Ancillary Task Research

Inception was released in 2010 and features an action-adventure film about "a skilled dream extractor is offered a chance to regain his old life, as payment for a task considered to be impossible."

Above is the trailer for Inception, which is a very short trailer being only about 1 minute and 30 seconds long. It features many stereotypical conventions that are expected of this type of film. I have chosen to compare this particular film trailer with its poster and magazine cover because the genre is of a similar one to ours.

When placed next to each other, there are many SIMILARITIES between the poster (left) and the magazine front cover (right). The most substantial one being both the MAIN FEATURE PICTURE and also the COLOUR SCHEME used; the colours used are cold colours, such as blues and greys, with a bold red used for both titles to stand out on the page. The picture features the main character of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio; who is also an extremely famous and well-known actor that had featured in many films. This picture immediately manages to GRAB THE ATTENTION of the audience due to the HIGH PROFILE and attractiveness of CHARACTER. If you also look closely at the pictures, they are very similar even though in one he is facing the complete opposite way. However, he is dressed in the same attire of a smart black suit and is holding a gun, pointing it down the the floor. Another noticeable comparison is that his head is facing a certain direction in both pictures. Inevitably, the poster and the magazine cover are a lot more similar than the trailer. This is because both the poster and the magazine cover are there to mainly ADVERTISE and PROMOTE the film, whereas the

aim of the trailer is to capture ATTENTION by picking certain scenes from the film that make the audience want to see more and by adding soundtracks that is left feeling the audience in SUSPENSE. The poster however, if a lot more DETAILED than the magazine cover. In this case, the magazine cover simply features a very LARGE EYE-CATCHING PICTURE, combined with a LARGE, BOLD TITLE and then a SUBHEADING OF A QUOTE to promote the film. But on the other hand, the poster features a FEATURE HEADING of 'Leonardo DiCaprio" across the top; a quote about the summary of the film which reads "Your mind is the scene of the crime" which basically SUMMARISES the whole story in just a short sentence; a PICTURE that covers the entire BACKGROUND of the poster; a bold TITLE which is the only thing on the poster that is red; this immediately draws attention; below the title, there is another smaller piece of TEXT that says "from the director or The Dark Knight"which promotes the film by relating the new film to a very famous film that has also been made by the same directors and because of this, the audience should perceive Inception to be of the same level as The Dark Night. Below that text, there is another short paragraph of text which features all the CREDITS of the film. They are in a smaller, different text that is actually not very readable, this is done so that the credits are not a main feature of the poster but legally, they have to be on there. And finally, below the credits, there is another piece of text, in another font, which simply states when the film is released in cinemas.