Kiran's Blog: April 2010

Photoshop - Construction

I started off with a blank page on Adobe Photoshop.

I then added the photo of myself covering the whole page.

After, i placed another image of Hamish but made it smaller so it appeared as if he was in my head. I decided to do this as it carried alot of enigma and ambiguity.

Next, I used the gradient tool to blend the image of Hamish into the image of me.

I then added the film title 'The Missing' in the conventionally place of existing film posters, towards the bottom.

Afterwards i put the actors name on top of 'The Missing'.

Next I put the billing block under 'The Missing' which is also the coventional place for this.

After that i added the slogan 'Will You Be Next?' at the top of the poster.

I then placed the release date at the bottom.

Finally, I added the production company logo's right at the bottom.

After analysing existing horror film posters, I found that the ‘villan’ is commonly used as the main image. I therefore decided to follow this convention and use an image of the villan character in our trailer, which is the caretaker (Hamish. I also noticed that the images that are used, are mostly quite dark and do not reveal much information about the character or storyline. This leaves this information very open ended, encouraging the target audience to watch the film. To take the photographs I used a dark room and one redhead for lighting. I took several photographs using different camera shots and lighting effects.

The first image I took is a portrait, medium shot of Hamish in front of a black curtain with his back facing towards the camera and his face slightly turned towards the camera. I placed the redhead on the left side of him, allowing the light to lighten up his face faintly. I was trying to give the idea of enigma as although you could see his face, he still had a mysterious look as he had his back towards the camera. After analysing all the images I had taken I decided not to use this one. This is because it did not carry enough horror connotations. Also, as we wanted to keep our target audience in suspense we did not show Hamish’s face in our trailer, and for that reason I wanted to keep the audience in suspense and not show his face on my poster.

The second image is very similar to the first one however I placed the redhead slightly forward so the light was shining directly onto his face and Hamish did not show his face. I did this in attempt to make it more mysterious and not give away his identity, leaving the audience with anticipation.

The third image is a medium/close up of Hamish looking directly at the camera. I placed the redhead directly behind Hamish, allowing a little bit of light to shine through. This worked well as it had eerie connotation because the close up made it intense while the lighting made the image appear very creepy. After analysing all the images I had taken decided not to use this image as it was not as frightening as I wanted it to be.

I then took the above pictures, leaving the redhead in the same position but with Hamish at different angles.

After that I looked at the images I had taken and realised the white shirt was contrasting the horror theme, and so Hamish put a black jacket on top. This worked a lot better as the light came out a lot stronger against the black than white. The first image I took was a portrait medium shot of Hamish with his back towards the camera. I placed the redhead in front of him creating an outline of light around his body. This made the image appear very creative and gave off an ambiguity atmosphere.

This image is very similar to the first one except Hamish’s face is slightly turned towards the camera, so you can see half of his face. This also works very well as it does not give his identity away but leaves the audience wondering who he is and why he is on the poster, as this was the idea I wanted to create with my poster so I decided to use this image.

This image is a medium/close up shot of Hamish facing the camera looking directly at the camera. The redhead was behind him letting light shine through, and therefore allowing his face to be seen. As I was wanted to keep his identity an enigma I decided not to use this image.

I then decided to take this tesgt shot of myself to test if the composition and framing worked better. However i ended up using this image in addition to one of Hamish.

Flatplans & Layout Ideas

Typefaces & Fonts

For my planning I created a mood board of existing horror film poster titles. This allowed me to see the similarities and also allowed me to identify the conventions. This was useful as it gave me an idea of what my film title on my poster should look like. By analysing these I can see the most predominant colours used are red and white. This is because they are both very starong, bold, eye catching colours. Also, the colour red has very strong connotations with the horror theme, e.g. blood, death and anger. In addition they appear to use block, distorted, jagged lettering, this is because this gives the impression that something horrific has happened to it.

I then found the following five fonts which i thought were suitable and followed the conventions to use on my poster for my film title from www.dafont.com.