1. Overview of film posters

2. Movie
Poster
Main
image
Dark/dull
colours
Film
title
Date of
realase
Actors and
producers
The killer/
possessed
person
Tag
line
Footage
from
movie
The devil
inside
Insidious 2
The
possession
Paranormal
activity 3
The
conjuring
Sinister
Drag me to
hell
The seven posters in which I have chosen are all horror film posters, five of them are based on super
natural/ possession movies with the remaining two being from other types of horror genres. In this
over view I will analysis and highlight the comparisons and differences between all of these as well
as the use of horror conventions. Between the seven film posters express and share particular
conventions of the horror genre, they all share similarity’s such as the general conventions of an
image, significant text, slogan etc.
As you can see throughout all these film posters, the main similarity in which can be identified would
be the main horrific image which takes up the majority of the frame on the film poster. Each of the
images placed on the film poster takes up the whole frame or is the main focus due to them wanting
all your attention to be placed on this image, the reason for this is that the image is usually the main
horrific character or the victim within the film, this grabs your attention and after seeing this makes
you think about the possibilities in which the film offers, for example within ‘ the devil inside’ poster
the main image takes up the whole frame this draws the target audiences attention to double look
to see what the image is as well as to why this image has been used. The use of the image
throughout the seven posters gives a fright before the target audience have watched the films this
technique draws in the viewers.
Each of the seven posters have similar placement of the film title, six of the seven display the title of
the film at the bottom of the film poster this is because of when looking at a film poster the target
audience would usually look from top down to the bottom using this technique allows the film title

3. to be the last thing in which the target audience have seen and there for will remember the name of
the film due to the pattern being seen throughout this leads us to believe that this is a horror
convention of film posters. The difference of sinister having the title of the film placed just above the
main image may be to add to the effect of the image due to it looking like dripping blood.
Throughout this film posters apart from sinister, we see the institutional information located
underneath the film title.
Out of all seven of these film poster only one of them use film footage as a main image, this is
paranormal activity this is due to the idea that the film is made up of found footage rather than, a
taken image for the purpose of this film poster. This show us that this is not a common feature
within film posters and therefore most people are less likely to notice or use this technique. On the
front of the film poster only four of the seven poster display the date of the film, as some film
posters choose not to display it or say ‘coming soon’ the effectiveness of using coming soon makes
the audience want the film more and anticipate the realise date, however if the date is displayed
individuals are more likely to remember this and therefore go and see the film on the release date.
All seven of these poster have a tagline placed on the front cover, however the placement of the
tagline is different depending on the main image which is on the front cover, common places in
which it is placed in, is under the title or at the top of the page, having it separate from the title e.g.
on top of the page makes it more likely for people to read it rather than just focusing on the title as
people read/ look from top to bottom meaning it will be one of the first things which the audience
will see. A good example of this is paranormal activity as it is the only piece of writing which is
displayed at the top of the page and therefore is more likely to catch the audience’s eye.
The use of colours throughout allow us to identify if the media productions in which we are looking
at are from a particular genre, common colours which are used within horror genre consist of red,
black, white and green. These are usually dull and dark colours which allow us to recognise the
horror aspect of media pieces, especially on the film posters. All seven of these film posters use this
technique as a lot of them are based around the colour black, with the writing usually being white or
red there is a large amount of these colours used throughout. Good examples of this is on the film
poster of the possession and insidious 2 as only colours which they use is red, black and white,
alongside the majority of the images being very simple and plain within colours consist of black and
white.