Horror Poster

We then had to design and create another horror poster. However, this had to be our own ideas of a film. We had to take our own pictures and edit them to fit in with the horror genre.
My inspiration came from a path in my village church. The church seems never ending, so I cam up with he film 'No Way Home'.

To make this poster, I used a variety of techniques to make the poster look dark and forbidding which connotes horror.
The poster, the syntagm was put together with the paradigms. I chose one paradigm, the path church to be the background of my poster. I chose this rather than any other location because it looked dark, never ending and frightening. I took a picture of a wide shot of the path, this was to create the forever expanse of the path. I lowered the saturation so that it would become a background image.

Then I made the borders on the top and bottom of the poster. I used the grunge brush, that looked like blood and used a deep red colour to paint with. Once these areas were complete I found a text that I thought was suitable and connoted a horror theme. I then put a gradient overlay on it and positioned as necessary.

I then placed a texture over the top of the whole image and set its mode to hard light, this is why you can see different shades of red on the borders and a grainy feel to the piece as a whole.
I photographed a boy in a black hooded top to create the appearance of a black cloak. I chose this garment because I felt that it looked dead like and ‘spooky’ which is what I wanted to portray in my poster. I rendered the face in the photograph and reduced the saturation to create the dead effect. I then did minor adjustments. I used the spot healing tool and took away any blemishes so the face looked even more corpse like and professional. I then placed a different texture over the face, creating a layer mask for the hair, nose and eyes.

I then used a variety of layer modes, grunge brushes, the burn tool and opacity levels to create, an ill looking horror genre style face. I then surrounded the picture with black smoke which gave me the idea for the smoke at the top of the poster.

To create the feeling that you are being watching in the poster; I cut out eyes of a photograph I took of my sister. I took a photo of these eyes because they signify evil, no way to turn and being surrounded. This is what I wanted my horror film to be about. I feathered the eyes to make them blend in so they were not sharp making it look like they were park of the background. I used the colour balance took to make them red and set the opacity down so they could just be seen.

I then took a picture of a group of flowers. I did want a picture of a dead flower but I found this difficult so I used the burn tool to make the image darker. I chose this paradigm because it was juxtaposition between the dead and the living; the ‘ghost like’ image of the boy and the once beautiful flowers contrast. I increased the saturation compared with the background so they would stand out and layered them with smoke to give the poster an evil, mysterious quality.
I then added the names of the producer director and cast and added a logo to make the poster seen more professional.

I think my poster was effective for because it connotes horror and fear. I think the smoke created mystery and the eyes draw the reader into the poster. However, I think I could gave improved on the photograph of the flowers to make them seem more dead which would have created a more obvious juxtaposition.