Research into film posters

Posters for supernatural thrillers/horrors tend to use darkness a lot to represenet the sinister, dark natures of their stories. One example of this is the sixth sense:

A lot of this film poster is black, which gives the impression that this is quite a dark film. The main character is shown as a silhouette, suggesting that he may have things to hide which will be revealed through the movie, and suggests that this film is likely to have plot twists and surprises (e.g. Bruce willis' character being dead). The use of the six acting as a metaphorical 'light' that people see when they die implies that this film will be about death and ghosts, showing the audience straight away that it is going to have a supernatural element to it. The tagline at the bottom 'touch taste hear smell see fear' shows the horror aspects to this film and shows the audience that this is going to be a film based around being scared.






The posters for the woman in black also use darkness to represent the sinister aspects of the film. In this first one, the text has flared vertically, creating a very ghostly effect, implying supernatural aspects. The rhetorical question 'Do you belive in ghosts?' is a much more obvious representation of the prescence of supernatural beings in the film, however this also targets the reader directly and creates fear on a much more personal level. The ghost in the background again creates a fearful mood to the film and the fact that the main character is looking away suggests he is in danger. Also, only half of Daniel Radcliffe's face can be seen, suggesting he either has something to hide at the beginning of the film, or the scarring events of the film are the things he is trying to hide. This adds the thriller aspect to the poster.



This poster again uses a flare effect on the text to create a ghostly effect. This provides consistency over all of the posters to send the same message of terror and supernatural things being a part of this film. The graveyard in the background represents death, representing the darkness of the narrative. Daniel radcliffe also has a shadow over half of his face creating the same effect as in the first poster implying that he is trying to hide something. The dark blue of the poster creates a more ghostly effect than full black because ghosts are regularly shown as transparent dark blue.

In both of these posters, Daniel Radcliffe's name is the only one shown as he is the most famous actor invloved, allowing the makers of the film to market his name to the audience. We however won't be able to incorporate this into our film because we have a very low budget and so cannot afford big names to participate in our movie.

The film poster for mama uses a large amount of darkness, about half of the poster is pitch black to create a spooky mood. The rest of the poster is quite gritty which also contributes to this effect. The person the child is hiding behind looks dead and zombie like. This is the aspect of the poster which shows the audience that the film is about ghosts/dead people and will have a horror aspect to it. The tagline 'A mothers love is forever' takes a quite sweet phrase and puts it in the context of a horror thriller poster and it twists it to be quite sinister.


The fonts in posters for supernatural thrillers are often block capitals which creates a very serious mood and makes the poster stand out as a horror/supernatural thriller and not as a light hearted comedy. Alternatively, the text in the sixth sense looks scratched, which also creates a horror effect. This effect is also used in the se7en title sequence, which was also a supernatural thriller.