Deconstructing a film poster (2) - Textual analysis

Who/what are the main narrative agents (ie characters/props/settings) for this text? How do we know?

The main narrative agent is displayed on this poster by the main image. The image comprehends the two main actors in the movie in their bedroom illustrating that it is set in a house which increases the fear of the audiences because it breaks through the boundary of where you are safe. Your house is supposed to be a safe place, but this film breaks that typical rule. The colours are very gloomy and dusky  creating shadows which represents that something supernatural is going to be taking place. We know that it is going to be scary, which is the genre of the film because the words written under the title “don’t see it alone” give a warning. The quotes on the poster give others opinions to the viewers. The quote sets an expectation for the target audience.

Our poster will similaraly feature the main characters, we want to show the close relationship between them. An inkling in the poster is something we plan to further develop and make obvious to the audience within the footage of the trailer. This is important for us to feature, as it displays that they rely on each other as the plot is presented in the trailer.
The colours of our poster will typically be the same, gloomy rather than bright as it matches the genre.
 

Does it conform to a formula? (eg horror convections/psychological thriller conventions). 

I think the formula is conformed of being horror. I know this because horror film posters contain lots of darkness which this poster does. The horror conventions are proven as all horror posters are very dark, include red somewhere  usually signifies blood or danger in the film. The use of red can also represent the love in other genres e.g. romantic films but for horror films the redness always gives the meaning of blood, fire and danger etc. The usage of black shadows in the picture also shows the genre and the fact of the darkness in the pairs life. The red stands out from the black background which is why the title of the film is chosen to be written in red so it catches peoples attention and gives the title more consideration.

The horror genre is usually signified on a poster by the colours. We plan to conform to such a formula through the use of colours as by doing so we dont need to actually label the product as a horror as the arrangement of the poster will speak for us.

Is it being broken up or linked by graphics? 

The image appears to be a still shot from the film, and has the effect of  the view of a video camera. The image is fuzzy and not completely clear which suggests it is a home video camera. If the audience saw the film, then viewed the poster they would understand the main image effect because the plot of the film involves the characters using their own video cameras to try and capture paranormal activity. The colour scheme of the poster matches the film genre.

We are not aiming for such a fuzzy image as it is not in the plot that the characters film the storyline themselves.

Are there clear character roles and functions being established/represented? 
The image frames two characters, a male and female. Their body language presents them with common gender traits. The female seems to be leaning into the male for support as if she fears what she is pointing to and his arms looks to be going to hold her and protect her. It suggests the female may be the weaker of the two seeing as she leans into him.

Our poster will feature the two main characters running: from what is still a mystery to the audience as they view this promotional product. The characters hold hands as they run, encouraging each other to keep up and not fall behind when running, aswell as hinting at their relationship.

Representation
The reality in this poster is shown by the non special effects on the image. It is an ordinary captured image which shows a naturalistic situation. It is a video image. We know this by the time written on the bottom right corner which would not occur on a photograph. The closeness of the couple and the women pointing at the shadow on the door represents their frightfulness and their the fear for the situation.

The female character has no clothes on show and has wrapped herself up with the blanket illustrating real-life as how people would look like when they are woken up by something unexpectedly. The couple are shown to be very closely located at the other side of the bed making them be at a distance from the shadow. This represents real life behaviour and their panic towards the shadow on the door and also shows the reality of how people would react in those conditions.
The poster has very dark colours which represents the darkness of the story. Although the shadow on the door is located at a small area but the various dark shadows emerged on the image emphasise the shadow and make it dominant on the overall image. This representation of reality is demonstrated in the poster by the darkness in the picture/room which might be showing the darkness in their lives. 

Therefore, the use of grey represents evil, misery and fear. As of the shadow on the door, the black signifies the dominance, depth and power of the shadow on the couple's lives.
The use of Red in the poster represents the presence of blood, danger and violence. This makes the poster look complete as a whole so I dont think there is any absence in the representation.

Audience
The target audience is predicted from Pearl and Dean's website which has a table showing what audience watches which genre films the most. As it is a 15 certificated film so the target audience would be ranged from 15-24. However, this genre would attract both sexes but the females would be slightly more atrracted than males. The target audience could be maintained at lower working class of whom include business owners, managers and supervisors.

The main characters of our project are male and female. This is to avoid attracting just one gender to our film but to appeal to all widening our target audience.

 

Deconstructing a film poster (1)

The Wolfman 

 

Within the frame of this film poster, there is one main image covering the poster. There is a female positioned closer to the camera so appears on a lager scale to the audience, which suggests she is a main character. Other parts of the mise en scene include, a shadowed figure in the distance. The rest of the composition of the poster image is trees.
We like the aspect that there is a shadowed figure in the background as it immediately creates a mystery for the audience, and may leave them intrigued as to who/what this silhouette is which gives easy opportunity with in the actual film to catch the audience off guard and scare them within the horror genre. As we create the poster to promote our product we are considering including such a distant silhouete to give an element of the unknown.

 There is a high contrast in the lighting of the image. The female character is in shadows, almost as if she is hiding from the figure whom is more in the light.  The camera has focused on the female as a midshot. Her face expresses what appears to be fear of what she is hiding from, and she seems completely terrified by the situation and almost as if she is disturbed by what she has seen. the light on her face is in contrast. one side is in low key light, creating the illusion of mystery. Her clothing in this image seems old, so it seems the film is set in a less modern time period. The long shot of the second figure shows no detailed features, but the silhouette seems to be a human body shape. The body language of the figure is that he is learning forward slightly as if he is searching for something - the girl. The assumption that it is a male can be made due to the title on the film poster 'The Wolf man'.
The main image on our poster is to be the main characters of the trailer, like this movie poster we want these characters to convey a strong sense of emotion in the still image, preferably a degree of fear. We hope that the image may be contagious and then strike some sort of nervousness within the audience. Or at least surround the audience with an intense atmosphere as they do not know what to expect after what the poster gives away is limited.

 The dark colour scheme used in this poster helps the audience to recognise the genre of the film, horror. The colour palette involves black and grey mainly, with the exception of the females costume of blue and the actors names in orange, which together along with some white light has created shadows. The genre of horror and thrillers are often represented with similar colour use, we plan to use such a colour pallete for our poster, the shadows represent the unknown and create fear.

This main image frames the whole poster. Text is also visible on the poster. Actors names who appear in the film are in a small, plain font, this is in an orange colour and capitals which may be to promote the film with 'big' names. The title of the film is in a large white font. This style of font is different to other font featured on the poster and is also the largest piece of text, suggesting it is the most important component of the text. The tagline is 'When the moon is full, the legend comes to life'. This tagline will attract the audience as it  briefly explains what is going on in the image. The high key light may be coming from the source of the moon, therefore it is assumed the shadowed figure in the background is the legend. The tagline still leave an element of unknown of the image, which will convince the target audience to watch the film. This piece of text is then followed by the name of directors, the production company, distributors, the release date and a website which will promote the film.
Similarly we will have ther main image frame the whole poster with text elements surrounding it such as the movie title and tagline. Also, we will likewise have the movie title as the largest piece of text as to attract the most attention and thus the audience will remember the name of the product.
 

Inspirational texts - Film trailers

Paranormal Activity

 

The trailer of 'Paranormal Activity' was an inspiration to us because the short scenes use locked the audiences attention as it is a quick paced trailer with almost constant movement.  Every scene in a trailer has significance because it links up to what the story is about. This trailer is an inspiration to our product through the sound used as it makes the audience fear what is about to happen creating suspense, the camera work is interesting as it is hand held and stationary and the actors acknowledge the camera. This film trailer was successful in attracting me as a viewer because it was frightening and eye catching with its uniqueness.

Grave Encounter

The trailer of ‘Grave Encounter’ has given us inspiration for our media coursework in which we are going to create a trailer of the same genre – horror. What we particularly like about this trailer is the sound effects used. Whilst watching, the sound used matched with the footage, creating suspense and fear within the audience. A variation of camera shots are used and we also like the creative use of the makeup and special effects. These factors have been used effectively and their good use has complimented and supported the genre of the trailor.

Silent House

The 'Silent House' trialer uses sound perspective through out. This is where the audience hears sound from the point of view of the female character, such as tapping and breathing. This efficiently helps the audience make a connection with the character. Another feature we like from this particular trailer is the low key lighting used which creates shadows throughout. We feel this trailor as a whole constucts the illusion of reality as it is believable, something which we aspire for our trailer to be as through the connection made the audience feel is could actually happen in reality which increases their fear.

Flatplans

A film magazine front cover flat plan featuring the film

A flat plan for the poster of the film

 

Each of our flat plans are going to have a similar colour scheme of black and dark grey. These colours easily create shadows which will help to connote mystery and fear for the audience whilst making it obvious what the genre of our film is (horror). The images we use fore the magazine and poster will not be limited with a frame but shall cover the whole page of available space. Other features of the flat plans  scale are now reflected in the layout through boxes representing the size of that individual features. In our original plans we did not shoe any sense of scale but when we revisited the flat plans we made the changes as we felt they were necessary ( The colour of these boxes reflect nothing, we only used the different colours to highlight the sizes of features).

We decided on the composition of items from researching other film posters and front covers of film magazines. There is usually a trend to the layout and from one to the other no significant differences, only different techniques like the use of colour to help certain features stand out or to catch the audiences attention. We hope to present our magazine cover and film poster in an appealing way to our target audience. We will use a similar style on each item so its flows.