Choosing The Film Poster Image

The original image that I was going to put on the film poster was going to be the image on the left. We took over 30 pictures so that there would be a variety to choose from and this one stood out to me, The pictures we took were some of her holding the chain and some without but we decided as a group that for the film poster it would be best to have the chain incorporated in it. The picture was in focus and had her holding the chain which is one of the main driving forces in my narrative. It was a medium shot which is the type of shot that most film posters use to show the face and a bit of the costume. I thought the image chosen showed her face makeup well and also the costume which was covered in blood. I wanted the blood to be involved as it's an iconography of horror and it establishes the horror genre. To an audience, the first thing they will notice is the blood on her face and top and this will automatically make them assume something bad has happened. Dawn looks quite scary in the first image as well, she looks hypnotized by the necklace and the shadow on her face gave her an even darker appearance. After I got some feedback from my media teacher and some peers, I decided that this image was good but it wasn't the best of all the ones that I had taken. I looked through them again and discovered the image on the right.

The image on the right was striking as it looked to an audience as if she was looking at the camera but the necklace as well. It was challenging working with a black background especially when it came to cutting her image out because it looked apparent that the image was cut out. Her hair outline stuck out with the black background so I made the decision to keep the image in the same exact spot and create the poster around it. Instead of cutting out the image I put all the text on top of the image. We used a black sheet for the background and I ironed it to make sure it wasn't that creased. I learnt from audience feedback that this image was more striking to them than the first one. The audience feedback also helped in making me decide whether to cut out the image. I cut out the image and showed an audience but they told me that they were able to tell that the image had been cut out and it looked weird on the background. The feedback helped me develop my poster and make it come out better than it would've if I hadn't of made certain changes. On the image that I ended up using, I used the shadow over her left eye to my advantage. I manipulated the shadow by lassoing out a section of the shadow and rotated it to make a downward cross. The downward cross has been used in other horror films such as The Conjuring and The Omen. The cross is turned upside down to become a symbol of the devil. The devil is believed to be a supernatural entity that is the personification of evil. The villain in the poster represents evil and through the downward cross on her face it would be illustrating this. I made the downward cross quite subtle, I didn't want to make it stand out too much as I didn't want that to be the sole focus of the poster. Making the downward cross was challenging in itself as I had to change the brightness and exposure levels up and down to create the right balance. If it the shadow was too dark it didn't blend in well with her skin. The mise-en scene on the poster is apparent, the chain is the thing that stands out. In the second image she's holding out her arm to essentially promote the necklace. Also her eye makeup in the image on the right was lighter than the one on the left which made it easier to darken and change.