'THE HAUNTING' ancillary poster

Step 1. For my first Ancillary task, i decided to create a film poster for my short film horror called 'The Haunting'. Initially I started with this image, taken in a dark room with a single, natural source behind the model. I then used online search engines to find popular and successful modern horror film posters, and I picked out the key conventions that a variety of film posters shared. The first convention I noticed, was that all successful horror posters either portray a protagonist in danger, e.g. 'the uninvited' shows a female protagonist in distress. I decided to use my antagonist, and then manipulate the colours in Photoshop to try and make it similar to 'The uninvited' poster.

After digitally manipulating the image, to make it darker and connote horror more, I decided to portray the setting in which my horror film takes place. To achieve this, I used a picture of a heavily wooded area, to connote the country side and the sense of abandonment and isolation, I then layered it into my existing image, and 'flattened' the image in order to achieve the picture below.

After establishing the setting in my poster, I decided to create a heavy light to dark contrast, so I enhanced the shadow, and the surrounding light of the model, in order to gain a richer image. The colours on the model correspond well with the forest image above. The contrasting light and shadow work really well, and that is a good aspect to have in a horror poster.

After successfully creating my image, I decided to add my film title. What inspired me the most was the 2005 remake, 'Amityville horror', which has a really powerful advertising poster. What I find particularly inspiring was the title, the blood red against the hard black background worked really well and connoted violence and horror.
So I used the same style font, font size and colour in order to achieve the same effect.

Before adding the final touches onto my film poster, I decided to gain some audience feedback from my target audience, teenagers 16+. I passed a printed picture of the above image around my peers in sixth form. What I received in response, was the document below. 

After much consideration and improving my image as a consequence to some of the criticism I received, I complied to the requests of my target audience and improved my image.

The above image is my first, completed ancillary task. I used an appropriate font size and style for the information below the main title, and a large release date which has the same colour as the main title. I passed the new improved version around amongst my peers, and the criticism had successfully decreased.