Film Poster Overview

The following are posters are promoting slasher horror films and all share common conventions, Friday the 13th, Smiley, Texas Chainsaw, Porkchop Two, Maniac, My Bloody Valentine and Scream 4.

The following posters have been designed to promote slasher films and have been successful in doing so within the sub-genre.

All seven posters share some common conventions of general film posters, such as the film title is the largest text so that the audience will remember the movie’s title. Also the image always dominates the page and fills the whole poster. This image usually represents the narrative of the film, for example in the ‘Scream 4’ poster we see an arm that has been sliced and is in a pool of blood, and the arm is also holding a phone, which goes well with the tagline ‘New decade. New rules’ meaning the technology that we use today will feature in this film.

We can see in these posters that they heavily feature the colours red, black and white as these are the most common colours that feature in the subgenre of slasher. Furthermore the posters are

feature a dark or gloomy atmosphere to create more fear within the audience, this will entice the audience to go and watch the film because that is what the audience looks for in a slasher, being scared of what is in the dark. We can also see that these slasher posters all have reference to a gruesome death due to the use of blood and the props used, for example the chainsaw shows that this is the weapon of choice for that movie. The target audience will be excited for this because they will know that a chainsaw can deliver a gruesome death that meets their needs.

What we can also learn from these slasher posters is that the antagonist is always hidden within a mask and never shows his true identity as this creates a tenser atmosphere for the audience that the antagonist’s true identity is unknown which creates mystery and fear. We see this from all seven posters as known of them show the antagonists face and five of the seven posters show the antagonists mask is on full show which once again creates fear but also entices audiences to go and watch the film.

Four of the posters shown feature the weapon of choice for the antagonist which will help create fear. But also these weapons are used because they are quiet and create big blood scenes where the killer can slice and chop up there victim quietly so the others don’t hear. However the Texas Chainsaw poster shows the antagonist holding a chainsaw which makes the movie unique to the others because the weapon of choice is very loud, but this is what made the film so successful.

All of these posters presented are designed so that the target audience knows that theses movie titles are from the specific sub-genre (slasher) for example the poster from Friday the 13 th has the antagonist right in the centre the camera angle used makes it look like he is much bigger than us which creates more fear within the audience. In addition the surrounding setting is a very dark forest area which shows the common convention that the victims will be isolated without any help sand the moonlight is used to create a gloomy and scary atmosphere to show that this is the only light available. This light was designed to look right down on the killers mask so the audience can see what lays in the dark woods and the fact that the light only shines on half of the mask means that he is coming within the forest.

The images presented in these posters are all designed to create fear and be horrific. In all of these posters, excluding the ‘Scream 4’ poster, it is the antagonist who is present, which makes the poster more enticing and terrifying as the villain is there to scare the audience and that is what will encourage them to watch the movie. The killer is going to be the scariest part of a slasher film so it makes sense for the antagonist to be the main image and to take up the whole poster so that the audience can be scared and want to watch it. For example in the poster for ‘Porkchop Two’ we see an up close shot of the pig mask holding a bloody axe, the target audience will find this horrific because it seems that the killer is half man half pig who is out to kill.

All these posters are effective because they have managed to create fear and excitement to enable them to go and watch the film or at least be interested enough to watch the trailer. They all follow three main conventions of a poster; minimal text, one main image, and a bold and dominant film title.