Horror Movies

HORROR FILM POSTERS

Analysis of Horror Film Posters 

Here is my analysis of horror film posters that I could use as inspiration for my own work and also Saul Bass inspired horror movie posters. I looked at each one thinking of what I could take from them and use the ideas in my own work. 

I was looking at in these posters were how I could use Saul Bass in the genre of horror. By looking at these posters I can take pieces of their work away and mix it with what I know with the conventions of horror film posters. 

My Horror Mood Board 

Here is a mood board of horror elements that I could use in my poster. The ideas that I have got from this mood board that the eyes are a great way to convey fear and also using a stylist, well design piece of work. I also worked out that the use of females, hero figures and children are a great way to make people feel fear as they are people you wouldn't expect to be monsters. 

Carrie 

Carrie is a film based on the 1974 Stephen King novel of the same and was the first of his books to be created into a movie. Realised on November 3, 1976 the American supernatural horror-drama film was directed by Brain De Palma and written by Lawrence D. Cohen.  The film revolves around Carrie White played by Sissy Spacek, she plays a social outcast who suffers frequent abuse from her very religious mother and classmates. Carrie finds out early on in the story that she possesses telekinetic powers that seems to appear when she is angry. When Carrie is invited to the prom by her classmate Tommy Ross by the request of another girl, at prom she falls victim to a prank by the Queen-bee of the school. This releases her powers and she distort the prom. 

The film was seen as a success grossing $33.8 million on a budget of $1,8 million and Spacek was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Also during a survey in 2008, it revealed that Carrie was considered one of the most popular movies teens watched on Halloween.  The film brought a couple of its cast to fame like John Travolta, which moved onto films such as Grease and Pulp Fiction.

Carrie Film Posters

I found these posters so I could take ideas from them and see what works and doesn't work. I thought this would help me a lot in my research and it could help me develop my ideas. 

 Stephan King Novel Covers 

After picking Carrie I looked into what was used for Stephan King novel covers. These helped me with the idea's I could use of my poster. Like the use of images. colours and text. 

Screen Shots From the Film 

I took these screen shots from the film as I felt they could be good ideas I could use in my work. They also remind me about the main themes of the film and the colours used. 

Text Task 

 Here is a collection different font which I have found to fit in with different sayings. We did this to help us to develop our skills in choosing different fonts that fit into different situations.

 Text Task 2 

Here are some fonts that fitted with the Saul Bass style but also the horror film conventions for text. This really helped me in deciding in what I wanted to create for my own type and which fonts I wanted to use of other text. 

Carrie Mind Map 

Here is my Carrie mind map, I created this after the film again and took out objects, themes, locations, colours and characters I could use in my work. 

  

Mood Boards 

My Prom mood board 

70's Mood Board 

Religion Mood Board 

Objects & Location Mood Board 

My Colour Mood Board 

Corsage Info

A corsage is a flower worn by females in different important ceremonies such as weddings or proms. In proms the corsage is give to the males date as a gift, the corsage normally matches the females dress and would link them as a couple. This is something that I would really like to use in my poster as it is a symbol of Carries accepting to her school and her trying to make from, to be seen as normal. Also as the one used in the film it can be used as a symbol of her innocents.  

First Sketches 

These are the first sketches I designed for the poster. They show the simple ideas I had and wanted to develop. 

Making The Of My Poster 

Taking the image of the rose and lowing the opacity so that I can see what I am doing easily I started to use the pen tool to go around the petals. After I had gone round all of the petals I deleted the image and produced the rose seen on the left.

I then made three more to make the corsage. I then moved on to making the ribbon. Using the pen toll I made the shape in the same pink as the roses, then making it look like light was on it by making white high lights.

I then moved on to making the title. I decided that I was going to make my own font. I designed it after looking at the fonts we found for one of our tasks. I wanted the font to be dripping as possible and to curve around the image. I made the word on paper going over it in pen. I then scanned the word in taking it into photoshop and changing its levels so that I could see the outline easier. I saved this and took it into illustrator  and took it through live trace so that I could use the live paint tool to colour it in. I also made sure that the image was straight before I took it on to the final poster. 

This is the image I ended up with I felt like this image worked but I could improve it to make it better so I started to try different things to do so.

I firstly started to add more font to the poster. I found this font in my research for this task and through that it would be a good idea to use it in my design. I also knew I wanted to keep the design simple so I only added a same phase at the bottom.

I also tried out the design in black and changing the flowers to red. This really didn't work. I knew after this that I wanted to keep the flowers pink like they are seen in the film. And that idea of keeping all of the poster pastille colours and the the text a dark red to show the innocence of the girl that then distorts the town.

I then tried using the flowers I created as the background. This looked okay but I knew it wasn't what I wonted. But I knew that I need a background of a different colour background from white.

I then tired making the flowers only a bit bigger and having a pink background. I felt that the pink background worked but maybe a different pink but having the flowers that big really didn't work as it made the poster too busy and not the simple idea that I wanted.

 I the changed the flowers to a lighter pink and reduced the size of the flowers. After this I went to change to colour of the title so that it was a lighter or brighter red to make it fit with the changes better. As I was trying things out I tried the title and text in white and I felt that it worked a lot better. I do like this design but I feel like it could be improved by making it stand out more as it doesn't really full fill the purpose of a poster.

 So I coped the type and the title and layer a small brighter pink version on top. This works a lot better as it makes the text stand out more and doesn't blend into the background. I repeated this idea on the text at the bottom. After doing this I noticed that the image in the middle seemed to fade away. So I repeated this idea on the roses making sure that the white wasn't to big and over powering.

Final Poster

Evaluation 

Type

With my research I looked at the type deciding if it fitted with how I think Horror film posters types look like and also if it connected with the Saul Bass style. Starting with the Saul Bass inspired posters, Horror film posts, Steven King book covers and other peoples Carries film posters. By looking at these I could filter through what styles I wanted to use and didn’t want to use, this helped me a lot. We did some text tasks the first one looking at how to fit current phases with different fonts. This made me start to think about how I was going to use fonts in my own work, making sure they fitted with the horror film theme and the themes of Carrie. The second text task made us look for texts that fitted with the Saul Bass part of our brief and also fitting with the horror theme. I liked some of the fonts that I had found but some of them I thought would not be suitable for my work. I made sure in this task that I looked at fonts that are serif and san serif. When it come down to designing my poster I used the texted in the task as inspiration but also making use them fit with the Saul Bass style.  I decided to make my own title font taking inspiration from the fonts in the second text task. I first made the text by hand and scanned it into to Illustrator, I made the text curve when I drew it out so that I could fit the object under it and was framed by the title.

Colour

In my research I could see that dark colours were the most commonly used in horror film posters such as reds and blacks. But I found that the use of pink in one of the posters I first researched that it was an interesting way to portray horror. Pink is linked with the idea of little girls and innocence; I could use this idea in my movie poster as Carrie is a innocence and naïve. Also in my research I didn’t find any posters that used pink as its main colour idea. I wanted to show the innocence of Carrie but also the horror theme. Saul Bass uses only three in his work so I knew that I wanted to use pink but to keep with the horror I decided to use red as my second colour. As the third colour after I had tried many different colours choice white. This is commonly used in posters as it make the it stand out in comparison to other posters around it. 

Visuals

I researched different horror images that I could link with my work but after I got the idea of showing Carries innocence.  So I re-watched the film and took screen shot of objects of scenes I could use to show this. After drawing some designs I decided to have my main visual as the corsage she gets given by her date. I made this by taking four images of roses and traces around them using the pen tool, then creating some ribbon. I resized and reshaped this image in till it fitted with the text.

Layout

I looked at the layout in my research and used it in my development. It really helped me to look at other peoples work and used some of their ideas in my own work. Like in Now The Screaming Starts, the text frames the image, this gave me the idea of having my text framing my image. I also having a tag line at the bottom as I had found that other posters that I liked.

Purpose

What I found from my research is that horror film posters are made to advertise the film and stand out against other poster. By learning these things in the research I made sure my work fitted with these things. I made sure my poster stood out by making it pink, this is uncommon with horror film posters, also using white in my text what is used a lot in posters because it make them stand out in comparison to others. As the poster stands out but also don’t tell you the whole story I think it works to advertises the movie. I think my poster haves a purpose and works well as a horror movie poster.

Effectiveness

I did a lot of research as horror isn’t my choice of film, so I wanted to look at a lot of different posters to get a lot of different ideas. When I choice to do Carrie I to show her innocence but also the horror in the film and I think I have done this with my research and development. If I marked my work out of 10 I would give it a 7. I feel that the end product is a lot better then what I started with but if I had more time develop my work I could improve. 

Saul bass

Saul Bass 

Saul Bass was born in America on the May 8, 1920 and died on April 25, 1996. His career streaked over 40-years working in lots of different filed such as graphic design and film maker. He worked for some of Hollywood's most famous filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese. He also designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America including the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&R's globe logo in 1983.  

Saul Bass Inspired Posters 




Looking at posters that had been inspired by Saul Bass. I looked at each image a took out what made them Saul bass inspired. Either it was the colours used or the shaping of the images or text. I wanted to take inspiration from these images and what I didn't want to do with my own work. Such as the amount of colours used in The Wizard of Oz poster. This didn't fit that well with what I see as a Saul Bass poster and could of been done better by only using three colours. But I think the type face for this poster is one of the best and I wanted to take that on as inspiration. But the Batman poster was the one.


Snow White and The Huntsman 

I choice Snow White and The Huntsman because the film has iconic scenes and a really good underline feel to the movie. Along with the classic fairy tale everyone know this story and with the dark twists I thought it would be good to see a Saul Bass inspired version.

Mind maps and Y diagrams on Snow White and The Huntsman 

This is my first mind map. I did this to show my first ideas for my story boards. I looked at the different themes and how I could work with different elements in the film like the feeling. I wanted to use the colours used in the film to help portray this. I then moved on to do a group mind map taking ideas from other people, this really helps in my development and it gave me lots of ideas. And as everyone knows the story of Snow White so I got ideas about what other people think about this classic story. We then did Y diagrams, this is when you think about the feelings, sounds and sights you would get in the film. I looked at one setting in the film which was the Dark Woods. The scenes that are set here are very powerful as the characters have a lot of conflict and hallutions.





Mood Boards 

I looked at different areas of the film suck as the weapons, animals The evil Queen and the colours which I think were mostly used. I looked at weapons because this film has a lot of violence in it and some of the characters have different weapons. I looked at the animals because nature is a big part of this film and this theme links in with the idea that Snow White bring hope back to the kingdom. The Queen queen is a large character in this film and how they are very stereotyped in fairy tells I thought it would be interesting to see what I could find.

Saul Bass Font Types
I looked at different Saul Bass font that were online and took them in to consideration for this project.  Also they helped me think of ideas of my own Saul Bass styled font. I wanted to use the three colours that I think is linked the most with the film. Also I wanted the text to be jumbled up so that it showed the disorder that happens in the film and how the lost of power can be messed up. I also wanted sharper shapes so that is links with the theme of weapons. 

First Sketches & Second Sketches 

Before I story board my ideas I thought it would be a good idea to re-watch the film. I did this so I could pause the film at scenes that I thought would look good in the Saul Bass style or were iconic to the film. I just quickly sketched these so I could move them on to further development.After the first sketching I decided to do some silhouette in the Saul Bass style. I started to look more at the objects in the film then the scenes  and the three different colours I wanted to use in my work. I choice these three colours because of the colours that are focused on in the film.

First Story Board & Second Story Board 

This is my first story board. I wanted to draw the story board out and start to think of what I could do before I brought in the Saul Bass style. I thought this would give me strong ideas of what would and   wouldn’t work.  After thinking about how I was going to set the story board out. I choice to use the objects I started to sketch. Also using the three colours I have choice. After doing my second story board I decide to scrap my first one as it didn't as well. I knew that using the objects was a better idea then going with icon scenes from the film. 

My First illustrator Tries

I started with a mix of the idea I had from bother of the story boards. I wanted to see what I could do before making my final story board. I  tired out my own type face in the type using a snowflake as the "O" as it would link in with her name. But after creating this and trying out the Hitchcock font I thought this was a good idea but I liked the ready made font better.  Also I decided that using grey as the background didn't work that well, enough though I really enjoyed the idea of the snow. The grey didn't make the text stand out as much as when I used the white. Also it didn't really go with the three colour idea of Saul Bass. I really liked the idea of the mirror man as this is an interesting when they film makers have created a main feature object/character. But when I started to put all my work together it didn't really work with the colour I had choice.  I had a idea of using the face of snow white but when I tried it out on Illustrator it didn't really work that well and I choice to take it out of my final story board. I knew I wanted to bring the mirror in some how so I tried out a simple mirror shape instead and it worked better with the red, black and white. I got to this conclusion by trying out different ideas with the mirror man and more simpler shapes.



Final Story Boards 


In my final story boards I used the ideas from my seconds but I looked using the three colours in different ways and tried to make the slide more different from each other. I used the Hitchcook which I found when I was looking at Saul Bass fonts. This is because I wanted something that was iconically Saul Bass so that it fits in more with his style.

Evaluation



Progress of learning



We started our project learning about Saul Bass, his style and how he was the first of his kind to do this style of film posters and film credit animation. His style of using bold silhouette shapes, a set of three bold colours and his own hand made font. This was different to other film posters of the time because they used mainly scenes from the film painted. Where Saul Bass used symbolic parts of the films such as in Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock) he used the silhouettes of the two characters along with a spiral shape this is symbolic of the dizziness you get when you are experiencing vertigo. We looked at a lot of different film poster what he had made and also his fonts. And tired out the fonts we had found on Illustrator with different colours and different ways.



We then moved on to looking at inspired film poster, these really help with working out what I wanted to take away by looking at what other people have done. There was one image I analysis of The Wizard Of Oz, this image was a Saul Bass inspired image but I really didn’t like it and thought it was a failed attempt at it. As the image of the path and the shoes used too many colours making it nothing like a silhouette and their fore I don’t think it was a good example. This poster could have been done with three simple colours, red, black and yellow but the artist decided to use about five. I did take away from this image the use of font, I found that it fitted really well with the Saul Bass style and it was the only thing I really liked about the poster.



After we researched into Saul Bass we choice our films. I choice my film because it is a darker and dirtier version of an old classic, Snow White. Snow White And The Huntsman takes the original story to a new level featuring more sword fighting and witchcraft. I thought this film has a lot of iconic scenes and objects I could use in my storyboard and I could explore the differences between the old and the new versions like with the shapes and the character and objects.



We then did more research into our films. I did an independent mind map of what I thought of the film with the themes, settings, colours, characters, moods and objects. I wanted to make sure I looked at every little idea I could think of before I started my development. This mind map was small but in class we did group mind maps where I got loads of ideas from other students, this really helped because it gave me lots of different ideas that I could take on. After this we did the Y diagram, I decided I was going to use this for one setting, as the setting was full of the three things I was looking for, sights, sounds and feelings. All of these research devices helped me develop and improve my ideas.



A thing that really helped me with my work was the moods boards and colour boards I created, these made me look at the themes in the film and how I could use other influences to make my storyboard more interesting. Also I could look at all of the images together from that subject each and chose between each them what I wanted to use.



At this time I re-watched the film and made sketches of iconic scenes. I thought this could be a good idea for my storyboard showing the whole story in simple iconic images from the film. This is an idea from a Saul Bass inspired film opening done for Catch Me If You Can, it tells you the story in a 1.5 minuet in a very simple way. But after I did the sketches I decided to do some silhouette of objects in the film. This worked well but I wanted to take both of the sketches to further development in a storyboard because I didn’t know what I really wanted to do with them.



After all the research I took them all into the storyboard and started to think of the best ideas I could have done. I started with the first sketches drawing them out for this I didn’t really do the Saul Bass style because I wanted to look more into how I would lay out the images before I took them into a Saul Bass style. But after finishing and colouring in the storyboard I found I couldn’t really set the three colours as the film moves location a lot and I couldn’t find the best colours to represent the feeling of the different images. So I started again and did another story with the objects I sketched out, this worked better as I could use the three colours that I wanted to use (red, black and white) and it worked really well.



I made the decision that I wanted to try out some of the two storyboards on Illustrator so I could see what I could do with the ideas and my skills. I wanted to see if my work would of improved with this program. I found that the second storyboard deigns worked better then the first storyboard. This was because of the shaping and deigns I had done in the second one I didn’t feel as restricted as I did with the first one as I had already got a idea of would work and now also I think it is because when I was drawing the second one out in my paper storyboard I was focused more on Saul Bass’s Style and how I wanted to use his style in my work. In the end I only used the ideas I took from my second storyboard as I felt I had developed them with more success.



If I Had More Time



I would have tired out my idea by hand and also tried different typefaces. Saul Bass did most of his film posters and film opening by hand making them out of card. This is a line I didn’t go down as I didn’t have enough time and it took me a while to develop the idea of Illustrator. I think this would of gave me more understanding to his work as it would have been to his style fully. But as I felt like I didn’t have enough time I didn’t go into this way of creating his style. I also could of used other materials such as watercolours and paints. This would of shown me different ways of exploring what I could do with his style. I also felt I didn’t have enough time to look at making my own font that really worked with my work. I ended up using the Hitchcock font I found on line as I felt it was well developed and worked well with my work. But still I wanted to do something different with my work and look into every aspect that I could of gone into.



What I Liked About Using Saul Bass’s Style



I really enjoyed how minimalistic his style is. It gave me a chance to use simple ideas that were linked with my film and use them in a way that wasn’t detailed but still affective. It also gave me the chance to do my work by hand and also on the computer as the style is quite simple and would be easy to develop with both. I really liked how Saul Bass worked in this area of graphic design as I could easily link my work with his and take inspiration from his work and others that have used him as inspiration. I think the idea of using three colours is really interesting as it bring more attention from onlookers. This is an tool I may us in the future with my own work, it as creates something different then what was around at the time he started to create his posters. Creating our own hand made typeface is something I really want to look into to as it could be something I could develop into the rest of my work as it is a personal way of making a font.



Self-Assessment



I think I did really well in my research looking at Saul Bass in detail at home and at college respectively going back to his work to get inspiration and ideas of how to move on. I made such that by doing a couple of mind maps and a Y diagram, trying to get as many ideas out of my head as possible before going on to sketching. When I did go onto sketching I felt that I could of gone down two different roots, symbolic items and the plot. This gave me a chance to try out different idea I could of gone down. Overall I think I did a good job with this task but I do feel that if I had more time I could of done even better by doing my in depth research into Saul Bass and what I could of done with his style and way of working. Also trying things out by hand, this is something I regret trying and what I think I should have really looked down. I grade myself a 7/10 because I think I did well but I feel I could of done better in the making and research.