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.