example although we already used the commonly used tints for horror which are yellow for the poster, blue in the magazine and both in the teaser trailer, it may have been better to use just one of these colours throughout as the audience may have found it easier to draw connections to them, however we had chosen to do it this way through research e.g 'Prom Night's poster has a yellow tint and the DVD front cover uses blue and yet they still have the link of red text and used the same tagline on both, which is what we did.
- Another way in which we could improve the effectivenes of the combination of ancillary texts and teaser trailer would be to have the central image on each, of the central protagonist which is Catie a female. I feel this would keep more continuity when linking them into the film, and would establish her better as the central protagonist, however we used the images due tp research of other horror films in that not all but most would have a male killer on the front, because it better establishes the genre of the film. such as 'Friday the 13th' and 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'.
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