Horror film posters

The movie poster is mostly black but has reds and oranges that denotes danger and reminds you of blood.

The only thing you see of the victim is their feet and the fact they’re wearing a dress which would then make the audience assume they were female and the shadow hands surrounding them gives a sense of the unknown as you don’t know what the evil character even is.

The title of the film is “Don’t be afraid of the dark” but the “Don’t be” and “of the” parts are smaller so at a glance the first thing you see is “Be Afraid Dark” which is enough to make you take a second look at the poster.

This poster has a dark background with a white face in the middle making the head stand out and given it a very ghostly, supernatural feeling.

While it is a fairly normal picture there are two things wrong with it and these things are enough to creep you out. The fact that her face is peeling back just to reveal another face and the fact that her eyes are amber and stand out against her ghostly white face that gives you a feeling that something is most definitely going on.

As with the other two this poster is also dark with the only colour being red which again denotes danger and reminds you of blood.

The darkness makes it so the characters are unidentifiable but you can still tell who the killer is and that it’s a male and who the victim is and that it is a female.

The caption is in capitals so it is one of the things that draws your attention the most, that coupled with the fact it say “HE KNOWS WHERE YOU SLEEP” puts extra emphasis on the female victim being extremely vulnerable.

The title of the film is blood red and the word “Nightmare” is the largest part of the title so the audience know that this is going to be a horror film and they can begin guessing as to what it will contain.

This poster is different than the others but still looks like a horror film poster as the only image is a severed leg although that shows me it falls under the “torture porn” sub category of horror rather than a slasher or a psychological horror.

The only other thing on the poster is the title of the film and you can see the teeth of a saw at the very top, which links to the title of the film. The title itself is smaller than you would think it would be and makes the assumption that having a big severed leg take up most of the room draws in more attention than a big title.

These posters have a lot in common, like the use of black and red a lot, which shows that there are trends in horror that all horror films share and are even expected to have. Even the ones released in recent times show this with films that where released in the 70s and 80s.

Photos

I did research into horror movie posters (which will be a serperate post) and based on that research took photos that fit into the horror genre.

Barthes code in my trailer

Action – I could have a crash behind someone and they turn their head to look at the noise or other short scenes like this that don’t reveal much as this will create tension and make the audience think about what’s going on in the trailer.

Referential – This will be how I show what type of people the characters are by following certain cliches that are present in multiple forms of media so they should be instantly recognisable. I could also use referential code to show how unsafe technology is and how easy it is to turn it against you by referencing real life cases of it happening.

Enigma – I can use this to trick people into thinking I’m following stereotypes when really I’m doing the opposite, for example the killer could be female and the victim a male. Enigma code is also about how much I want the audience to know which for me is as little as possible as not only does that create a sense of unknown but also I want the audience to be asking questions like

Who is he villain?

What is there reason for doing the thing they are doing>

Why these victims?

I need to actually answer these questions first during the planning stage and then in the trailer only provide hints towards the answers

Intertextuality – I can use this to make characters mention the real life things that link to what is going on so this ties in with the referential code.

Research into camera angles

When researching about how camera angles I found this blog post that explains how to use different camera angles to build tension http://groupmediabejb.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/camera-angles-which-create-tension.html

Making a character look vulnerable is a key part of making something scary, for example in halloween when Michael Myers sits up behind the main character Laurie after you think he’s dead or in the shower scene in Psycho

Another thing that adds to the tension is the music in the background as it builds the tension and makes the scene scarier

Effect of horror films: Glenn Sparks

Glenn Sparks is a professor and associate head of the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. According to him one of the appeals of watching horror films is the feeling after the movie has finished. This is called the excitation transfer process. When watching a horror film your heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increases. Once the film is over this lingers but, according to Sparks, we’re just not aware of it. This means any positive emotions you experienced during the film – like having fun with friends – is intensified. instead of focusing on the the fear you felt you instead recall the good time you had and you’ll want to come back for more. However if your experience was negative then the negative emotions you get are intensified and may sway you to skip the next horror film that comes out.

Another reason people enjoy watching horror, also according to Sparks, is that some people simply enjoy the adrenaline rush gained from watching horror. He states that around 10% of the population enjoy this adrenaline rush, these are the same people who also enjoy roller coasters. Similarly this also explains why people do not like horror films. People who are hypersensitive to the temperature of the room or the tag on their shirt are more likely to have intense physiological reactions to horror films.

Sparks also said that people watch horror films as they’re novel. Everyone pays attention to anomalies in our environment. As danger disrupts routine, curiosity about change is key to survival. Sparks equated people wanting to see horror films to stopping at the scene of a gory accident: “You don’t see that every day,” he said. However negative emotions can trump novelty,   according to Sparks. If we experience high levels of fear, seeing a scary movie just isn’t worth it. “Negative emotions are stored in the amygdala which in contrast to positive emotions are particularly resistant to being extinguished,” Sparks said. People might “suffer lingering emotional fallout if something in the environment reminds them of a scene”. A good example of this is when the movie “Jaws” came out a lot of people refused to go swimming in the ocean and felt uneasy around lakes and pools. Others might avoid films that hit close to home, students told Sparks that they avoid films where a babysitter is being terrorised as they themselves babysit.