We chose to put our film name and tag line in the same shot so people would instantly correlate our teaser trailer with the film poster. However we chose to have a more blocked font for our film name as we felt this should be bold and clear to our audience so that they remember it and a fancier, artistic font for our tag line to still suggest the romantic comedy genre. We stuck with our colour theme of pink and orange and made one pink and one orange so the audience could easily differentiate and not get confused and think that the tag line is part of the title. At first we were unsure as to whether or not we should use two separate colours but after playing around with the fonts and the colours we felt it was better to have two different colours. 
As it is a teaser trailer compared to a trailer we decided to be more generic with the release date of the film and just put “Coming soon”. However we have chosen to release our film in the summer as after we researched ROM Com's this is when they are most likely to be released and this has been advertised on the poster. Again we chose a more blocked font, the same we used for our film name as we felt it was important that people had the date in mind so they could look out for it nearer the time. We used pink for the release date as this was brighter and appealed to our target audience better. We also included the website in this shot as we wanted people to go and look up our film once they had seen the trailer. Again we put this orange so our audience we able to differentiate. We felt this worked well as its simplicity makes it stand out to the audience and stick in their minds.
Although we filmed in school we wanted our settings to look more realistic and outside of school as possible so we chose carefully where we picked to film. Most of our filming was done outside in the school grounds as it was much easier for us to get away from the natural school setting. A typical location we did use though was a shot of our two main characters supposedly in a coffee shop. This is very conventional of the ROM-com genre and can be seen in many films such as Valentine’s Day and 500 days of Summer. 
Seeing that we did nearly all our filming on one day it was important we made sure our character’s had at least one change of clothes so it looked as if the different shots of the couple had been filmed over a period of time. We were conscious of the fact that in ROM-Com's, usually the female protagonist is very good looking and normally looks quite girly. This is a convention we kept and although we didn’t make her look overly girly by wearing dresses and skirts as per usual she still had a pink cardigan on and her hair down. We didn’t want our male protagonist to be dressed overly perfect as per usual in ROM-Com's so we kept him in casual attire to suggest the young and fun element of our teaser trailer. By doing this we also felt it would appeal to our target audience much better.
Here we deliberately chose to film close up to get the expressions on each of the characters faces and suggest the idea of them falling in love. Also the way their heads are positioned almost makes a love heart shape so we didn’t want to get too close up and lose this element to it.
We wanted to include a shot where the character’s are physically moving as many of our shots are too quick to capture any real movement so we decided to include this one at the end and slow the pace down a bit to suggest the romantic element of our film.
When we watched our film back we notice that some of the shots were off centre and this was one of them. We looked through the settings on Pinnacle studio and found a device that would help us move the shot around and centre our character so our filming did not look clumsy.
Also we never reveal why Mr Imperfect is imperfect during the teaser trailer we just have footage of the male and female character together therefore the audience has to go and watch if they want to find out.
Our voice over is very important in explaining what is happening and giving the audience clues as to what could happen in the actual film and this is much like the 500 days of Summer teaser trailer which has no dialogue from the actual characters in it what so ever.
Originally we were not going to have a voice over on the shots of the film name and the release date as we wanted to challenge the conventions of a ROM-com in this way, after watching it all the way through we felt it would be more effective if we did have a voice over as the teaser trailer seemed empty without out and suggested more of a horror or thriller genre than a romantic comedy.
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| Original magazine cover |
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| Final magazine cover |
Originally we were going to use the colour scheme of red as it is what we saw on many film magazines. However we felt it didn't really suggest the idea of a romantic comedy so changed our colours to white, pink and grey. We also changed the font of "Imperfect Mr Perfect" for the same reason. On our original poster the image of our character looks very posed and not fun and youthful as we wanted her to look. By changing the image to her in her character I feel we have made the magazine more appealing to our target audience. Also before the magazine looked quite plain and dull due to the white background. Now we have a background the magazine seems to have a bit more life to it. From our research of film magazine we found that the cover lines used a selection of fonts so we tried our best to mimic this convention.
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| Our film poster |
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| Poster from research |
For our poster we felt the image had to be the focal point so decided to make this stand out. Also we decided to use an image that would suggest the ROM com genre to the audience. From our research we found that very often the stars of the film where clothes that match the colours of the fonts on the poster so we made sure that our female character had pink on and that our male character had white on. This is evident in film posters such as "failure to launch". We felt this worked well as it tied the whole poster together and makes it more eye catching, however I feel it would have maybe looked better with a coloured background as I feel there is a lot of white space on ours but we kept it white to stick to ROM com conventions. We used the contrasting colours of pink and orange for the stars names as it made them stand out and from our initial audience research we found that 16-24 year olds are more likely to go and see a film if it has an actor or actress they like starring in it. On our poster we decided to put "Summer 2011" rather than just coming soon as we had in the teaser trailer this is because the poster would be released not long before the film comes out. Also as our target audience are 16-24 year olds it would be sensible to release the film in the summer because a lot of our target audience will be off school, college or university We used quite a blocked font for our film name and release date as we wanted it to be easily readable from a long distance so people are able to remember what it's called and when it's coming out. However for our tag line we used quite an artistic font to suggest the ROM com genre. This works well as it not only suggests the genre but it breaks up the blocked font that is on the rest of the poster.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We wanted to create a promotional package that was able to reach out to a mainstream audience and with the target audience we chose we felt this would be easy as 16-24 year olds are generally the easiest people to advertise to. For example they are the people who go to the cinema most so they would be able to see our trailer and poster. They are the people who go on social networking sites the most so we could advertise through them to get to advertise to our target audience and with the majority of 16-24 year olds on social networking sites they are the easiest people to advertise to. For example they are the people who go to the cinema most so they would be able to see our trailer and poster. They are the people who go social networking sites the most so we could advertise through them to get 16-24 year old attention. Also they are the people who generally do not have as much responsibility as other age groups so are able to go the cinema to see our film. However targeting the magazine at this age range was a little harder as film magazines tend to be very specific at who they target and often it is the same people who buy them each week or each month and these people are generally film fanatics. Despite this we tried our best by using a range of fonts and colours to grab their attention. Our three products work well together as we were able to base them around our tag line “love makes the imperfect perfect” which we thought of very early on in the process. I feel this is the main way our products are linked together and it helps our audience effectively link all three products together and maybe get them to explore a media which they haven't before such a film magazines. One thing we decided we would keep the same on each of the products was the colour. We kept orange and pink running through each of our products so it was easy for our audience to see that all three products link together.
In each product there are successful elements. In the poster I feel the image works really well for what we are trying to promote about our film and suggests the romantic comedy genre very well. Also as they are smiling and laughing which connotes the fun and young side of our film that we have tried to promote to appeal to our target audience. On our magazine cover the variety of fonts and colour are what best appeal to our target audience and would successfully sell the magazine. Within the teaser trailer I feel the most successful parts are the last two scenes as it clearly shows the romantic comedy genre and goes from a close up to a long shot which I think works really well.
We did have some difficulties which each of our products but they were all problems we were able to overcome. In the teaser trailer we had some shots that were off centre and some that had been filmed in HD and some that had not. We were able to fix these quickly in Pinnacle using some of the editing devices available to us. We also had a shot of our two main characters in the “coffee shop” and our female character looked as if she talked and this made the film look unprofessional so we decided to take it out and go back through the footage we had to find a more suitable shot. On the magazine front cover we had to change the image as when we first got feedback people felt it was too posed for a film magazine. We also changed the colour of our cover lines from red to pink to suggest the romantic comedy genre and appeal to our target audience. Originally on our poster we wanted the film name on the bench with our characters but when we took the photo we didn’t feel this looked right but we then had to decide where else it could go and this involved moving some items that were already on the poster.
The weakness I feel our teaser trailer has is that we filmed all of the “imperfect” guys in the same place with the same background so it looks quite boring and also the camera is shaky at the beginning which is something we could have looked into sorting out. On our poster I feel that there is a lot of white space and we maybe could have had a background despite a white background being conventional for ROM com posters. Our magazine front cover works well but there are a few issues with the background for example there is a bin in the background and although this is not clearly visible it would have looked more professional if we had edited it out.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?To get our audience feedback we used questionnaires and Facebook. Before we started the process of actually creating our promotional package we produced a questionnaire to see what our target audience would want from a ROM com promotional package. The most important things we gained from this were that:
· In a film poster people firstly looked for an image
· Rom-com was the most popular genre
· Teaser trailer was the most popular way to advertise a film
After taking these into consideration we started to create our promotional package. Once we had finished our magazine we asked our class for feedback to see if it would appeal to our target audience, they said they felt our image was too posed so therefore we changed it to an image of our actress in character.
Once we had finished our teaser trailer we uploaded it to Facebook to get people’s feedback. The main feedback we got was that:
· The camera was to shaky at the start- Although we had discussed changing this, we decided we wanted to keep it to give the film a more “home video” type film and try and relax our audience into watching it.
· The end shot of the film name wasn’t long enough- This was something we looked at and decided it did go quite fast so people may not catch the film name, we therefore elongated the shot so it gave our audience plenty of time to read it.
· The voice over was too serious for a rom-com- This was another thing we looked at when it was brought to our attention but we felt that the voice over is appropriate as we don’t want our audience to think our film is just comedy so having a more serious voice over suggests the romantic element to our film. Also we wanted a British voice over as the majority of our audience are going to be British and we felt this would appeal to them much more.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We then created and handed out questionnaires to our class for them to evaluate all three products and give us their opinions. From 8 questions we found out that:
· Our promotional package does serve its purpose
· Our target audience preferred the teaser trailer compared to the magazine and poster
· They felt we needed a wider variety of shots
· They felt we needed more emphasis on the prejudice against the male protagonist that makes him imperfect.
We agreed with the wider variety of shots and understand that we do have a range of shots included in the whole teaser trailer however sometimes certain shots are too long especially for a teaser trailer and just by adding in a different shot we could have made our teaser trailer a little more exciting. The suggestion that we needed more emphasis on the prejudice against the male protagonist was an element of the film that was discussed a lot during the process but we came to the conclusion that we wanted to leave it so that people came to see the film to find out why he is imperfect and why her parents are prejudice against him. During this process we have used a range of new media technologies in order to create our promotional package. To do our initial research we mainly used YouTube especially to find examples of teaser trailers. Software such as Pinnacle and Photoshop have aided us in the creative side of the promotional package. In Pinnacle we have uploaded and edited our teaser trailer and used a range of editing devices available to us to make our teaser trailer the best it can be. To edit our images we used Photoshop, this was a program I had heard of but never really used before so I was able to learn some new skills from other members of my group. As mentioned before, we felt Facebook was one of the best ways to advertise to our target audience and used this as a way to get feedback on our work. To get the music for our teaser trailer we found out about a copyright free music site, where artists post their music and sound effects for people to use copyright free. I used Blogger to update my groups progress, I found this a quick and easy way to show what we have been doing and evaluate our progress.
Examples
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| YouTube |
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