This film poster is for a horror film called Dead Silence (2007).
The layout of this poster follows the typical style for a horror film, based on my research. It has a banner line ("From the writers and director and producers of 'Saw'") which tells you what else the people who made this film have made, and therefore allows the audience to compare the style of that film to this one, then underneath this it has the main image, which takes up most of the room on the poster, before the title, which is the largest typography on the page, before the credit section at the bottom. Overall, the layout is really simple and easy for my to replicate in my own poster production so as to follow conventions.
The colour palette of the poster is red, black and white, which corresponds with the conventional colour palette of the film reviews. This scheme goes across the whole poster with the a change of colour in the image due to the colour of the subject's skin and the their green eyes. The green eyes create a sort of tension with the audience because they stand out from the rest of the poster and therefore attract your attention straight away. This allows the reader to connect with the poster and be drawn into it, therefore perhaps in my poster I could have a colour palette of black, white and red, but with a concentrated bright colour section that immediately draws in the audience.
The poster uses a single image that takes up about 90% of the poster, therefore it's quite obvious. As for the contents of the image, the image is of a personified doll's face that looks like it's alive. This represents the nature of the horror film and what it entails. The focusing of the image is such that the finger the subject has in front of their face is most in focus and the sides of the subject's head is out of focus, sending a message to the audience that corresponds with the logline and the title of the film which are situated underneath. The colours in the image, as discussed above, are red, green and pale skin colour/browny in places. This furthers the realism created by the facial expression of the subject and add an eerie tone to the poster as a whole. As for the shot type, it's a low angle close up shot, because although it seems like it is eye-level, the eyes of the subject are looking slightly down and the positioning of the subject, with its head at the top of the poster, gives the audience the impression that the doll is looking down on you, creating tension.
The typography used on the poster is varied, with a simple and clear font in white at the top of the poster, however towards the bottom, the title, logline and credits are in more sinister fonts, but still different fonts and colours. The film title is in a white font that looks slightly 3D and ghostly which is instantly recognisable as horror even without the rest of the poster. The film title is much larger than all of the other text on the poster which makes it easily recognisable against all of the other text and allows the ghostly effects to be bolder and more obvious. The font for the tagline is different, and it is the only text on the poster that's not in white, it is instead in red. This allows it to stand out and create suspense due to its blood-like connotations, and simple and easy-to-read font. Finally, the credits at the bottom of the page are in white, and are quite small in comparison to the rest of the text due to there being so much of it to put on there and it not adding much to the overall effect of the poster.
The lexis on the poster is quite simple throughout. The tagline is "YOU SCREAM. YOU DIE." which complements the film title, Dead Silence, and also corresponds with the positioning of the subject in the image with their finger in front of their face in the "shh!" position. This linking of all the different parts together works to create tension within the poster and make the audience feel scared but nervous to see what happens in the film.
Overall, this poster is simple, yet effective in creating tension. It's conventional, as I will explore in the next posters, and it quite simple to recreate for my own horror film poster.
The second film poster is for The Uninvited (2009).
The layout for this poster is very similar to the previous one with the single main image, the "from the producers of..." line, the film title beneath the image in large typography and the credit sector at the bottom. This furthers the idea of these being the conventions of a horror film poster.
The colour scheme is also very similar to the last one, it's just lacking in colour as it's in black and white. The connotations of these colours give the poster a very dark and scary tone, creating tension with the audience. This palette is very simplistic, yet it conveys the intentions of the film very well.
The main image on the cover is a mysterious human-like figure with a bulbous head peering through a window. This position makes is look like the figure is looking through your window, at you, making the audience feel uneasy. This image takes up the whole poster, with the text on top of it. This makes it look even more real because if this picture was printed out in large it would look like it was happening to you and this I feel is the kind of thing the creators of the poster were going for; the poster brings in the reader as if it's happening to them and not in a film. This is furthered through the eye-level medium shot that's used.
The typography on this poster is all very similar. The "from the producers of..." line, the film title, the tagline and the release date all use the same font in the same colour, white. The font used for this text looks almost like a child's handwriting in chalk, which creates suspense within the poster due to the addition of children to a horror film makes it a lot scarier because children are seen to be young, sweet and innocence and not scary, or to-be-scared. The typography of the credits changes to look more standard and compressed so that more writing can fit into a smaller space and so it doesn't take the reader's attention away from the rest of the poster. The colour of this text also changes slightly to an off-white/grey looking colour so it doesn't contrast as much with the black background and therefore is more concealed, furthering the previous comment on it being not overly visible as to take away from the poster as a whole.
The lexis used is very simple and concise, not using too many words so express what the image is already telling you. The main lexis is the film title which is The Uninvited, and this immediately tells the audience roughly what the film is about, along with the image; eerie creatures that enter your home without consent. This alone advertises the film in a way that would entice an audience that likes horror films, however along with this there is the tagline and a "from the makers of..." line. The tagline reads "fear moves in" which furthers the tone set by the image and the title, yet adds an extra level of tension about the nature of the what is coming into the home. It describes it as "fear" which connotes the creature(s) embodying fear itself and taking a form that is terrifying. The poster also states that it is "from the producers of "the Ring" and "Disturbia"" which is an extra advert for the film if the audience has seen and enjoyed those films and therefore it will display similar features, though taking a different narrative.
In conclusion, this film poster agrees with the conventions of horror film posters as outlined in the analysis of the previous poster and gives me a hint as to the kind of poster I should be producing for my own film.
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