From what knowledge I had gathered I decided to use a red/maroon colour for the background of my media products as it is a strong colour and commonly associated with crime (inc. blood, violence and fear). I thought the type of font I used represents the film well because it has a ‘fearless’ stance.
The audience is able to identify with connotations so they understand that red has such meanings as fear, violence, death, danger and crime. The image of my teaser poster signals a message of crime (in particular violence) and a lifestyle of a British gangster. I think this is implied and comes across well through the pose of the criminal. The baseball bat is also a symbol of the crime that goes on throughout the film. On the front cover of the video box the two criminals again look fearful and ‘hard’ so to speak.
The film I am advertising has a linear narrative and is called ‘A Criminal Mistake’- so named because of what a mistake it is to get involved with drug dealing and the world of crime. In the blurb on the back of the video box I have established the basic narrative and hinted at the development of the plot, in order to hopefully make the audience want more and see what the resolution is. Basic traits of the main characters in the film are hinted at in the blurb and through the pictures giving the audience a relatively good idea of what they are like.
The initial step of producing my poster and video box was deciding the genre of the film and I chose crime with a main sub-genre of romance. Once this had been established I set out the basic narrative structure so I could build on this to create a blurb. When writing the blurb I aimed to entice the audience by not giving too much away. I found that it was quite hard to make the film appealing by achieving this aim in so few words.
I thought about what kind of images I wanted on my video box and poster and set about obtaining some photographs of a good quality, although nothing near that used in the media industry. Another problem with using my own photographs is that I had to use the people I knew and they didn’t have much spare time so it was difficult to get them together. Also, they couldn’t take direction very well so the clips could have been better.
The next thing I had to do was learn how to use the scanner. This proved not too hard to do. However, editing the photographs was one of the biggest obstacles I came across during the production of my media products. To erase the background I had to use a programme called ‘Paint Workshop’ which wasn’t able to do very complex things with the photographs or graphics, which was another limitation.
Once I had edited the background for two of my photographs I had to then colour it the same as the background on my video box and poster which is a maroon/red. This also proved very time consuming but once completed they looked much better.
A major limitation was not having the equipment to make the media products look of a high quality standard. But using the programmes available I tried to make them of the highest standard I could. I used the Internet in order to obtain the eighteen-certificate symbol to put on the video box. I chose this certificate as many crime films contain scenes of an intensely violent, disturbing nature and also some scenes containing an explicit sexual content.
A reoccurring problem I faced was running out of space on my hard drive. This was due to the number of graphic images I was using for my video and poster.
After I had completed these two media products I felt that although they may not be of the same standard as a Hollywood advertisement for a film, they still achieve certain objectives such as meeting the needs of the audience, making it clear who the target audience is, etc.
When I started to produce my video box and poster I was not too confident about how to go about portraying the film through my use of colour, lettering and images, but as I progressed I soon became more confident about the ways in which to target my audience. My teaser poster for example has little information on, but I feel that it wants the audience to know more about the film and hopefully come and see it. If the marketing of your media product(s) is wrong then this can prove to be a serious limitation and very disadvantageous as the wrong audience will have been targeted.
Although there were many obstacles and limitations that occurred I think my video box and poster will interest and attract my target audience (aimed at those interested in crime films), making them valid media products.
