Side-By-Side Poster Analysis

My poster compares to this poster for The Possession (2012) in many ways, and the style in which it has been designed is very similar to mine. I chose to use black as it is a bold colour and also connotes darkness and death, which leads on to the tagline ‘the darkness comes to life’. I chose this as the tagline because it shows the general narrative of what actually happens in the film without giving too much away, because the dark parts of Leo’s (Oliver Butler) mind come to life in the form of demons. The actual shot of Leo is over-the-shoulder with half of his face showing. I chose to do this because it connotes schizophrenia and the idea of having two personalities. Also, it allowed the interesting effect of having a low opacity reflection. I was in two minds about this idea because I thought it could come across a bit cliché and obvious, but I now like the symbolism of it and I think it adds a different mood to the image. For the image, I wanted the colours to be quite faint and monochrome as the film isn’t bright and happy, and so I think this helps to promote the horror genre of the film. The brick wall as the background also brings interesting textures to the image rather than a plain wall. It also connotes a grittier, urban setting which is in keeping with the fact that Leo (Oliver Butler) is a police officer who has killed a suspect. I added a subtle gore effect (blood coming from his ear) to the image just to show the different horror sub-genres within the film, and I think it works quite well in that it doesn’t draw too much attention away from the psychological aspect but still adds a dash of realistic power. All of these conventions can be seen in this poster for The Possession (2012) which acted as my inspiration when creating this ancillary product.