What did you learn from annotating different Horror film posters?

From researching and analysing different horror posters Hannah and I have learnt a lot about what is most popular among our target audience.

From the posters we researched it was learnt that dark colours were the most popular used. For example copious amounts of black and grey as these colours can be used well to portray the emotions of fear, darkness and death. Red is also a popular colour among the posters we analysed. Red is a strong representation of horror and murder as it is the colour of blood. After analysing image three we decided that red would be a very powerful colour to use throughout our poster and also in our trailer as it highlights the emotions we want to portray of fear and pain. Red is also a very bright colour. From the research we carried out on film posters we saw that usually one bright colour is used to captivate the audience and to grasp their attention onto an image. Because of this we wanted to take this idea and use it in our poster.

When analysing “The Uninvited” poster, Hannah and I discovered that it is the point that you cannot see the person in the foregrounds’ face that is extremely disturbing. They are also looking through a window which makes the audience ask are they looking at me? The colours in this poster are also very limited which is very effective. The dark colours highlight to the audience straight away that it is a horror genre.

Throughout are research we also found that mist was extremely common among many horror posters. Mist is associated with open air and being isolated in a wide open space. This was a great idea to use for our poster as our trailer is set in the woods at night time so mist would be very effective to have in our poster as it allows the audience to see where the story is set without watching the trailer. They hopefully will be thoroughly intrigued to learn more and see what it is about.

Images associated with horror can also be very dramatic. As a group we found that this would be a very effective way to make our poster very distinctive to our audience. A dramatic image can also be used to grab and captivate our viewers so they will want to watch the film to find out what it is about.

A title is also very important to have on your poster. We found that it is common among the horror poster we researched to have a very bold title. It is usually black or red as these are typical horror conventions. To have this very bold also means that it will stand out and it will be very distinctive and eye-catching.