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

Postcards:
My ancillary texts consisted of my postcard designs. Here I was explain how shots throughout our short film have influenced my poster designs and led me to my final design.

Design 1:
My first design which was moved on into editing was influenced by scene 13 and the shot of the game of hang man. When drawing out this shot for the storyboard, I instantly was inspired and had an image in my head of what I wanted my postcard to look like - wanting to use the 'Brother' of the hang man to create the second word in the title, 'My Brother Leon'.

Even thought I was greatly inspired by this design, I decided against using it as my final design as I was unable to get a decent camera and lighting on the night of taking the photographs - This left the design looking unprofessional.


Design 2:
My second design was influence by our day of filming when Leon has his beaten up and bruised eye. Although I was not totally for this design at first, I felt the make up look better than expected and I was inspired by the aggression of Josh's character.

The photo for this design was taken on a Canon 450D just before we filmed the kitchen scene. I felt that by taking it against a white background added to the dramatics of the photos. I also felt by raising the contrast and sharpening the image would also add to this effect.

Although I still really like this postcard design, I decided against using it as my final design due to it being too obvious of what will happen within the film. I felt that something much more subtle would would more effectively as a postcard.

Design 3 - Final Design:
My final design was influenced by the variety of items scattered on Leon's chest of drawers. Before arranging the items for this scene, I went off in a trail of thoughts, leading to me feeling that you can always judge a persons personality by what their bedroom is like and what's lying around their room. After thinking this, I was inspired to take a photo as you can judge Leon's personality and have an insight into what his life is like, just by looking at the items on the drawers; a knife, cigarettes, money and a phone.

The same effect of delving into his life in one shot was suppose to be given off with this jump cut in the actual finished product. However, due to being half hidden by the door and slightly grainy, I felt the need to make the shot more cinematic by taking in on the Canon 450d - This I then edited on Adobe Photoshop, heightening the contrast and adding extra 'sharpening' to the knife, which makes it stand out most of all. I felt that by using this photo as my final design, the audience will associate the title of 'My Brother Leon' with the objects, leaving them with a sense of what could be to come in the plot.


Film review:
I based my film review page around a page of Empire. This was achieved by adding the extra articles on the side to make the page look realistic, as if my article belongs on that page of the magazine.


Final Film Review:
When deciding on which style of magazine to base my film review around I chose Empire magazine. This was decided after analysing numerous sources and feeling that my written review fitted most appropriately with Empire. This was because the layout of my paragraphs and my language was at similar levels. This layout I feel consists of:

1. Introduction
2. Plot Summary
3. Positives about film
4. Negatives about film
5. Overall verdict

Before writing my film review, I brain-stormed ideas around this writing layout. Leading to deciding which were the most relevant points to bring up throughout the review. This included the decision of what 'star-rating' to give our film. I gave our film 3-stars due to it having it's minor flaws. I also wrote my article for Empire as if they were doing a 'short-film special' issue of their magazine.

One of the scenes that I brought up from the film was the argument between Leon and the Gang member. This was because the argument presents Leon's life deteriorating through auditory codes, where as we are visually able to see how the arugment is affecting Lily - Which is presenting our theme of dysfunctional families.

I tried to target my audience through creating a visual layout as similar as possible to Empire's film review layouts. I used the same colour scheme and created the layout using photoshop. I also tried to have a potentially humorous caption to go with my photo. This photo I felt needed to be a shot from the film itself and decided to use the Hangman scene as this scene has great relevance to the story artistically. By making my page similar to a page of Empire, I have attracted an audience with a professional looking piece.

I also created a layout for Sight and Sound, however I decided against using this because my article was not appropriately written to fit in with the magazine's creative style.