In what ways does our

poster use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Conventions of supernatural horror posters:

- Film posters can be both portrait or landscape, however I’ve found that with the majority they’re portrait.

- Close-ups and extreme close-ups are frequently used for intensity .

- The colour schemes tend to consist of black and reds, to connote the emotions of fear and pain. - The angle is usually neutral, to establish an equal ground with the viewer, in order to create more engagement- this is also usually emphasized by the use of direct mode of address.

How our poster follows conventions

Our image is conventional of a supernatural horror poster due to the fact that it presents the evil force, as opposed to the protagonist of the film.

The aim of the poster is to clearly display the genre and style of the film, unlike the magazine cover which aims to pull the reader into finding out more about the film.

Our poster may have been less striking and eerie if we’d used the protagonist as our model, which is why we decided to stick to conventions of horror posters and use the supernatural entity.

The colours are partly conventional due to the use of black and white.

The majority of horror posters use black due to its connotations of mystery and malevolence, and the white then acts as a powerful contrast in order to make the typography clear and striking; hence why we incorporated these colours into our poster.

The lighting of our poster is typical of a horror poster, due to it being low key with just enough areas of highlight in order to display part of the entity- ultimately this creates a sense of mystery and threat as it indicates that there could be something lurking in the shadows.

The layout is also quite conventional, due to the heading of the film being placed at the bottom of the page with the credits underneath- this can be seen amongst most horror posters. We decided to go with this convention due to the fact that it suited the frame of the image, as we could still make the title ‘Afflicted’ large without letting it detract from the image i.e. direct mode of address, costume, etc. As an example which contrasts from this convention is the Insidious 2 poster, which is quite quirky due to the heading being vertical- it ultimately creates a sense of chaos which is quite effective.

The typography on our poster is conventional of film posters due to it being easy to read, which is key when a viewer is looking at a poster from a certain distance away, for example ‘Grace Farrington’ and ‘Coming soon’ are in a simple and clear font, in order for the viewer to be able to easily familiarize with the actress and the fact that the film is being released soon.

Our tagline ‘Will fear stop you?’ is formed in a slightly faint, flowing typography, which connotes the idea of spirits and ghosts which links with the supernatural aspect of our film.

How our poster challenges conventions

Our poster also challenges conventions- the camera shot of our image is a medium close-up and this is quite unusual for a supernatural horror poster. Usually the image is a close-up or even an extreme close-up, in order to really capture the expression and intensity of the image; however we’ve challenged this convention by distancing the viewer from the entity by using a medium close-up. The reason why we did this is because we wanted to capture our models costume within the image, due to it having quite a theatrical and eerie effect.

We developed conventions in terms of colour due to the fact that we’ve used the unconventional colour green- usually horror posters express anger, power and malevolence through the colour red- however we wanted our magazine to challenge this convention which could be argued is becoming a cliché.

The green on our poster acts as a way to combine our three ancillary tasks, as it runs throughout them as a theme, due to the fact that green connotes envy (which appropriately reflects the supernatural entity) and links in with the forest setting of our film.