How effective is the combintion of your main product and ancilliary texts?

There are many common elements between my three texts – the poster, the magazine cover and the trailer. Firstly, the title of ‘In The Shadows’ appears in all three, as a focal point. To create the title we used two fonts together (one serif and one sans serif), and they appeared exactly the same to make it recognisable for the audience, linking the three texts. The title was a quite big on the three texts as it was very important to emphasise it. In addition, our main character, Holly, played by Shauna Ellis appears in the poster and the magazine cover, as well as appearing several times in the trailer. Therefore the audience could recognise that she was important to the story. This could help us attract the audience as Shauna would be part of our demographic, meaning that people may feel like they can relate to her. This links to Lacan’s mirror theory.

There is also a general greyscale theme throughout my texts. As well as the title being black and white, all the photos on my magazine cover are black and white. This is a stereotypical convention of horror films. Other conventions of horror films include the woods, as a setting, which can be seen in both the trailer and on the magazine front cover. The woods connote the illusion of being trapped whilst simultaneously creating a feeling of isolation. Another genre convention is shadows, and the theme of light and dark. This is obviously featured heavily within our film and this is clear from the title ‘In The Shadows’. 

As mentioned, Shauna as Holly appears in all three texts, while Eva as Natalie appears in two, myself as Amy appears in one. This suggests the significance of Holly’s character throughout the film. There are many elements of her appearance in the texts that connote something about her character. Her dark clothing and make up in the print text connote darkness and a lack of innocence as we want the audience to believe Holly could be capable of evil. However it is possible that this portrayal is countered in the trailer as Holly appears in lighter colours and expresses how scared she is. This will give the audience the overall impression that Holly is a mystery, and very changeable.

As only three characters are really featured throughout the texts, there aren’t many suggested relationships. However the trailer clearly shows Holly, Amy and Natalie all laughing together which connotes their friendship, and Natalie and Holly both featuring on the magazine cover emphasises their closeness.

The narratives of the story have been left deliberately quite vague as we want the audience to be curious about the film. Therefore, not a lot is made obvious but it is clear that Holly is the main character and that she is scared, and perhaps lonely or isolated. This is especially emphasised in the poster as she is alone. There is also some suggestion that something or someone is haunting and terrorising Holly and her friends, and although this is not obvious from the poster or magazine cover, the potential repercussions of this can be linked to the print texts.

The colour scheme for the magazine front cover is red, white and black. Although this theme is not as obvious in the trailer and poster, there are subtle hints to the red. The red connotes danger which is conventional of the thriller genre. The fonts for our title are the same on all three texts so the audience can easily associate the three. In addition, there are some fonts, such as Orator Standard, used in both the magazine cover and the poster.

As well as the title, there are elements of institutional information seen on a combination of the texts. The billing block features on the poster and in the film, as does the production company logo, which is conventional. We want to emphasise to the audience who created the film. 

Overall I think the campaign for ‘In The Shadows’ was effective. There were elements that linked the three texts together, such as the title and our main character Holly. The colour schemes and fonts fitted with the thriller genre and to an extent, with each other. The theme of light and dark emphasised the genre as well as the plot of our film.