The document discusses the design choices made for promotional materials for a horror film called "Lullaby." Key features included in the poster are a spooky close-up photo of the villain to intimidate audiences and convey the film's scary nature, and red lips on the villain to symbolize danger and fear. A creepy font was used to make the poster look sinister. The magazine cover was designed to appeal to a more sophisticated audience, with the director's head composited over the masthead to give a sense of exclusivity. Both the poster and magazine target horror fans rather than a mainstream audience.

1. Joseph Donaldson

2. I included a number of generic features in my poster, to not only make a good poster but so people
viewing it will know the film is a horror, and not a comedy for example. One of the main features is
the spooky photo, I took an extreme close up of our villain looking very creepy, a lot like the poster for
the film ‘Contracted’ (2013). The reason I done this is because the audience will almost feel intimidated
by Caitie’s face and they’ll automatically know what kind of film this
poster is advertising. When taking the photos, one thing I noticed
straight away is that there isn’t much colour, mainly black and white
which I thought looked great because it almost connotes the darkness
of the film and how scary it will be but I really wanted a bit of red on
the poster. I chose to colour in Caitie’s lips in a blood red colour to
give the connotation of danger and fear. I think this works really well
as not only does it have a hidden meaning, but it sticks out from far
away, which is likely to draw an audience in. Another generic feature I used was a creepy font. I used a
website called DaFont to get the cool typewriter font. I thought this font worked really well with the rest
of my poster as it looks quite sinister and connotes that this horror film is a real story as it would have been documented on a
typewriter. My favourite font was the font I used for the characters names and the ‘coming soon’. This looks very paranormal as it is
shifty, like a ghost. A lot of psychological horror films use this style of font, like ‘Grave Encounters’ (2011).

3. This photo of Joe is one of him dressed up to look like a classy director, as my magazine is aimed
at a more classy audience rather than the typical middle class audience that read the popular film
magazines like Total Film and Empire. With the photo I used chiaroscuro to show that this addition
of my magazine is one about horrors, which goes along nicely with all of my cover lines. Obviously
every magazine has a barcode, date, prise and issue number so I added these in places that other
film magazines would. One thing that I made sure I done was to cut Joe’s head out using the
magnetic lasso tool and then paste the head on a new layer above my masthead so I could put the
masthead behind his head, like a lot of popular magazines do,
especially Total Film and Empire. This gives the readers a sense of
exclusivity, that they know something that a random reader
wouldn't, especially because they know what the masthead says,
which is quite difficult to read with Joe’s head in the way. All the colours and fonts used in
my magazine cover are very similar so I can keep up a sophisticated house style. I also
added two graphics on the bottom left hand side. This was my horror poster and another
member of my groups horror poster. I added these to give the reader another reason to buy
the magazine as not only are the getting a magazine full of fun and useful information,
they’re getting free posters. A lot of magazines do this, from music magazines, to wildlife
magazines. You can see that Total Film also do this as this is a popular demand from
regular readers.

4. Both of my ancillary products go together well. They are both for a more mature and classy audience and I
think they compliment each other well. Although the target audience for my trailer is predominantly lower
class young adults, I feel that the high class audience would enjoy it as well. I think my trailer and ancillary
products are quite similar to ‘The Woman in Black’ and the target audience for that was both higher and
lower class.
The certificate for ‘Lullaby’ is a 15 as when doing our research, we found that most psychological horrors
were a 15 certificate and we didn’t feel like we had enough gore/violence in our film to make it an 18. Also,
the 3 years between the ages of 15 and 18 are very important as a lot of our audience would be around this
age and they wouldn’t be able to go see it at cinemas, which does not only lose us money, but it also
upsets our target audience. For my poster, I didn’t want to make anything too scary but I also didn’t want to
make it too mild so I think the use of chiaroscuro along with the scary photo works perfectly and ties in well
with my 15 certificate. My magazine was different as I didn’t want to make a scary magazine as it wasn’t
just about horrors, it also includes other genre’s of film so I avoided the scary side of it and just went for the
stereotypical magazine look.
Like most horrors, the target audience isn't the mainstream. Although horrors are enjoyed by a lot of people,
they don’t have a big following and horror fans would be classed as going against the CDI (cultural dominant
ideologies). Because of this, horror films have the power to do what they want without causing controversy
as they aren’t as important as an action trilogy or a ‘rom-com’. So because of this my horror poster and
magazine doesn’t target the mainstream audience, but instead targets the reformers and individuals.