Poster for the movie

Our front cover is very important to us as we want it to attract the right audience. We also want it to give a teaser of what the movie is about and get the audience hooked into watching it. We researched film covers as they are similar to the poster. We had had to look at the specific horror / thriller genre are there was no point researching genres that aren't specific to our project.

The first film cover we researched was Sorority Row. We decided on this movie as we both were aquainted with it and its story has similarities. For example both our films are female orientated. We felt the front cover was very busy but interesting to look at and that it would attract an audiences attention when sitting on a shelf. We liked how it has shown most of the characters with the main ones as the biggest. It also has put them in a position where it is showing an arrow pointing to the middle of the cover. This could connote to the audience that there is more entertainment inside the box. The background is their sorority house on fire which could suggest their life going up in flames. The whole picture has a red/ orange colour scheme which could connote hell. None of the characters are smiling which shows the audience that it isn't a comedy and not for young children. The light behind them might suggest death and that some of the characters are going to die. We also liked how the picture is symmetrical. What we didn't like is that all the girls are in completely different outfits which don't particularly match with the background or colour scheme. It does suggest to the audience that these are glamorous girls but we feel we want a bit more co-ordination than that.

The Grudge is the second film cover we looked at. This is because it was a film we both found enjoyable to watch and it partly inspired us to make our project a horror/ thriller. The cover is very dark and inhuman looking. We liked the rough look about it and the proxemics to the character. The eye doesn't look particularly attractive and is dark which matches the colour scheme. The big, red writing could connote danger which would again show the genre. As the picture is so close it is hard to make out the shape of the face which could make the audience want to see more. The layout is quite simple and it doesn't show the main character which might make the audience intrigued, and curious. We liked this idea but we decided we didn't want to give away our antagonist that quickly. 

The Ring is similar to The Grudge in how simple the front covers are. They give away hardly anything for the audience. This film has the motif of a ring of light. This ring of light at first can mean anything to the audience from a wedding ring to a puff of smoke, but as you watch the film it shows how very important this ring of light is to the storyline. We like the thought of using semiotics to show very little information until you watch the film. This we think makes the audience very curious and want to watch the film even though they have very little information on it.  The colour scheme is very plain with the simple colours of white and a raspy black. The font of the writing is as if a little child wrote it which connotes there may be a young child in the film. The beginnings of the words are not capitalised which also suggests this. The slogan 'before you die, you see' connotes a very scary film which the audience may feel could have possibly put them in danger. It also makes more sense if you watch the movie. All these signs are to entice an audience to watch the film.   

Layout ideas for our poster

This design we wanted to give little hints on the storyline and thats where the halo idea came from. We also wrote innocence in latin to show the ancient timeline of the myth our story in based on. We tried to make it symmetrical as a common fact suggests people prefer it to unsymmetrical.

This design we wanted to be unique and so we decided on making the film name to be clever and interact with the background. We didn't want either of our layouts to be too busy as we really liked the idea 'The Ring' had displayed as it was really simple but really effective. We want the audience to feel that the movie must be so good that there is no point trying to justify the horror on the poster. We like the old fashion buildings with character and that is how we came up with this idea.

We decided to go for a fairly simple design but would be quite obvious after you watched the whole movie.

We wanted it to look like a sketch almost, so it starts as if it is just a storybook but as you get into the film it seems more real. To make this effect, Mary had to sketch some angel wings and then we edited them on photoshop. We then took pictures of me curled up as if the wings were behind me. We then edited that picture to make it smudged and then merged the pictures together. Here are the pictures we started off with;