Poster Research

As the film Antichrist and the general work of Lars Von Trier has been a great inspiration to me, I thought I would look at two of the film posters for his movies.
The setting for my image will be in a forest as in this poster, although it will be much simpler than this surreal work.
This film is classed as a horror/thriller, although I believe it has factors of a psychological horror due to its story, themes, and sequences in the movie. The setting for this is very dark which suggests the movie will be of the horror genre, and the hands climbing out from the tree roots gives it a horrific effect. The text here is very simple and stands out from the dark surrounding image. The images portrayed are pieces from the film itself, in my own poster I will fabricate an image that is to do with my film, but not a direct scene from it. This poster is effective in showing off the gloomy horror and surrealism that is involved with the film, I will need to think about what images will best portray my film.

This poster is from Trier's latest work, Melancholia. This poster features much more text around it, focusing on the reviews and awards of the film to attract attention. Through the addition of this text interest is built for the movie, as the audience can see it has glowing reviews and has been awarded, which will generate curiosity to watch it.
This image is again quite surreal, it shows a direct image from the film. Through using a well known actress as the focal point of the image it also allows an audience to set it a certain standard, that it must be worth watching if it has such well known people in it.

I really like this poster for The Blair Witch Project, being a psychological horror it is an interesting poster to look at. It at first appears to be a sign for missing people, although when looking closer you discover it is an advertisement for a film. This is quite different to many film posters that I have seen which just feature the films images, this intrigues the viewer through its odd format.
I like the idea of having some kind of missing sign, as the main character's family in my trailer have disappeared, this kind of design may be something worth considering.
The text under the photos relates to the story of the film, the way it is written disorientates the viewer as it is written as if factual. That the people have really gone missing. This mysterious factor may intrigue audiences driving them to see the film. The fact that the film is shot like a documentary is more frightening to me, as it tries to make itself real.
The title of the film is quite small and overshadowed by the image and text, although stands out from the black background through the use of colour. I think this small title also adds more mystery, as it is understated.

Many of the posters for psychological horror films feature a lot of dark colouring and perhaps dystopian or dark surroundings. This is true of this image for Rosemary's Baby also. The image is almost divided into two halves, the first showing the character of Rosemary, the second what we assume is her baby in a pushchair. This divide could represent Rosemary's feelings about the child, as in the film she is torn between feeling the love of a mother to a child, yet the fear of having born a demonic creature. The darkness in the lower half of the image also represents the evil that the pushchair holds, it is a very bold image in terms of colour, it stands out to the eye. The position of Rosemary is also important, as she seems to be laying down, which represents her submission in the film, as she could not help or stop what was happening to her. The image very much overpowers the text at the bottom, you almost miss it. This may be because the actress was very well known and her presence is an attraction to the film, or that it was trying to create mystery and suspense as to the films story.

This is a more recent example of a psychological horror poster, it definitely conforms to the conventions of the genre in that it is both creepy and haunting without actually showing any monstrous imagery, gore or violence. I think it is a very effective advertisement, fans of the game will recognise the eerie, misty surroundings and silent hill sign, which draws in that audience but also the stillness and creeping fog draws mystery and suspense as to what lays in the town of Silent Hill...
The black horror type text of the title contrasts from the white surroundings, although I don't know whether it was necessary to have two signs saying the same thing for one poster, it may have been more effective without the bottom black text. This again shows the similiar dystopian surrounding, something which I would like to incorporate in my own image.

Through studying some of the imagery used for this genre of film for advertisements, I can deduce that the use of dark, creepy imagery is often used, alongside dystopian surroundings and often shadowed faces or gloomy scenery. When brainstorming ideas for my own poster I originally thought of setting my image in a dark wooded area, which as it seems will conform to the genre well. I wanted to have the ghostly images of the character's family in the background of the image, out of focus/distorted so it is unclear who or what they are. I believe this imagery will work effectively with the genre and audience of my film, although I still need to think about what kind of text I want to use on the image. The text used on the Silent Hill poster seems to work well, it definitely adds to the horror of the image. I will do some research on fonts and film titles so I can start to fit my poster together.