Jouvans textual analysis of a horror poster

The Woman in Black is a horror movie which is due to be released in February 2012. The film is produced by the film production company ‘Hammer Film Productions’ and is distributed by Momentum Pictures. The film is directed by James Watkins and features actors such as Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds and Liz White. The Women in Black is a film remake of the 1983 novel written by Susan Hill. The Woman in Black is about a lawyer who visits a small village for legal reasons and soon discovers that the village he has visited is haunted by a woman. The lawyer later realises that the woman is a ghost that is set on getting revenge on the community after she was unable to save her child, however the lawyer is determined to prevent this from occurring.

The posters main image is of the actor Daniel Radcliffe who plays the lawyer ‘Arthur Kipps’ in the film. The character is positioned on the left hand side of the poster at a close up camera angle from his eyebrows to his lower lip. Half of the characters face is displayed in the shot which creates a mysterious feel to the poster. The posters main image challenges common conventions by using a close up camera angle, many horror film posters typically use medium close ups or long shots for example Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) and Friday the 13^th  (2009) follow conventions by both using long shots in their posters main image. Below is the 2010 Nightmare On Elm Street poster which uses as long shot. 

The poster however follows common conventions found in horror film posters by using less than three main image characters, the majority of horror film posters feature one main character and a minority use two or more.  The main image uses low key lighting, there are dark shadows around the characters nose and left cheek which could suggest that the light source is positioned at the characters right hand side. Low key lighting is common in horror film posters as it symbolises the horror genre. From the characters non-verbal communication the audience can tell that the character is focused because he is looking directly at the camera with his eyes wide open. The character has a well trimmed goatee which could suggest that he is a person who takes pride in his appearance as well as being of a higher class in order to keep up with such an appearance . The characters props and costume cannot be identified as the characters face is the only thing present in the poster. 

On the right hand side of the poster there is a background next to the main image which uses a mist effect, this effect makes the character appear to be in the mist.  The use of the misty background creates a mysterious and chilling mood to the poster, the mist is grey and grey connotes mystery,evilness and depression. In the mist a ghosts face can seen and the ghost could possibly be the woman in black, because the ghost is next to the main image of the character it could be mean that the ghost is coming for the him. Ghosts are spirits of a dead person hence why it is a typical convention used in horror posters as it frightens the audience.

On the right hand side of the poster the main characters name, a tagline, the films title and the films additional information is displayed. The information on the right hand side of the poster uses the same sans serif font which is in white capital letters however the text varies in font size . The poster has a structured and organized format because all of the texts use the same font.

The main characters name is at the top right hand side of the poster. The characters second name is below his first name, this word formatting style brings a  unique look to the poster.

The tagline used in the poster is ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’. The tagline  is next to the image of a ghost, the tagline could have been placed there to make the audience agree with the questions that ghosts do exist.

The title of the film is in the bottom half of the poster and it uses a unique format as each word is below its previous one and each word from the title uses a different font size. The word ‘Woman’ and ‘Black’ are in large font sizes while  ‘In’ and ‘The’ are in small font sizes.

Below the film title the films release month is displayed in a small font and below this is where the films logos are positioned.

'Slasher Inc' logo

As you very well know, our group Slasher Inc had decided to create a logo for our group's name. In previous posts we had put up just a few rough ideas, on what we'd like our logo to look like. Moving a few weeks on from that post we decided to go back and fully create our logo.

First of, we decided to go with just simple old 'Slasher Inc' writing for our text in our logo. Because of this we decided to use the programme 'Photoshop' to ultimate create our idea. To get the font, for our text, we downloaded the font 'old_sans_black' from 'dafont.com' on the worldwide web. No particular reason for us choosing this font, apart from the fact that it is simple but very effective in what we hoped to achieve. The font on it's own would not be very 'eye-catching' or draw a viewers attention to it. Because of this we decided to add some effects to the text. Some of these effects being adding a 'drop shadow' to it, an 'Inner shadow', adjusting the 'Bevel and Emboss' to our liking etc etc. This is how we ended up with the text in the picture below.

Getting our image up and running

Secondly, we wanted to add a bit more to our text rather than just adding effects such as Inner shadow etc and leaving it. Because of this we thought of ideas that would go with the sub-genre of our Horror movie, which is ‘Slasher’. As a collective we decided that the best types of effects to add would be a ‘blood-like’ effect. To get this effect into play we had to download some brushes, of the Internet, and then import them into Photoshop so we could then use them. The brushes we decided to download and use was ‘T9-Dirty-Sprays’. This brush was free and so quick and easy to obtain and use without the fear of breaking copyright laws. We used the brush by making a new layer called ‘texture’ and just adding this brush onto the new layer, in a dark blood-like colour. This then got added on to the photo, just behind ‘Slasher Inc’ and gave it the effect of blood being splattered. To give the ‘Slasher Inc’ a more gritty effect we also added new brushes, respectively named ‘Dirt Spray’ onto all the letters individually, giving dark black spots onto each letter. Check out the image below to see the effect.

Now that our image was finalist we decided it was best to leave it as it was and thus we decided to save the image as a JPEG, so it could be uploaded onto Blogger.

Saving the final image as a JPEG

But we had hit a snag. The snag was that we found the image to be too big, with too much off a background, rather than more logo the background took up most the image.

This final image had to much of a white background

Because of this we decided that the best thing to do, too get rid of this problem, would be to crop out the majority of the background.  To do this, we uploaded the image onto a piece of Software called ‘iPhoto’. This software allows you to edit your images simply and too a minimal fuss. So clicking ‘edit’ on iPhoto and then ‘crop’ allowed us to reach to the stage present in the photo below.

Uploading image onto iPhoto and cropping out the background

Once we had got the crop tool into the desired position we then clicked ‘done’ on crop. This allowed us to crop our image successfully and cut out all that excess white background, which we did not need.

Lastly, once we were happy with the editing of our image we then saved it and ended up with the end result as our logo.

Final desired image

Social networking sites used to market

To bring our idea of marketing our film into reality we decided to set up two separate pages, on two separate social networking websites. The networking sites we used are Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook is the biggest social networking website in the whole world. There is estimated to be a total of 800 million active users with 50% of these active users login on to their Facebook everyday. More than 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages) with an average user being connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. This is being said, it is easy to see why we would use Facebook to broadcast our movie. It's free and many people around the world can access our page from just a click of a button. Now the average Facebook user has 130, so this would mean that were our page be liked by somebody, 130 of their friends will see it on their homepage. It would ultimately become a 'domino' effect, with one person clicking on the page, then another and then another. This could lead page to our becoming very successful and make more people want to see our movie. Below is an image of our 'Slasher Inc' Facebook page.

To broaden our horizons and make sure that our movie can be seen by people who don't use Facebook, we decided to in turn make a Twitter page. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites in the World. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search quires per day, with it only have being created in July of 2006. This means that if we're able to get a strong 'following' on Twitter and are so called 'Tweets' being shared by users, we could possible reach out to millions of people worldwide. With Twitter also being free, it was very wise to make a page as it wouldn't cost us anything and can only be a 'win-win' situation.

Our Twitter page; @SlasherincCTK

Marketing of our movie

Due to advances, in technology, it is now much easier/simpler to be able to market a movie. Ways in which it has now become easier is through the use of ‘Web 2.0’. Web 2.0 is really a combination of the technology (like AJAX) that allow the customers/audience to actually interact with the information, that is on the desired webpage. Web 2.0 is starting to mean the situation where amateur writers and developers are able to create applications and Web sites that get more credibility than traditional news sources and software vendors. This combination of powerful JavaScript tools like AJAX enabling nearly anyone to contribute to and interact with the data that we are all working with is really what Web 2.0 is. Examples of a Web 2.0 website would be YouTube, a site which enables viewers to watch movies, embed and share videos and also lets them interact with fellow users of YouTube, through the use of comments.

example of some websites involved in 'Web 2.0'

Because of this ‘Web 2.0’ our group decided that it’d be smart to market our teaser trailer on such sites like YouTube. An example which inspired us to do this and lead use to believe that ultimately it would be successful was the ‘Dark Knight’ marketing campaign on Social network site MySpace, which enabled them to reach out to a wide audience and capture an audience that they might not of been able to reach without this viral marketing.

Example of how Web 2.0 was used to market 'The Dark Knight'

 Going back to how we used ‘Web 2.0’, we decided to take advantage of it’s use to us by creating Social networking accounts such as Facebook and Twitter and for the actual posting of our teaser trailer e.g. where our audience could view it, we decided to make a YouTube page.

Our YouTube page

Web 2.0 is very useful to use as it is free and means our target audience (users of the internet) would be able to access all our trailers, pictures, content easier and thus more and more people will get to know about the film, resulting in a possible ‘buzz’ around the trailers release.

Logo sketch ideas

Above are two logo sketches for my groups film logo. As a group we decided to create a logo from the first sketch because we felt it was the most effective and appropriate for what we intended to produce. 

Equipment we'll be using during our production

Due to many ground breaking advances in technology, it is now much simpler to get your hands on ‘top of the range’ equipment, in the use of filming, than it was say 5-10 years ago.

This is why our group has composed a list of the technology, which we’ll be using in production, and this post will just give you a quick run down on what the equipments called, what its used for and where it’ll be of use in our production.

First of, one of the main things we’ll be using in our production is camera’s (to take pictures or/and film shots) and so the camera we’ve been using to great effect has been the ‘EOS Canon 550D’. As well as having a class-leading resolution boost of 18 megapixels, it also has HD capture of 30 fps, for its movie mode and has full manual control and the option to use an external stereo microphone, so if our group feels we need to record any sound (dialog) we can do that. It also sports a widescreen of (3:2) LCD panel, has improved button design and offers the ability to customize the Auto ISO function to our liking. This type of camera is very practical, as it holds incredible features and comes at a very reasonable price. To give you just a quick run down, I’ll list all the features within the EOS Canon 550D. Features;

• 18 MP APS-C CMOS sensor
• DIGIC 4
• ISO 100-6400, H:12800
• Up to 3.7fps shooting
• Full HD movies
• 7.7cm (3.0”) 3:2 Clear View LCD with 1,040k dots
• iFCL metering
• Quick Control screen
• Ext. Mic socket
• Movie crop

Any filming or pictures we’ve taken need to be put up somewhere, so our teachers can see our work or progression. This is why we’ve chosen the website named ‘Blogger’ to host our work. Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs. Blogger is of a great use to us, one because it is free, two it is easy to access and use and finally it’ll enable us to upload any work we seem fit for our coursework as it allows everything even from ‘embedding’ of videos from websites such as YouTube. Blogger will also allow our group to come across in a professional manner and display any work we’ve collected, worked on and developed.

Once we’ve collected our work, we then need to have the use of a computer to place our work on. This is where ‘iMac’ comes into play. iMacs (created by Apple) are a great deal handy to our group, as this is where we’ll be able to edit all our work, collect it and put it on Blogger. Now iMacs come in two sizes (either 21.5 inches or 27inches) but the size we’ll be using in College is 27inches. The 27-inch Mac boasts resolution of 2560-by 1440, giving you more pixels, which mean that images look crisp and true to life, the 1000:1 contrast ratio gives you more vibrant colours and blacker blacks and the 16:9 aspect ratio gives off the same ratio as a HDTV.

Now whilst the iMac itself is a great piece of equipment, it still needs other programs aid to get the best out of it. This is where Photoshop comes into the picture. Photoshop, made by Adobe, is a graphics-editing program. This means that it will enable us to be able to edit, manipulate any images we deem necessary for our group’s poster or film magazine. It’ll also help us to design our ‘Slasher Inc’ logo. Althought Photoshop 5 is the latest one on the market we’ll be using ‘PS3’ due to the fact that this is what they have at our college.

Another program, of use to us, is ‘Final Cut Pro’. Final Cut Pro breaks free from the restrictions of old-fashioned time line tracks. A new, dynamic editing interface let’s you experiment freely while working with extraordinary speed and precision. We will be using this program to edit our teaser trailer, to the best of our ability, using such tools as trimming tools, to cut the videos we shoot, and also be using the rubber band tool to make clips fade in out to make the trailer run smoothly in the time line. 

Last, but most certainly not least, is the technology we’ll be using as a group to stay in touch to talk about our work. Due to advances in technology to due with Phones, we now have mobiles that allow us to have instant messaging services a click of a button away. The mobile being mentioned is a ‘Blackberry’. Ironically every member of our group owns and uses a Blackberry and due to it’s instant messaging service ‘Blackberry Messenger’ it is easy for us all to stay in touch. On ‘BBM’ we made a group called ‘Slasher Inc’, that has all us four members on it, so if we ever feel we need to chat a quick conversation or throw ideas at each other we can just message all of our members together on a group chat.

Ideal Audience Moodboard

To go with our idea of ‘Dave’ we’ve also designed a mood board to show what images would suit our target audience.

The pictures/images are from an idea of what someone, who'd want to see our movie, would like, participate in, use etc.

We'll let the images speak for themselves and let you know what are idea of an 'ideal' audience would be like