My poster for my horror teaser trailer: Possessed

Before I begun the making of my horror poster I made sure that I had chosen the right picture that would attract the attention of my target audience so I handed out a piece of paper with 4images on to 15 members that I had taken of my actress and asked them to tick the picture that attracted their attention first and what one that they would prefer to see on the poster for my horror teaser trailer poster.

The four images that I chose were the following below:


1)

2)

3)

4)



I recieved the most ticks on the third image, so this shows that even though my target audience chose the option of a medium close up to be the picture shown on my poster, they all preferred the third image above which is a distance picture. As I done extra research into what picture to use for my horror poster I am going to use the second set of results that I recieved as I believe these were more reliable as my target audience were able to see the images instead of just answering a question.

I began the process of making my poster by applying the background which I chose to be black. The reason I chose black to be my background was because I thought that this way everything would stand out. I then applied my chosen picture which my target audience preferred to be seen on the front cover of my poster. I put this directly in the middle so that it would be one of the first things that people see when they look at the poster.

I then put the title of my film at the very 

top of the page on my poster as this was the choice that my target audience made when I received my questionnaire results and I also thought that this would be the best place for my title to be as I knew this position of the text would be most attractive towards the viewers of my posters and it would become recognised. I chose to put this text in red as I thought that it would resemble blood and the blood that is currently on my actresses dress. I put the caption 'In Cinemas January 13th 2013' at the bottom as this looked the best after the other positions that I tried and it was parallel to the title and I wanted it in the same colour as the title. I also made sure the font was what my target audience wanted and a reasonable size for my target audience to read. 

However, after playing around with different things on my poster I expanded the main picture and realised that it looked so much better once I had made it fill the whole of the page. I also asked a range of my target audience to make sure that this was the right decision to make. This meant that the background was changed  so I changed the 'In Cinemas January 13th 2013' to white as I also added the caption above it in red, I also wanted this particular caption red as it went across the actresses legs and resembles the cuts that are on her legs. I added right at the very bottom my name as I was the person one produced it and I saw this on other horror posters that I researched. Below the title I added the phrase 'But when will she arrive?' as an unanswered question which would attract my target audience.

This was the final edit of my poster. I decided to add the words 'shocking' and 'chilling' on each side of the poster in captials to attract more attention towards my target audience. I chose the colour white as it reflected the writing at the bottom and I wanted the title to have the most attention so I did not want to write these words in the same colour as the main title. Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of my poster, I was happy with the image that I used and the font chosen for the words and I thought that the captions were catchy and frightening towards my target audience. I decided to make up the captions myself as I wanted them to be a surprise to my target audience so that my poster would not become predictable.

However, there were a few changes that I made for my horror poster and the final design is below:

I made the mistake of writing 'choreographed' at the bottom of the page so I made sure that this got deleted out of the poster. I also changed the date of the release as I thought that putting the date on halloween would make the film seem more scary and would invite more people to want to see it. I also added five stars above where the cinema date is written in order to show my target audience that this film was voted five stars and is extremely worth watching.

After I made these changes I wanted to make sure that my target audience were happy with  the result of the poster, so that they would be able to recognise it and attracted to it so I asked them if there was anything else I could add or change to my poster to ensure it was the best I could make it. This then led me to making the last few changes to my poster and this was the final product:

This was my final design for my poster. After all the feedback that I recieved from my target audience there were particular changes that I had to make in order for this to be as best as I could make it to ensure that I was meeting what my target audience wanted to see on the poster. I moved the phrase 'Thrilling with an unexpected twist' to the top of the page so that it was more noticable and it was my decision to change the colour as I felt like there was too much red at the top of the page, and I changed the word 'unexpected' to white so that it stood out and attracted attention due to this being the main word in this phrase. I then changed the arrangement of the unanswered question on the left of the page and made it bigger. I then putting the phrase that I am going to include on my front cover magazine as I want this to be very recognised by my target audience. At the bottom of the page I changed the colour of 'In cinemas - 31st October' to red so that there was a contrast between the colours at the bottom of the page and added a certificate so that my target audience could recognise that it was aimed at them.

Overall, I was very happy with the outcome of my poster and this poster will meet what my target audience expect even more now.

CHANGES:

When I decided to resubmit my A2 coursework, I made sure that my target audience had a change to tell me what they thought would be the main elements to my poster so I made a small questionnaire to ensure that I could make the best possible changes to my work and make sure that my target audience were happy at the same time. However, at first I started off with a huge problem as my first decision to do was to was re take my photographs of my chosen model (the killer) but I had a major problem as when I needed to take my photographs my model was on holiday so I was unable to do this. So I made the decision to edit my photographs and designs in a different way. 

My questionnaire:

1. Are you still happy with the current photograph which is shown on the poster?

2. List 3 things which you would want to see changed on the poster:

3. Is there any more text that you would like to see appear on the poster?


My results allowed me to realise my target audience were still happy with the current photograph that was shown on the poster and I was happy with this result as during previous questionnaires I gave my target audience the choice out of existing photographs and this was the particular one that they chose. The main things that I realised were that my target audience wanted the text to change to the colour white, the red 'POSSESSED' title to be made darker and the picture to be made darker. They did not want anything to be added to the poster or anything to be taken away. 

FINAL DESIGN:

I made sure that I made the overall photograph much more darker so that this satisfied my target audience, I also realised when I was editing this again how bright the old design looked compared with the new one I made. I used Pic Monkey to edit my photograph which was a huge help and this also allowed me to add the blood splatters on the poster to make it look more like a horror and so that the poster was recognised as a horror and matched the blood on the killers dress. This also made the light shining through the window alot darker so it looked like night time instead of day time and I cropped out the radiator on the left side so that it look more like a horror poster as from my research I realised that they did not include home elements such as these. I kept all the writing the same and in the same place as this is what my target audience wanted but changed the colour to white so it all matched. I also made the title 'POSSESSED' a darker red to resemble the blood and match the dark blood splatters that had been added to my poster.