Poster Research

Another part of my task is to create a poster for my trailer. And so to give me an idea of what mine should look like and the tropes that are associated with my particular genre i have researched some of the most famous psychological horrors and found the posters that promoted it. Doing this can give me ideas on how to make mine, in order for it to belong to the genre, convey the right message about the trailer and appeal to my target audience by using the correct promotion techniques.

1 2 3

4 5 6 

These are all posters form psychological horror films. By just looking at these posters i can already see that there is a convention and that is focus what i mean by this is that in all of these posters something is illuminated. In the first for Woman in black Daniel, Radciffe's face is light up along with the writing next to him, In the second for The Exorcist the light is shining on the silhouette of a man, in the third for The Grudge the triangle of face and eye that is shown is lighter, in the forth for The Ring The ring is lit up, in the poster for The Others The lamp illuminates the woman's face and for The Orphan there is a line of light around the girl. The light in each of these posters brings focus to the thing that is a major player in the film itself. The fact that the rest of the posters are usually dark really conveys fear and gives the impression of horror. In my opinion when i think of how illumination on faces and are used is reminds me on the action where people place a torch under there face when telling a scary story.

In posters 1, 4 and 6 tag lines are used such as:

"Do You believe in ghosts"-this piece of text being on the ghosts face
"Before you die you see...(title)"-It acts as an introduction for the title.
"Theres something wrong with Esther"-the most significant line in the film

I can also from these posters that they are quite simplistic which i like because the psychological horrors are set in simple locations with average people, it completely supports the genre. Whereas a love film poster could be quite busy and colourful.