It is important to understand a medium before creating a piece within it, and this is no less true in relation to advertising posters for horror movies. Within this post, the posters for Friday the 13th, The Conjuring and Saw VI will be analysed and the research used in the creation of the ancillary product.
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th
is one of the most influential horror movies in recent memory,
especially within the slasher genre. As such, it is essential to
understand how the advertising affected the success of this product,
especially in regards to the poster.
The main image of
the poster has the setting of a misty wood (Crystal Lake in the
film), a common setting for horror films due to the claustric
atmosphere and isolation it creates as well as the feelings of being
trapped it elicits. This claustric feeling is emphasised by the
positioning of the only character; the character in the middle of the
image blocks the eerie, ethereal blue light shining through the tops
of the trees, representing the barrier the protagonist (and the
audience, as the main character in slashers is supposed to represent
the ideal audience member) has to overcome to get to safety. The
light-dark juxtaposition is directly parallel to the good-evil binary
opposition found in the narrative, which Levi-Strauss argues is a
manifestation of the underlying thought process of humanity and is
therefore a concept universally identified with by all audiences (an
extreme case of identification, theorised by Blumler, Katz and
Gurevitch in their Uses and Gratifications Theory to be a reason for
audiences to seek out media). Interestingly, the aggressive body
language of the character, the dehumanising hockey mask that
bastardises the human face (uncanny valley) and the immediate threat
of the weapon paints the main character on the poster as the
antagonist and thus representative of evil. This means, by looking at
the binary opposition, that the audience looking on is supposed to
represent good (which fits in with most people's self-concept, thus
boosting the identification the average audience has). Having the
antagonist as the main character on the poster is common to horror
but not to nearly any other genre, and represents the need for the
audience to experience conflict in their boring lives as escapism
(hence why so many horror and slasher films take place in places like
suburbia and revolves around shallow characters going about in their
boring lives before conflict strikes in the form of the antagonist).
This need for conflict is further shown by the low angle of the
image, showing the antagonist as more powerful and thus a more
difficult and interesting barrier to success. The smoke in the
background and the trees act as a physical barrier, creating a sense
that the whole world is against the forces of good, stepping up the
conflict further. The use of Jason Vorhees as the character on the
poster is an interesting one, especially as Jason turns out to not be
the killer in Friday the 13th and is therefore not the
prime antagonist (or villain, as Propp used to label the character
type); usually the most threatening and conflict-inducing villain is
used for advertising. Jason is an exception in this regard due to his
iconic look that is incredibly effective at making him look just
inhuman enough to create unease and dangerous enough to create fear
during action. This is why he is put in the centre of the poster in
clear view – the unique selling point he creates is essential for
branding.
The tag line at the
top of the page creates a sense of horror through the use of
juxtaposition and subversion. A common phrase when coming to a
holiday location is “Welcome to [place name]”, and as such it
produces a sense of safety through the association with vacation. By
putting this friendly phrase on top of a horrific image, the tag line
subverts the expectations of the audience through the juxtaposition
and makes the audience uneasy. This unease adds to the conflict and
as such makes the target audience wish to see the product more.
The title, on the
other hand, is located in the bottom-third of the poster. This
placement (tag line, image, title and billing block, in descending
order) is a convention of film posters and as such makes it easier
for the audience to 'read' the advertisement. The blood-red of the
title generates danger and brings to mind gore, again accelerating
the conflict, whilst also standing out against the twilight, serene
hues used in the rest of the image (white, black and gentle blue,
symbolising safety and calm, whilst the red subverts this). The title
needs to stand out to both strengthen the branding of the product
(great for selling cross-media products and merchandise) whilst also
getting the title – the only thing the audience can really use to
find the product – to stick in the minds of the audience. The
woodgrain effect on the text makes it look like it has been dyed onto
a piece of wood, bringing to mind the wooden signs in American
forests. This manufactures in the audience's minds a sense of unease
and claustrophobia whilst also fitting with the setting of the piece.
The calendar motif in the title is also interesting, combining both
language and font to create a sense of importance and event to seeing
the film. The phrase 'Friday the 13th ' is a date that is
seen in the Zeitgeist as a day of misfortune; this fits in perfectly
with the horror theming and genre. The font looks as if it has been
written on a calendar and the serif style makes it look important.
This calendar theming creates an association in the audience's mind
with a date, an ingenious marketing technique that makes the audience
feel as if they have to see the première of the film (thus bringing
in a large amount of box office revenue on opening night, which
creates 'buzz' and sells more tickets later on as well).
The subtitle (“From
the producers of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) links to the film
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
bringing in fans of said product by suggesting to the audience that
this film will be similar in some way. It also appeals to the
'fanbase' of the producers, a consistent group of consumers that will
regularly buy products with links to their chosen obsession. Below
this, the billing block sits and offers a summary of the main cast
and crew, again bringing in fans of these people whilst also making
the poster look professional.
In
summary, this poster is a great example in the horror poster genre.
The use of incredible imagery mixed with tactical use of language,
colour and symbolism creates a great atmosphere that gratifies that
target audience more than most horror posters. Motifs, use of image
and well-thought-out language will all be considered in future
ancillary tasks, and this
poster will be a primary inspiration for them.
The Conjuring
Another incredibly successful horror movie (and one that was recently
released) is The Conjuring, grossing over $318 million from a
$20 million budget. The marketing of The Conjuring was
incredibly different to that of Friday the 13th
and thus needs to be analysed by itself (via the poster).
Todorov
argued that all communication, whether language, prose or art, is a
reflection of core 'psychological processes' and that there are thus
grammatical and syntactical similarities between all mediums that
allow audiences to understand the communication. Following from this,
posters have to set up two Todorovian narratives for the audience; a)
the film's narrative, showing enough of the story of the product to
intrigue the audience and creating an incomplete narrative that sells
tickets through curiosity, and b) the poster's or the gratification
narrative, which frames the audience member in the role of the
protagonist and sets up which uses and gratifications (Uses and
Gratifications Theory – Blumler, Katz and Gurevitch) the audience
will experience.
The
main image communicates most of the film narrative. The image is that
of an old, lower-upper-class house in the middle of an estate, with
mist quasi-obscuring the content of the image and a gothic, warped
tree with a noose hanging from it in the middle. On the ground
beneath the noose is the shadow of a young girl. Being an
establishing shot of the main location of the film, this sets the
equilibrium of the film narrative and gives spatial context to the
piece (and the narrative propositions of the house and the characters
are linked with a spatial relation, as explored in Todorov's The
Poetics of Prose). The hanging
noose on the tree and the shadow of the young girl hint at a
disruption, creating excitement in the audience and appealing to the
horror-loving psychographic group (the disequilibrium being the most
emotional and conflict-inducing part of the narrative), and this
conflict is implied to be occult through the title ('The Conjuring')
and through the shadow of the young girl not having a casting object
(no pun intended). This also acts as the realisation of the
disruption via the viewing of this by the audience and the audience's
preconception that this image is from the point of view of the
protagonist. Furthermore, a temporal relation is set up between the
narrative noun of the house and the noun of the protagonist(s) (which
the audience presumes the image is from the point of view of, due to
the general protagonist-centric nature of media), with the house
looking as if it was built in the 1800s and the grain filter on the
image itself suggesting that they are in the 1970s and thus the
disruption occurred in the earlier time period. The attempt to repair
is suggested using the spatial relation between the noose-sporting
tree and the house, making it seem to the audience that the way to
repair the disruption is by exploring the house and setting up the
idea through the mystery of the obscuring mist that the incompleted
parts of the narrative will be resolved in the film itself during the
attempt to repair. The new equilibrium is not shown, as this serves
as the point that most audiences wish to get to and thus showing this
would reduce revenue.
The
gratification narrative is communicated throughout the different
features of the poster, and places the audience in the role of the
Hero (a dramatis personae defined by Propp). As the horror audience
has a need for escapism (Uses and Gratifications Theory) through a
sense of conflict that they don't experience in their own lives, the
motivation of the Hero can be assumed to be overcoming a sense of
conflict or opposition (a safety-conflict binary opposition that
Claude Levi-Strauss argued reflected a human tendency to interpret
information as part of one side or another). In this case, the
equilibrium is before the audience 'reads' the poster and the context
usually found in the equilibrium (although not one of Propp's stated
narratemes, the context is usually noted as an additional narrateme
by media referring to Propp's Morphology of Folk Tales)
is simply that the audience has a need for a conflict. Again, the
disruption and realisation of disruption occur simultaneously here
(most likely due to the difficulty of showing temporal relations in a
static medium). The disruption is set as the sense of conflict which
the Hero will face through the use of mist obscuring the content of
the image (creating mystery, which is a binary opposition to the
audience's natural curiosity, thus producing conflict), the isolated
setting surrounded by trees (the lack of access to the Helper
character and the feeling of physically not being able to escape
exacerbating the power imbalance between the character and the source
of conflict), the symbol of death (the noose and the warped tree
incite the life-death opposition that is universally identifiable)
and the symbol of the occult juxtaposing the symbol of nature (the
shadow with no casting object suggests that the laws of nature,
symbolised by the trees and the grass all around, are being opposed
by some non-natural proposition). Furthermore, the title enforces
this disruption; the serif font suggests a gothic tone to the piece
(as serif fonts are often used within the gothic genre), thus
creating dread in the audience through association, whilst the black
colour of the text combined with the words “The Conjuring”
suggest the presence of the occult (explained above). The use of the
phrase 'TRUE CASE' within the tagline creates a sense of realism,
which; a) elates the sense of horror and personal threat by
suggesting that this could happen in real life, and b) makes the
threat more realistic so that the audience feel as if they have to
resolve the disruption to bring the conflict of the narrative to an
end. The casting block at the bottom of the page (the last place on
the poster the audience is likely to look, thus allowing a sense of
time to pass between the realisation of disruption and the next
narrative step within a static medium) introduces the audience to the
idea that the conflict will occur in a film, and as such allows them
to realise the needed attempt at repair (A.K.A seeing the film and
thus facing the conflict and resolving the film narrative
introduced). The date in bold below this also allows the audience to
map out a plan for the attempt at repair (the counteraction
narrateme, as defined by Propp). The next step to resolve this
narrative is for the audience member to go forward with the departure
narrateme and watch the film, facing the conflict and thus creating
the new equilibrium.
In
conclusion, it is important for a film poster to set up both a film
narrative and a gratification narrative if maximum advertising
efficiency is to be attained, and as such both of these will be
present in the poster that will be produced for the final product.
Saw VI
The film Saw
VI, the sixth in the Saw franchise, was a commercial
failure when compared to the sale figures of the other films. As
marketing is essential in the success of a film, the poster should be
analysed to find the areas which failed to convince the audience to
buy the product.
The first point
of failure is the main image. In the centre of the poster is a human
head (ambiguous in sex, age, race and identity) facing up, surrounded
by aggressive-looking machinery that makes a ‘V’ shape above the
head. The image is in greyscale with a grain filter over the top and
with a murky mold or grime effect in the background. This fails for a
couple of reasons. Firstly, the posters of the Saw franchise
have established a convention of using items within the picture to
show the number of the installment (e.g. the second Saw movie
had two removed fingers next to each other in a way that looked like
the roman numeral ‘II’, or two), whereas this has what looks like
the roman numeral for five (‘V’) in the picture but is actually
the sixth installment; it is likely that audiences familiar with the
Saw franchise merely thought it was a poster for the fifth
film that they had already seen and ignored it. The androgynous face
attempts to be a universal representation of a dead body that creates
a juxtaposing image of death to the audience’s want for life
(Levi-Strauss), with the facing upwards and being vertical meant to
mimic a cadaver. This fails because there are not enough indicators
that the person is dead – there are no closed eyes, pained
expressions or gore of any kind – and the medium literacy of the
mass audience is too low to read this easily. Because this death
symbolism doesn’t work, the relationship between the narrative
propositions in the image (the machinery and the person) isn’t
readable; the machinery, which is supposed to be one of the death
traps from the series, isn’t associated with death of any kind in
the viewer’s reading, thus making it just a pointless piece of
technology. As such, the poster looks less like a poster for a
‘torture porn’ horror movie and more like the poster for a grim
cyberpunk science-fiction movie. In addition, the use of space as a
means of creating juxtaposition is sub-par. With most of the Saw
movie posters, the clean, white space of the poster contrasts
with the grimy gore of the image, creating a sense of doom in the
audience through the clean white - symbolising medical authority
(what is meant to happen) - and the bioporn elements (removed teeth
or fingers, etc.) - symbolising a perversion of the medical authority
(almost as if that torture is supposed to happen, which creates
conflict with the audience’s own beliefs. This works from a
gratification narrative standpoint and also reflects the villain in
the piece); this poster, however, is all grimy with a grain filter
over the top, making the trap seem inescapable and thus taking away
the horror (if something is certain, it has no conflict but is rather
just an event. The reason for people to seek out horror is to find
escapism in the conflict, and with no conflict there is no draw to
the horror).
The tagline is
located in the inside the ‘V’ of the machinery. It states, ‘He
helped me’ in the font Times New Roman. The typeface is very
small and is coloured black. The typewriter-esque font was used in
the original posters to create a direct but impersonal link between
the audience and the villain (conflict-causing Dramatis Personae
defined by Vladimir Propp), which was combined with taglines such as
‘This Halloween, he’s pulling out all the stops’ (Saw II)
or ‘I want to play a game’ (Saw). This worked because of
the supplementary advertising that teased the idea of the ‘Jigsaw
Killer’ that both killed with a personal incentive (hence the
direct link and the use of ‘I’ and ‘he’) and was removed from
the actual murders through the use of death contraptions. In
addition, the small black typeface used was up against a clean, white
background, so immediately stood out. In this tagline, the presence
of ‘He helped me’ suggests that the ‘Jigsaw Killer’ is no
longer the main protagonist and that mantle has been passed down to
another character that will carry on their work. This doesn’t work
for two reasons. The first reason is that the original villain
represented an ideal that opposed that of the audience member, and as
such becomes a ‘force of nature’ villain; the problem with
killing off a force of nature villain is that it also represents a
death of their ideal, so the replacement character will automatically
feel like a watered-down version of the original (thus less
conflict). Secondly, the original advertising of the franchise relied
on the brand identity of the ‘Jigsaw Killer’, so replacing him
takes away the consumer recognition and makes them less likely to see
the final product. The tagline also doesn’t stand out against the
greyness of the background, which makes it harder to read.
The title (‘SAW
VI’) is located in the centre of the bottom-third. It utilises the
burnt-film-style logo of the franchise, but instead of using the same
font for the installment number (which Saw to Saw IV did),
it uses Times New Roman. This loses cohesion between the installment text and the logo text, making the poster look
unprofessional and thus meaning that a mainstream audience is less
likely to see the product. Furthermore, the logo is greyscale, which
means it doesn’t stand out against the greyscale main image and as
such is harder to read. The billing block is located at the bottom (a
legal requirement due to various unions within the film industry),
with the date in bold at the bottom. This is still hard to see, as
the typeface is white and the background is greyscale, meaning the
audience is likely to miss the date and not go see the product from
this.
In conclusion,
this poster shows how important using conventions as a means of
effectively communicating to the audience is. The lacklustre design,
although quite aesthetically pleasing, doesn’t make the audience
want to see the final product (the ultimate aim of a poster);
communication is seemingly more important than aesthetic.
