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

Although a conventional image on most mainstream magazine covers would have its featured person making eye contact with the camera, I noticed that this was not always true for Sight and Sound Magazine. I had wanted to use a picture of myself looking down in order to suggest that I may have something to hide and to create a sense of mystery, as I feel I did in my trailer. I chose not to use an action shot from my trailer, because I did not feel that one shot could reflect my trailer properly, and because I wanted something slightly more classy to appeal to the readers of such a niche magazine. My cover shows I am the auteur of the film, and therefore makes my film seem more worthy of being watched by my target audiences of individuals and reformers.

I chose to keep the text simple and minimal because this almost always seemed to be the case with Sight and Sound. They only ever seem to explain what they really need to and the simplistic approach seems to be what makes their cover so classy in comparison to other more mainstream film magazines like Empire and Total Film. I did a similar thing with my trailer, only explaining what I really needed to, in order not to give too much away too soon. For my magazine cover I wanted the main focus to be on the image, and for the trailer I wanted the main focus to be on the footage. I chose to have myself looking down on the cover. Although I know this is not a conventional feature of most magazines, who usually choose to have the model making eye contact with the camera and addressing the audience, my online research showed that Sight and Sound only did this around 60% of the time and I decided to take advantage of this to make my cover a better suit to the enigmatic narrative of my trailer. It also makes my film seem more artistic and suit the usual Sight and Sound audience.

Both the cover image and the trailer create a sense of mystery and gore, and enforce the concepts I wanted to evoke about The Awakening. The gore is created on the magazine cover by the connotations of the red text and is enforced throughout my trailer with the use of fake blood. The mystery is created in the image on the cover by having me looking down like I have something to hide, and is created in the trailer by the close up shots of all of us grinning in a sinister way, making it difficult to determine the evil one. I was inspired by the mysterious look of the Total Film cover that featured Shutter Island. Like the makers of Shutter Island, I knew I couldn't exactly advertise my film on a cover, but I could send pictures out that would portray the artistic style of my film.

I wanted to keep the themes of mystery and body horror prominent in my poster too. I feel that managed to achieve both through my use of the torn image. By covering half of Em's face in blood I am showing an effective use of gore and connoting danger and death, and by showing the other half normal. This is taken from the film noir/low key lighting technique of half-light/half-dark which connotes that a character is a mix of good and evil. My poster intentionally creates confusion over which half of her personality is genuine. Again I went with red text to enforce the idea of danger and blood. The tagline 'WHO CAN YOU TRUST?' is the same one used at one of the final, and most effective, points in the trailer. Taglines are very important in drawing in an audience and something short like "THIS TIME IT'S WAR" for Aliens really help grab the attention of a wide audience and encourage good word of mouth. By using the text on both products, I was thinking that if somebody has just come out of the cinema and saw the trailer a couple of hours ago before the film, coming across the tagline again in poster-form will take them back to that key moment in the trailer and encourage them to watch it.