Evaluation of my Horror Poster

Rebecca Paterson

• I think that the film trailer and the film poster go well together. The main character has been used to advertise the film trailer and the film. The effect on the eyes, links in with the genre of psychological horror, and the white, black and red colour scheme links in with horror. It also represents the coldness, harshness and psychological aspects of the trailer.

• I used the image of eyes to advertise my horror trailer, they are common when advertising horror because it becomes very personal and quite intrusive towards the viewer which is effective when advertising horror movies.

• I chose to do a character poster and not a teaser poster because the film is not a franchise it would be harder to link the poster with the trailer as it is not well known as there is not a franchise fan base already in place, examples of this would be SAW. The character poster allows the audience to link something to the trailer. As it is only part of the face, it creates enigma so that the audience want to go and see the trailer. As the main sub-genre is psychological, I thought that imagery of weapon would not represent the trailer, also as the trailer does not have any images of weapons in it either. I thought that the editing on the eyes so that there is not as much contrast between the white of the eye and iris when converted to black and white. I also made the pupil darker so that it was bolder. This editing gave the eye an unnatural feel to the image and this linked in with the psychological genre.

• In my research looking at horror posters that used images of eyes, I found that firstly the colour schemes that worked best where black, white and red. I thought using a black and white image also kept in with this colour scheme and linked in with the coldness of the genre better as well. “The grudge 2” poster and “The Eye” poster use the plain, simple, over exposed, white background, contrasting eye imagery.

• I also chose to do a landscape poster as I thought that the composition looked better and would look cramped on a portrait poster. Also because the image I chose to crop landscape across the middle section of the face, instead half of the portrait of the face, the image looked better landscape, so the “darkness” could engulf the image on one side.

• As eyes are common imagery in horror posters, all the eyes were looking out at the audience, this allowed the image to be direct and connect with the audience. This was also effective because it was intrusive and uncomfortable with are connoted with the genre of the horror.

• In terms of text, I kept the title the biggest text on the poster so that the name of the film is easy to see, I also found that in some psychological horror posters one or two letters are flipped which make the audience second guess what they are reading as it plays tricks with the brain because you read it the same while your eyes register the difference slower, linking in with the psychological element. There is also the date, and the billing block at the bottom, discreetly, so it does not intrude on the image as this is main focus. I kept the font the same, except the billing block, to be consistent so that it is easy to read. To give my film a brand identity I used the same text and style on the magazine and front cover of my magazine.

Going back to the original analysis of horror posters, he typography on the poster is important as it reflect elements in the film like in human centipede poster and the movement in the text. This inspired me to change the “R’s” in the title to reflect the psychological element. Also the placement of the text is important as the text should not over power the image. Having the image framed by the text allows the poster to be read smoothly rather then confusing and hard to read and focus on the poster, image or text. The colour scheme is important so that it attracts the intended audience, to attract a horror target audience the colours of the poster have to be associated with horror which is why I chose red, white and black. Also the white and black can be linked to Strauss's binary opposite theory, white signifying the good and black signifying the evil.

The image in the poster has to link with the genre of horror which is why you can only see a small slice of her face, as it becomes intrusive and uncomfortable to look at which is the desired effect from horror films. The way the eyes have been edited also add to the eerie, unnatural atmosphere which links in with the psychological horror sub-genre. Also the left side of the poster is particularly dark and the right is over exposed this also could be linked with the binary opposites and could be said to foreshadow her being the victim and her fight against evil.

In the top right hand corner and bottom left hand corner I made the corner darker to reinforce the graduation of colour from dark to light and to reinforce the sense of darkness and evil.

The tag line is underneath the title and hints at story line. It draws in the audience and creates a sense of enigma that make the audience want to see the film (developed by Barthes).