Poster Planning

From the beginning we were keen to use the image of the shadow in the door as we considered it to be bold and therefore eye catching. We also wanted to incorporate a shot from the trailer, which would also be from the actual film. We took film poster conventions into account when we designed our original poster.

Below are our original rough sketch plans for the poster. We did not fully intend to use these designs but through them we came up with the basic plans for the layout of our poster. 

We created a series of 6 drafts before going back and developing our 3rd draft to create the final product.

Draft 1

In the creating our first draft we chose the font ('Typewriter 1942') that would play a key part in all our drafts and the final product. we also created the billing block (font: 'Universal Accreditation) that would be copied and pasted into our other drafts. At this stage we also decided to have the actors name in the 'Universal Accreditation' font.  We also came up with a catchline that was later developed. However we did not consider this draft to be strong enough to be our final draft as the grey text used and the positioning was not correct. The effects put on the main image were also not effective enough.

Draft 1

In draft 2 we made the transition from grey to red for the text and white for the billing block and websites.we moved the title down and put the cast at the top. We also moved the release date down to the bottom to make it more prominent. At this stage we were still deciding whether the tagline (as seen in draft 1) was appropriate for the genre. We eventually decided that a similar tagline was fine as horror films are often fairly 'tongue and cheek' in their taglines. we also took some of the filters off the main image.

Draft 2

Draft 3 was the draft that would later become the final product. the layout is similar. We used the smudge tool on photoshop to distort the figure in the main image in order to 'dehumanize' it. by this stage it was 2012 so we changed the release date to 'autumn 2012' and raised and enlarged it to make it even more prominent.   At this stage we had another potential tagline, that was similar to the previous one. We also made the billing block slightly larger, the websites in particular. The certification and the facebook page address were added at a later stage during the transition to the final product.

Draft 3

We decided to make draft 4 a landscape image. We did this with the view to add more to the poster which could in turn show off more selling points of the film the the poster thus making it more effective. We added another image from the film as well as the certification of the film. We used the original doorway image as it may have looked better without the smudging but with blurred lines instead. we attempted to use a shadow effect to blend the secondary image in. We added a vertical red line to create a divide between the door way image and the rest of the poster. a

Draft 4

Draft five is similar to draft 4, except we decided that the smudged version of the doorway image was much more effective as it stood out more and as mentioned above it's slightly dehumanized. we also added the tagline. The secondary image was taken as a still and is not a shot from the movie. We wanted to feature the doll but not explain its meaning, whereas a shot of the character finding it may have given too much away. we found the the image did not blend well into the rest of the poster and decided to change it in draft 6.

Draft 5



Again draft 6 i very similar to 4 and 5. It has the same layout, being landscape rather than portrait. We changed the secondary image again to just the doll and added filters to drain the colour and lower the level of opaqueness to make it blend in more effectively and and with subtlety. We also added the orginal tagline but later decided to use the shorter, snappier version. However we then came to the decision that a portrait poster was more suitable as we felt the secondary image distracted from the strengths of the doorway image. There was also a fair amount of unessary free space.

Draft 6



TS