Critical Evaluation

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts? In our main production, we were trying to firstly show Connor as a successful actor (and a role model), and then sadness and feeling sorry for him as he succumbs to the pressures of fame. We also wanted to show the audience that fame can wreck people’s lives, and how the pressures of fame can finally make celebrities lose control.
On our poster, we had just one large photo of the main character (Connor), and this was so it was eye-catching, appealing and to show that he is the centre of attention in the film.


We researched existing film posters, and got this idea from the film posters for “Fighting”, and “Aviator”.

However the film poster for Aviator, shows a picture of the plane, (which is also a main part of the film), however we did not want to incorporate this feature into our film, (for example, by adding a camera to show that he is a celebrity), as we didn’t want to give too much away to the audience.

When we took the photo, we tried to get the shadowing was just right so one side of him was dark and the other was light, showing that he had something to hide. We altered the shadowing on photoshop, to looks slightly darker than it was on one side, as this created more effect. Connor also had a negative/depressed look on his face which maybe showed the audience that it is a sad film, however could help to sell our production as they would want to find out why. We made the title of the film larger to attract the audience’s eye, and also underlined it, (which was effective as it relates to the title, “The Last Line”). The names of the main characters are also in quite a large font, with a very appealing slogan, “Is Fame really worth it?” which may also help in the selling of our production as it is engaging. This is our final film poster:

I also think our radio trailer is quite effective for selling our production, as we don’t give too much away to the audience, which again will keep them guessing. We put some dialogue into the trailer, which includes Brett during the interview, (to establish that he is a celebrity), and also an argument with his girlfriend, “Lucy”. We had a voiceover of Brett as well, telling his situation slightly which sounded emotional and created drama – linking with our genre. Throughout the trailer, we had the song from our film (I Am Not Left Handed- Boats but not the Ocean) as it is quite a sad song and fits in well. We created our own narrative voiceover for the radio trailer which fitted in between dialogue from the film. This gave details of the film, and gave a little information regarding the storyline, so our audience knew what the film was about and whether it is something they would be interested in; therefore this would be used as a selling point. When researching existing trailers, we weren’t able to find any actual radio trailers, however got existing film trailers from ‘YouTube’, and just listened to them rather than looking at the visual aspects of it also. This was so we could listen to what features previous films had used for the selling of their production, and from there we got ideas and created our own. Previous trailers we researched included “The Fighter”, radio trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71l-kIhJ5j8 and “The Kings Speech” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsxjM03ME7s&feature=fvst. These trailers were very useful as they had main parts of dialogue from the film, which gave the audience an insight into the storyline and also sounded interesting, therefore was effective in the selling of the actual film. As these are film trailers, and ours is a radio trailer, a main difference is that the information regarding the film (such as title, release date, production company), was in the form of text on the screen, whereas we gave this information in the voiceover. The previous trailers, (all being high-budgeted, Hollywood blockbusters), also showed the names of the main actors, which we didn’t do. However, I don’t believe this would have helped in the selling of our production, as the main actor isn’t a Hollywood star and so wouldn’t have attracted the audience to watch our film, purely because he is in it and his fans would want to watch him. This is a post we did on ‘blogger’, on research of previous trailers. http://whathappensinvegas10.blogspot.com/2011/02/radio-trailers-research.html And this is 'The Last Line"'s finished radio trailer. http://whathappensinvegas10.blogspot.com/2011/04/last-line-radio-trailer.html