For my media AS media coursework, my task was to create an advertising campaign for a horror film. This campaign would consist of a main campaign poster, a teaser poster and also a DVD cover. The task involved researching the typical codes and conventions used by the horror genre by looking at the posters and DVD covers used by real films and then implement them into my own campaign. Whilst researching horror film campaigns, I decided that I would proceed with using the supernatural horror sub-genre. The reason I chose to use this subgenre for my film is because there seems to be many films under this subgenre that are popular with today’s cinema going audience.
I first debated between choosing either a slasher or a
supernatural subgenre for my film campaign. The reason I chose to use the
supernatural subgenre was ultimately down to the current trend in the horror
genre. The slasher subgenre has not been as popular in recent years as it has
been in the past and there is a lot more supernatural subgenre films being
released today compared to slashers. This meant that there were a lot more modern
examples that I would be able to use as inspiration for my own campaign, and
also my target audience would hopefully inclined to like my film campaign.
With this, I began to research horror film advertising
campaigns with the idea that supernatural horror films would be my main focus. The
first film campaign that I researched was ‘Sinister’ which was supernatural
horror film released in 2012. I researched this film not only because it was a
supernatural film but also because the film also involved themes of child possession
which I wanted to include in the narrative for horror film. The main reason for
using this Sinister’s advertising campaign is because of how well it created an
enigma code within the teaser poster of the campaign. The poster showed a
symbol with a face that is present throughout the advertising campaign of the
film. The poster also displayed a simple phrase “Have you seen him?” What I
liked about this is how it gave a simple question that made the audience what
to further explore the film in more detail. There is also the inclusion of a
website under the domain “www.haveyouseenhim.com” which shows that the
producers are trying to target a young, internet using audience. Moving onto the
main campaign poster gave me more of an indication of the codes and conventions
of a supernatural horror film campaign. As I stated earlier the symbol of the
face is also present within the main campaign poster. This shows that a
campaign must follow themes of repetition; this is mostly because it gives the
audience familiarity and they form an understanding of the film by recognising
some themes from the teaser poster and recognising them again in the main
campaign poster. This is added to with the fact that the posters also share the
same tones and colours which include similar tones of a dirty grey and black.
In addition to the research on the Sinister advertising campaign,
I also briefly analysed the teaser poster for another supernatural subgenre
horror film which was Drag Me to Hell. The poster was very simple in its image.
The poster displayed a large close-up of an ordinary horse fly however it has
blood splattered behind it on the wall making the spectator question what the
fly has to do with the film. This shares similar conventions with the teaser
poster for Sinister which is that they both create an enigma code through the
use of a symbol; Sinister using the face and Drag Me to Hell using the horse
fly. This again tempts the target audience into researching further into the
film with some more information given in the main campaign poster. Although the
posters display different colours, they both use the similar grunge/dirty
textures on the backgrounds of the posters by using things such as cracks and scratches,
things that I was able to implement in my own work using the tools in
Photoshop.
After researching both Sinister and Drag Me to Hell, I had
more of an understanding of the codes and conventions of the supernatural
horror subgenre and how the films target their audiences. Using this
information and also my own knowledge of the horror genre I decided that the demographic
for my film would be people of the age between 15 and 28, both male and female.
I chose to use this audience because it became obvious that the supernatural
subgenre is aimed towards a younger audience with the inclusion of social media
links and websites. However I decided target the film to audiences no younger
than 15 because from my research it also became apparent that the majority of
horror films are rated 15. I also use the age 28 as a rough boundary as I felt
that audiences above this age would generally not be the target audience; this
later became clearer from the primary research I undertook, especially my
survey.
The research I undertook also heavily influenced the work I
produced in pre-production. I had learnt from both the Sinister and Drag Me to
Hell campaigns that the typography used in supernatural horror films are
normally kept rather simple and with only a simple effect used on them. For
example the typography used on the Sinister posters is a simple font in black
and with only a simple smudge used on the text. Drag Me to Hell also kept to a
very simple text with a plain white font and small cracks over the top. I
decided to follow this minimalistic theme in my own typography using white text
(due to the black background) and a simple Cambria like font.
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