Film Poster

Film posters are primary designed to advertise/popularize the film and attract wider demographic. There are any different types of posters including remix poster, motion poster, character poster and teaser/advance poster. As a part of our portfolio , we were assessed to design a Promotional film poster which usually contains basic image or design without revealing too much information about the plot and characters. The purpose of a teaser poster is to increase awareness of the film so that more people are likely to see it when it comes out.  The text on the posters usually contains the film title in large lettering , names of the director , characters and release date. Advance posters are also associated with a tag-line which is an emotive mysterious statement reflecting the film. We want the image of the poster to be an extreme close up of Kenny's eye because it related to his obsession for Ashley. I will now analyze a few effective horror posters in to help me understand the general conventions of horror posters and approach the design of our poster in a more creative and challenging way. 

Candyman

On the right you can see the poster for Candyman, a 1992 horror film. The poster looks very attractive and eye catching which is important as its purpose is to advertise the film and sell it to people. Its in a portrait view and has one main image and little text which suggests that the image is more important. The picture is a close up of an eye positioned centrally in the A4 poster. The image has clearly been manipulated to achieve this terrifying effect. There is a scary silhouette of the killer in the pupil surrounded by dark red. Red is a colour which is commonly used in horror posters because it connotes danger, blood, sorrow and torture. There is a bee stuck inside the eye. This is quite unrealistic which suggests to me that horror posters must include a surreal elements. The poster is not too colourful and bright, the use of warm similar colours works very well as the viewers' attention is not drawn to the colours but to the man inside the pupil. A different font and text size is used for the title positioned centrally to stand out. The other text included in the poster is the tag line- positioned on the top, featuring actors positioned underneath the title, and the credits which are included in all posters. Although this poster was done nearly 20 years ago, it is a very effective and eye catching publication which is successful in conveying a message about the film and advertise it to its chosen demographic.                



                                 The skeleton key 

This is another horror poster which uses a close up image of an eye to attract its audience and sell the film. It is contrasted to Candyman because of its colours and content. It uses natural colours which are neutral and not as scary and dramatic as red. However the overall effect is terrifying because the pupil is missing and instead there is a whole new image in the eye. This is very unrealistic and scary because of the dark colours and burned out parts of the image. The poster is clearly a horror poster which is important because the main purpose of film posters is to convey the genre of the film.  There is not a lot of text, except the title, famous actress and the credits. The shot is excellent because it a perspective extreme close up and the camera is positioned slightly underneath the eye which create the illusion that we are looking up to the eye. An image editing software has been used to , adjust and desaturate the colours and tones, manipulate the eye and transform the image. A special effect has been added to the title where the E in Key has been manipulated to create the illusion that there is an opening door which connotes escape. This is a very smart technique as iconography (a key, opening door) to make the film seem more intriguing and scary.




The eye
 The poster of the horror film 'The Eye' is very close to the effect we want to achieve in our publication. The central eye close up is of a very high quality which suggests that a special macro lens was used to capture the eye. The colours are kept very realist which in this case is scary because the hand stuck in the eye looks so real. Overall, the poster is very simple and easy to make but its so powerful and effective. The lack of text make you focus on the eye and the abnormal hand coming out of it. The only text is the title positioned centrally underneath the picture and Jessica Alba's name which is very important because she is a famous actress which is important because Jessica Alba is not a typical horror actress but plays mainly in romantic comedies. The font colour is black and eye is in bold which suggest that the word is iconic for the film. I reserched it and i found out that the story evolves around a person who gets a cornea transplant and starts seeing dead people. This explains why the producers have chosen this particular image for the film. The lay out of the poster i very similar to the one of Candyman with the difference that this poster is of a better quality because of technological advances.