Vacancy on VioletHill Poster

Film Poster Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback Poster

Above are the results of the questionnaires made to assess the success of our film poster for Vacancy on VioletHill.

From these answers we found that:

• The average rating of the poster's effectiveness was approximately 8 out of 10
• The average rating of interest levels in the film promoted by the poster was 8.3 out of 10
• All of the respondents replied 'Yes' to the question "Did the poster leave a lasting impression on you?"

Like the magazine audience feedback, the feedback was generally positive, probably more so that the magazine. There was still some constructive criticism regarding the poster, for instance the carving on the wall is very hard to read as its feint and partially covered. However, people commented that it looked very professional and that the picture was very powerful, and that the image of a man with an axe was also very effectual.

Poster Construction

Tom made this document for the construction of the film poster as he was there for every stage of the construction and spent the most time on it.Construction (Poster)

Test for Poster Idea

One of our ideas for our poster is to use an axe in shot reflecting an image of our main character. In order to see if this would work we've mocked up a version using images off of the internet and using Photoshop to merge them to create the effect we're looking for.

We took the picture of an axe, and then copied the image of a metal texture onto the axe, added a layer mask to blend it into the original axe picture. By pen tooling the shape of the axe head it merges into the original picture, and then we lowered the opacity to make it look more natural.

Then we got the picture of a man shot low angle and pen tooled around his portrait and placed him on the area of the axe head. By selecting the area of the texture layer and then after inverting the selection we deleted the unneeded parts of the man's portrait. We made the layer style for the portrait 'soft light' and lowered the opacity slightly before gaussian blurring the man's face by around 2.7 pixels radius. Lastly we lowered the saturation of the portrait.

This was the result:

The Omen Poster Analysis

The poster for the release of the remade Omen film uses a mixture of imagery and iconography to illustrate the basis the of the film, playing both on what the viewer see’s and of what they know from the previous films. The film was released around 4 years ago for the only time we’ll ever see the date 6/6/06, obviously highlighting ‘the number of the beast’ in Christian belief, centred around the coming of the antichrist and the eve of the apocalypse. The clues of the iconography given here are the emphasis on the date 6/6/06 at the bottom and in the black text above the boy. The ominous Christian imagery shown would be the shadow that extends down from the ‘O’ of omen that appears as an upside down cross, suggesting a sign of the antichrist.

The elements of the poster that make it obvious that the film is a horror would most likely first be the colours. Everything in the scene is toned with a de-saturated blue, with a very high contrast. The backlighting gives light blurred edges to the trees and the figure, and the field of focus is very shallow, highlight the boy at the forefront followed by the dog and the menacing and sinister looking trees in the background, masked in thick white fog that plays on a pathetic fallacy. The way that all the trees are bare and almost silhouetted makes the scene look very cold and unnerving. The sharp thin branches surround the scene in a very disturbing manner, to help add to the horror feel.

The boy himself has a very unnerving look about him. His expression is very mysterious and the shadow covering his face makes him seem like a threat to the viewer. His eyes can just be seen in the shadow making it seem like he’s looking directly at the viewer with a suspicious motive. He’s dressed for winter, confirming the cold atmosphere of the poster. The boy is midway through swinging on the seat he’s on, giving a transitional period to the scene, and the innocence of a child playing on a swing contrasts well with the serious, sinister face given off by the child. This is a large clue towards suggesting that the child is cursed or not completely what he seems. The Rottweiler next to the boy is also a menacing features at it sits almost completely silhouetted and the breed itself has quite a few connotations that suggest a fierce, violent nature. The eyes of the dog are even highlighting, making it look very unnatural.

The text in the poster has an ominous feel to it. The font is serif and gives it a formal look, highlighting that the film is very serious and dark. Its plain black, adding to that theme, and there’s been a slight vertical motion blur applied to the text, making seem as if the text is emerging slightly, giving it its own creepy aura that adds to its imposing appearance. On the date at the bottom a yellow/golden outer glow has been applied, giving it a biblical look, informing the viewer that the film is based on beliefs of Christianity. The upside cross has been used again as bullet points to separate the days, months and years. Overall an impending menace is portrayed in this poster, linked to Christian belief, giving very much a ‘calm before the storm’ impression.