Film Poster Subsidiary Task - Research & Planning

Research of Horror Film Posters

"The Blair Witch Project" - 1999

A feature that is immediately obvious when first viewing this poster is the use of black and white, which as I found out during the horror trailer section of my project is used throughout the entire film. The use of colour is very interesting; the only major exception to the mostly black and white colour scheme is the small, red Wooden doll design appears above the films title in the lower section of the poster. Typically the colour red connotes blood or danger in many horror films. The colour red is also a very powerful which stands out effectively when placed above a black or a white background. The only other use of the colour red is beneath the main image where the image begins to break down into almost a water-colour effect with the black, white and small amounts of red mix around like ink in water, perhaps maybe even connoting blood in water. The Main image itself is a black and white picture taken of a forest at night which has then had its contrast edited, however the bark of the trees is a ghostly white colour, this could be recreated by shinning a lamp at ground level against the tree and taking a picture without the use of flash. In my opinion the use of a lamp to illuminate the bottom of the tree seems like a realistic possibility, as the intensity of the whiteness upon the bark of the trees becomes less intense further away from the ground. The focus of the picture is sharpest in the centre of the poster as if it is trying to draw the audiences eyes deep into the forest, the posters text is slightly below this. Once the main picture is viewed typically the audiences sight would fall down to the text, this technique along with the viewers own curiosity draws the audience to immediately read the text.

To summarise this posters key features and effects, the poster uses colour very sparingly and carefully. Relatively little attention is directed to the very top of the poster, normally where many films would include their title in a bold and impressive font, this poster instead uses very plain and regular fonts. The focus of the posters main picture is responsible for attracting attention to the correct area of the poster. Overall this poster breaks some typical codes and conventions relating to the layout and the colour it uses, however these diversions from typical movie poster design set this particular poster apart from others


"Resident Evil" - 2002

This posters design is far more typical than the previous poster, perhaps this is due to the fact that this movie is not as experimental as The Blair Witch Project and therefore this films poster reflects on its more obvious mainstream themes. The title of the film is situated at the top with the names of two of the stars above in a smaller font. The custom font used for the film title is pointed and knife-like.Located below the title is the posters main image of the two aforementioned actresses with a red light illuminating them from the rear, on top of the illuminating light is a layer is semi-transparent clouds.Beneath is the films Tag-Line - SURVIVE THE HORROR. This tag-line makes the genre of this film obvious to the audience. Once again a very simple colour scheme has been used, just like in the poster for The Blair Witch Project. Unlike the previous poster there is a section beneath the tag-line which includes the movies major credits.

Overall this poster is a very typical example of film poster design and this layout is usually popular with action or adventure films for example:

This poster for Face/Off- 1997 has a similar layout to the poster for Resident Evil; the main image of the characters is set in the centre of the page with the actors names above it with the films major credits along the bottom of the page. In fact the only real alteration between the two posters is that the location of the films title and the tag line is in a different position with the tag-line of Face/Off being centrally aligned and placed in the middle of the main image. From the research that I have done I can determine that this particular sort of poster layout is the typical template used for many action movies.

Poster Design Brief

From my research that I have conducted I now understand a lot of the codes and conventions used commonly by horror film poster designers. The aspects that I want to include in my horror film poster are as follows:
• Bold & Simple layout.
• Basic colour scheme using mostly dark colours.
• Central main image. Title & Tag-line under the main image.I believe that if I adhere to these rules I believe I can make a professional looking film poster that would be an effective piece of advertising to help market my film.