After drawing out a basic idea of what we wanted on our horror posters, we decided to create two drafts of mock ups of the posters on Photoshop. The two posters are quite contrasting however are both effective in their own way. When we create our final draft we will put a tagline onto our posters so that they fit perfectly into the conventions of horror trailers that we have researched into.
Draft 1
Main image:
For our first draft we looked at the close-up shot of one of our victims that would turn into a zombie within the trailer. We knew this would be effective on our audience because they would remember the character within the film and identify the film with them when they watch the trailer. When we initially took this shot of Kimberly she had no make-up on or zombie like features such as cuts or bruises, however we used Photoshop to edit these featured onto her to make her look more realistically zombie like. We reduced the darkness in the image and placed layers of various colours to create bruises and bite marks.
Typography:
The typography on the poster is very industrial and we felt that this would work extremely well due to many zombie films having conventional army and industrial themes to them. We decided to make the letters a deep blood red to create connotations of blood and death which are important in making our audience aware of what sort of horror film this will be. We added a layer over our typograpy of blood splatters to make the letter look infected and to have themes of gore on the poster.
Billing Board:
We wanted to ensure that the billing board looked realistic and didnt take too much attention away from the main features of our poster therefore we made it white and kept it simple at the bottom of the poster. We researched into what sort of typography succesful film posters have used to create these billing boards and dowloaded the correct font from a website. We believe that the typography and layout of the billing board is very effective and realistic.
Release Date:
We chose to put this at the very bottom in a cental position of the poster because from our research we have learnt that this is where release dates are conventionally put. We want to ensure that our poster looks as realistic as possible therefore we knew that putting our release date in a conventional place with plain conventional writing would achieve this effect.
October is also associated with halloween and fear therefore we decided that this would be the best time to release our zombie-horror film because audiences would want to go out an do something for Halloween.
The film poster that inspired us to create this poster was the Dawn of the Dead poster:
We really liked how effective the close-up shot of the zombie was and how only half of them was infected. We knew that if the audience were aware that the zombies were once human it makes the film seem more realistic making them more feaful overall.
We also used the theme of blood splatters and the plain billing board to make our main image stand out the most like this poster and we also ensured that our title was also red to reflect ideas of blood and gore to the audience.
Draft 2
Main Image:
This draft was created through our research into the dawn of the dead posters. This shot was taken with the inspiration of the zombies that lurk from the darkness in one of the dawn of the dead posters. We used a framed shot of the corridor to represent the film as being set in a school to reflect the genre and to also represent themes of institutionalisation which are conventional to the zombie horror film genre.
Typography:
We decided to keep the same typography and effect on our title for both posters because we feel that it is the most effective for the sort of theme we want to go for with our horror trailer and poster. Despite this, we did edit the title slightly differently to the other poster by placing a black splattered layer over the top to make the writing apear as though it is rotting away, just like the zombies do in our film. The layer also makes the title look even more industrial which again is effective at keeping the conventions of the zombie horror genre.
Release date:
We decided to go for a more dramatic effect on the release date of this poster and used cratchy writing to represent the violence from the zombies and the gore that will be featured in the film. It also makes the audience more apprehensive to watch the film because they will find fear in the date that is released due to it being written in red and being associated with death. The sharp letters suggest connotations of weapons such as knives and teeth that the zombies will attack with and this would create tension in the audience, however would make them more excited to see the action within the film.
The horror poster that inspired us to create our own second draft was also another Dawn of the Dead poster:
We thought that this poster was very effective at showing off the zombie horror genre and we wanted to recreate that but with a darker theme. We recreated the idea of having zombies walking towards the audience however we decided to just use one to make the audience feel more isolated and scared of what the person actually is.
Louise Richardson 