Practical Poster layout

When creating the poster layout we had to be very specific as to where we placed the information. In order to obtain the idyllic poster we completed a lot of research that we used to style and design our poster. We wanted to conform and subvert to certain conventions depending if they followed our genre.

• Firstly we took into consideration the image for the poster, we took a series of images for our final photo shoot. We experimented with multiple angles to change the lighting, I took images from lower angles and straight on. I took the lower angled images to convey the idea of inferiority as the antagonist would be seen in a higher position. I also looked into the different effects that I could create through framing. The lens will be the main focus point of the image once I have completed the poster in photoshop, this was something I had to take in to consideration as I did not want the lens to be perfectly centred within the image. I used the rule of thirds principle, the eye naturally rests on the top left of an image and slowly follows lines in a 'z' shaped form. Therefore I slightly places the lens of the camera to the right of the image, forcing the audience to look at other details other than the centre.

• Once I had taken the image the location for the title was my next main priority as it is the main aspect in promotion, the common conventions demonstrated that the title is usually located at the top or in the lower half of the image. When looking at our own image we came to the conclusion that the title will most likely have to be bellow the camera lens, this helps to draw the audiences attention down towards the lower half of the poster. Not only this we included a tag line, this was placed on the far right of the image bellow the title, the text is considerably smaller to the title. However this is to help intrigue the audience and to give a small amount of information to the viewer. The tag line "smile for the camera" is also a small form of comedy for the antagonist and shows the he is recording his victims.

• For the billings block we placed it at the bottom centre of the image as this is one of the main conventions of posters that is seen across all genres and is not specific to the slasher horror. We made the text white so that it would be visible to the audience on the dark background, although we didn't want the block of text to be predominant on the poster, Therefore while I was placing the text at the bottom I reduced the size of the text to be as small as possible, not to mention that I changed the opacity slightly to make the text appear less obvious. Though it was a small alteration we noticed this technique to be used in other horror posters to keep the focus on the main subject. Originally we placed the production company details bellow the text. Due to this the text was pushed higher up on the image and therefore covering the poster, after considering different ways in which we could alter this we moved the billings block down and reduced the size of the production companies. In doing this it allowed us to place the images either side of the text.

This is the final product: