Media Evaluation 2

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

There are many different techniques I used in my ancillary tasks to make them an effective combination with my short film production. In this evaluation I will discuss and analyse these techniques.
Firstly I will look at my first ancillary task. My first ancillary task was a magazine film review for my main product ‘Alfie and the Snake’. I did a lot of research in film reviewing and decided to base my version heavily on the highly successful ‘Empire’ magazine.
The first technique I used was having screenshots on top of my film review. These pictures were taken out of my production. I feel this is a very effective; yet simple way of combining my production with my film review. It will also help the reader gain a feeling about what the film’s tone is without actually seeing it. I find this to be a key way in appealing to a target audience.
Another simple, yet effective technique I used was a set colour scheme of red. My reasons for choosing red are as follows:
• It is the most dominant colour in my media production (due to the snake)
• It is an eye catching colour for my review’s white background
I however did not write in red. This I felt would have ruined the professional approach to my film review.
Another technique I used in my ancillary task was putting key information about my short film down the side of my film review. I kept this as short and accurate as I could (much like in ‘Empire’) to give a basic idea of the film to the reader. I feel this was another easy way to get my media production across to its target audience. Also because it has all the essential information on my film without any sort of opinion, it allows the reader to make their own mind up on whether they will view the film.
The final useful thing I used in my film review was the review’s rating system. I felt the image of stars was associated with most rating systems and therefore used it with mine. It also allows the target audience to get a non-bias rating for my media product and allow them again to decide if they want to watch it.
Overall I feel my ancillary task one is a fairly effective way of combining my main production with itself. I feel it could be improved with a colourful background, however this may over complicate my simplistic approach to the film review.
Next I will look at and analyse my second ancillary task. My ancillary task two was a poster for my main production. I created it using Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop (although a minimal amount of the latter).
Firstly, I again used a red font for the main titles in my poster. This was primarily for the same reasons that I used red in my first ancillary task. However since I made this poster later than my first ancillary task, I felt it would allow any of the target audience that read the review to associate the poster with it and then obviously my media production.
I also decided to use green and yellow for the background. I feel the green is useful as like red, some snakes in my short film are green. This would again allow people to get an almost preview like colour scheme to the film without actually seeing it. I used yellow as I felt it is a colour typically appealing to youngsters (my target audience). The fact my poster is bright also allows people viewing It to get an idea that my film has quite a light tone and child friendly plot.
I used an image of Alfie holding a snake directly under the short film’s title as I felt they perfectly matched each other. The fact the snake looks quite ‘toyish’ and friendly will again allow for my target audience to be intrigued by what my film is about. This is especially true since snakes are commonly seen by most children as ‘evil’
Although I feel the above is effective with the combination of my media production. I feel I missed out on a few key features that would have greatly improved my poster. One example is the age rating. This would support the target audience as it would have a universal rating. I therefore feel my first ancillary task was much more effective.