Horror Movie Poster Research and Analysis

From analysis existing horror movie poster I have observed what is seen as conventions in the movie posters themselves. One of the most prominent conventions I have noticed is the composition of the poster and how the main feature of the poster is placed in the centre of the frame. This is to ensure that this element of the poster is what draws the audience to view it. Subsequently I have also noticed that horror movie colours use a very monochromatic colour scheme as using bright, vibrant colours would contrast with the genre of horror and maybe confuse the audience about the intentions of the film itself. Another convention of horror movie posters is that text is seen in a white font as to stand out against the darker background and to create a lasting image in the viewers head. One last convention I have seen when researching already existing horror movie posters is that they show the face or a version of the identity of either the protagonist or antagonist and this is to tease to the audience as to what to expect from the film, however in the majority of horror posters the identity of the featured face is in some way warped or disfigured as to allude to the events and atmosphere of the film in question.

Final Tone Cards

 Our group decided that these would be the final versions of our tone cards in terms of colour, font and size. We made the decision to split the colouring of the tone cards as we though that having the 'One Group' tone card in white would symbolise the innocence and equilibrium at that point in the trailer. However we then decided to make the more sinister tone cards such as 'One Problem' and 'It Will Not Be Ignored' in red as red connoted danger and violence and also symbolises the blood that is seen in the state of disequilibrium. Our inspiration for this was watching the Scream 4 trailer as this also features different coloured text for tone cards. The final font for both the tone and title cards is 'True Lies' and was found at DaFont.com and we chose this as the trailers's signature font as we felt that the elongated lettering resembled smears of blood which relates and resembles certain parts of the trailer.

Final Music Choice For Trailer

We decided to change the music in our trailer as we felt that the previous song used, Marilyn Manson's 'Sweet Dreams', was only suitable for one part of the trailer and that we needed both atmospheric and suspenseful music throughout the trailer. At first we found it difficult to find music that would fit the narrative and tone of the equilibrium part of the trailer however we eventually found an audio track that matched the mysterious equilibrium part of our trailer, this audio can be found above. We then decided that we would use a different piece of audio for the state of disequilibrium in our trailer as we required a much faster paced and more intense piece of music to accompany this stage in the trailer. As I am very familiar with the Scream franchise and their trailers, I quickly realised that the music used in the Scream 4 trailer (above) matched the later half of our trailer as the music is very fast and dramatic and matches the visual build of tension seen in the trailer.

Dimension Films Ident

                                                                          The blue Dimension Films image that can be seen on the right is the original company production/distribution company ident and the red image below it is the version created by us for our trailer. Our group made a decision to change the colour of the ident to red as there is a lot of red featured in our trailer such as in the iconography and tone cards used. We also decided to change the colour as it would separate our trailer from the other horror trailers that use this production/distribution company such as Scream and The Amityville Horror. We also felt that the red text against the black background would create a much more sinister atmosphere from the very start of the trailer. We edited the Dimension Films ident using the colour palette on the editing software Final Cut Pro X.

Final Production Company Ident

This is the final product of our company ident and we have made a lot of changes in improving this version from our section draft. The biggest change and upgrade we made was to make the ident more graphic so that in turn it would look more professional. We created our smoke effect company ident by following this tutorial on YouTube, using this tutorial made the creating process much easier as After Effects is a very complex programme and with this video we were able to make the most out of it. Another change we made to our ident was to change the font to Baskerville as this matches the now Gothic atmosphere of our ident and is much more high level compared to the previous font we used.

Colour Grading in Final Cut Pro X

Whilst editing certain scenes of the trailer I realised that the colouring of the clips needed to be changed for them to fit more appropriately to the plot of the film. To do this I first had to watch this tutorial as I did not know how to achieve the colour grading idea at first. As the premise for our horror film is a sleepover it would follow convention to have the killer strike the protagonists at night. However, due to our limited time and full shooting schedule we had to film the night scenes in the day. The top images are the original clips whilst the bottom images are the same clips after the colour grading. Although they are not perfect and do not exactly replicate the clip in a night time setting I feel that the edition of the colour grading helps to establish and enhance the idea that the majority of the event taking place in the trailer occur at night. I also agree that the clips shown on the left look less effective than those on the right but this is due to the slight over exposure of the shots background as this excessive brightness has made the night time effect harder to achieve, unlike the clips on the right which originally had very low and subtle lighting.

First Draft of Slaughter Party

This is the first draft of our slasher horror Slaughter Party and already we can see that many improvements need to be made if we want our product to be successful. I think one of the biggest elements that needs improvement is the lack if music as the music is what creates atmosphere and intensity in a trailer and our trailer with it just resembles random clips out together, adding audio also adds a sense of narrative to the product. Another element that needs improvement is the transitions between each shot as a lack of them creates no flow in the overall product and makes it also appear very fragmented and frank instead of faded and mysterious with a softer feeling. Tone cards also need to be added to this trailer to also add to the narrative and to show our use of multiple software whilst creating the trailer. As well as this a prosuction company ident need to be created and added to give identity to the trailer and so the audience know who is behind the creation of the product. Finally, our trailer need ti be at least a minute longer to achieve narrative and to give the audience a chance to see the plot of our trailer and for it to be as professional and real as possible.