'In Fear' Film Poster Research - Mae Webb

Conventions 

•  Title - The title has been placed in the centre of the poster and goes across most of the page. It is also the biggest font on the page and the wide gaps between each letter make it stand out the most perhaps showing how important the title is as it tells the audience straight away that this film is a horror/thriller as fear is associated with these genres. The use of red on the 'IN' also adds to the idea of horror being the genre as red can be associated with blood and danger, giving the poster a dark atmosphere.
• Actors Names - The names of the actors don't appear on the poster which is perhaps because they do not want the focus to be around the 'celebrities' that appear in the film to give it more mystery as it may make the audience want to find out who's in it as you also can't really make out the character shown on the poster.
• Main Characters - There is one main character on the poster who appears to be a woman, however the picture does not give much away about her or her role in the film which keeps the audience guessing. 

• Production Block - the production block has been placed at the bottom of the poster which shows the names of the people who were involved in creating the film (a legal requirement) They have decided to keep this simple and small not to disrupt the rest of the poster. 

• Age Rating - there is an age rating on the poster however it is very small. The age rating is 15 as it contains some violence. This is very hard to see perhaps because they do not want to focus on this.
• Review/rating - There are 6 reviews down the left hand side of the poster, 4 of which include ratings of either 4 or 5 stars which gives the audience a good first impression on the film. One of them says 'The best British chiller since the Decent' and another 'one of the scariest most intelligent horrors to come out of Britain' which is telling the audience that this is a British film which is quite typical of British film posters as quite often films are assumed to be American because of how big the film industry is out there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Website - There is also a website at the bottom of the screen which allows people to go and find out more about the film, the fact that they have their own website shows that the film has been quite successful. (www.infearmovie.com). The website has been cleverly thought out as instead of having a website telling people all about the film they have made it the website for a hotel in Ireland called 'Kilairney House Hotel' which is obviously the setting of the film, this allows people to uncover more of the mystery of the film. This also intruiges the audience to find out more and is an interesting way of getting an insight to the film and hyping people up to want to watch it. The quote "You'll never want to leave" hints that perhaps the hotel draws people in and that is part of the mystery of the film.
  
  
  
  
  The use of a hashtag (#sliceofparadise) means that it gets more people talking about it and makes it trending on twitter, this is what came up when I searched this hashtag on twitter: it had many people talking about it and people were getting involved in the website and sharing it with their friends. This is a very good way of getting the audience excited about the film before it is released.
  

  
  Layout

• The main image is a cross between a character and the setting of a forest and this takes up the whole of the poster, with the text on the top of this. The Title has been placed in the centre of the poster but it does not cover anything important aspects of the image as you are able to see the features of the woman's face and the trees. Also placed carefully between the E and the A of the title is what appears to be the silhouette of a man which is very subtle amongst the trees but still noticeable and adds more mystery to the film as if there is a spirit watching the characters.
• There are two posters for this film that have been released and the other one is below:
  This poster is portrait rather than landscape and uses drawn imagery rather than photographs as the background. I like this poster as it reveals even less about the film creating more mystery, however because of the red coloured background and long trees we can still guess that it is a horror/thriller. I do however think that the landscape poster works better as it grabs your attention and looks more sophisticated and like it will be a cleverly thought out film with the shadow cleverly placed and the film reviews.
  
  Representation
•  Although the poster does not give much away about the characters and therefore how they are represented, we can guess that the film has gone with the stereotype of women being the protagonists as the image on the poster shows an extreme close up of a woman's face looking quite scared and 'fearful'. Which makes us assume that she is being portrayed as a 'damsal in distress' and will need rescuing. This is very common in thrillers as women are seen as more weak and innocent whereas men are seen as more strong and dangerous.
• The high key lighting on her face compared to the very dark low key lighting on the rest of the image makes the female character seem quite pure and innocent as her face looks pale white which is seen as a colour of purity. It also makes her look as if she is looking up to a 'higher power' for help which could also show that she is represented as a 'damsal in distress'.

  

  An example of high and low key lighting, the high key makes her look sweet and innocent, where as the low key makes her look quite evil and mysterious.

  
  Genre

  
  
  
  
  • The genre of this film is clearly a horror/thriller. We know this because of the conventions of these genres on the poster that give this away. This is Rick Altman's theory of 'Semantic Codes' which are the conventions that communicate meaning to the audience such as characters, inconography, locations, props, music etc. For example, the semantic codes for horrow and thriller films that appear in this poster are:
  • Low key lighting - the poster has very dark lighting surrounding it which creates a dark and eerie atmosphere and show that something bad is going to happen and perhaps there is something evil lurking.
  • Iconography (shadows) - there is the shadow/silhouette of a man amongst the trees in the poster which is quite a significant convention in horrors as it keeps the mystery and builds the tension as you don't know who or what they are.
  • Setting - the setting of a forest is apparent in both of the released film poster which not only tells us that the film may be based in a forest, but it also lets us guess that this is a thriller/horror as this is a very typical setting in this genre because the forest is a very secret and dark place where it's easy to get lost and easy to hide things.
  • We can also tell this is a horror/thriller because of the reviews down the side of the poster as they clearly state that it is. "Best Horror" "Terrifying" "Horror - thriller". The director of the film clearly wanted the audience to know exactly what this film is going to be before watching it to set that eerie mood around the film. This lets the audience know exactly what they're in for if they watch the film.
    
    Narrative

    •  The way the lighting goes from high key on the woman's face to very low key in the corner of the poster may hint to the audience that things are going to get progressively worse for the characters in the plot. 
    • Restricted narration is used as there is only an extreme close up of the woman's face and therefore does not reveal anything about her age/class etc because we can't see what she's wearing. We also don't see anyone else so we can't guess the characters relationships.
    • The canted angle perhaps suggests that the narrative won't be straightforward and linear as it is very distorted.
      

      

      Linear Narrative

      
      Audience
    • The poster does not reveal much to the audience on purpose because it creates mystery and will shock the audience more when they see the film as they can't guess what is going to happen. 
    • The use of the website allows the audience to get a better insight into the film if they wish and it has been cleverly designed to still keep the mystery but let them find out more in an interesting way. This also gets more people talking about it.
    •  The use of the female character on the image may make the film appeal to women more as they feel they might be able to relate to a female character better, horrors are usually aimed at young males and so having the female character on the front may widen their audience.