Creating our horror poster

This is the original image I started off with. I decided to edit the image due to the mise-en scene (rubbish on the background). Additionally this particular image did not connote horror, hence why I decided to edit it.

I edited the image using ‘Picmonkey’. Afterwards I took the image into ‘Photoshop’ where I resized it and added further effects on it. My aim was to make the image connote horror.

- This is the first edit for our final poster. I edited the crack using Web 2.0

(Google images of a different textured cracks).

However when first created the crack didn’t

look realistic, as it was too thin this meant I had to go

over the crack using the “paint brush tool” which

we used to make the crack appear bigger.

- Using the “magnetic lasso tool” I carefully

select the top half of her. This is because my aim

here was to separate the top half of her body.

- The “magnetic lasso tool” was used successfully to

reinforce the sense that Flora has two different sides to her. I used the “right key” to shift

over Flora’s body which created the illusion of her

body being torn.

- I then showed this too our target audience and they

stated “The loved the way she looks torn, as symbolises the idea of her innocence being taken away from her.” They

further explain that in terms of her innocence it is clear through our narrative that

Flora lost her innocence when she murdered her father,

which emphasises the idea that the good Flora has been taken over by her bad side.

-When shifting Flora’s body, I had to copy and paste the top half of the edited image (black and white) of Flora in order to create this ripped

effect. My aim here was that I wanted our image to successfully communicated to our target audience, the idea of Flora being twisted and something not being

right about her. This reinforces our use of Stuart Hall’s encode and decode theory, in a sense that the audience upon first glance didn’t see what is wrong with the image. (We as

encoders portrayed a rip in the intention of making our target audience decode that

Flora is evil).

- As you can see here due to the image being manipulated (the change in position of Flora) and “fiddled” with we found

challenging to structure the image accurately. This is evident due to the grey light which is visible on the top layer of our

image.

- Once I added the text from Dafont.com called “Skratch Punk”,

I then used Photoshop to crop text and one by one using the

“magic wand tool” made the font a dark “bloody” red, as not only

did we want to link the symbol of red which is presented through

our trailer and magazine, but also in terms of our narrative we

wanted to illustrate the death of James (Flora’s father) and loss of Flora’s innocence (Which is why

she is wearing Black).

- Also in terms of mise en scene, we decided to make Flora wear a

short revealing dress which shows her legs. This illustrates “male gaze” – Laura Mulvey (as

the gaze is of someone from afar viewing Flora from behind). This also reinforces the idea that her

child exterior makes people think she’s innocent when in reality she

is mature and acts inappropriately for a young child.

I subverted the positioning of the masthead (name of production) by having the text go downwards, rather than it going across (which is conventional). The main reason as to why I subverted it comes down to the fact that due to the way I had taken the image, there wasn’t enough room to place our branded font, hence why I positioned it going downwards.

- This is the process of which I added red text to our poster (in terms of the logo at the top)

using the “paint bucket tool”. Due

to the Photoshop crashing a lot, it was difficult to select the

layer of the text which meant I had to select

the text individually and use the “magic wand” to select the text, but also the “paint bucket

tool”. Although the “Egyptian710BT” font

was installed in PhotoShop it was ironic that I had to go to such an extent to change the

colour of the font. However I quickly

overcame this challenge when learning how to

use ‘Photoshop’.

- I had to manually select the right red which is conventional in Horror posters, as I wanted to use the right red as well as follow the conventional use

of red presented in other media texts.

-Here I used the “paint bucket tool” I filled in the individual font. I wasn’t sure which colour the best suited

our branded font, I decided to test this out where I changed certain

lettering to be red and some to be black. I then asked our potential

audience which colour they preferred (which would intrigue

them to watch our production if it advertise). They then stated that

they would much rather prefer if the name of our production was to be red due to the fact that it it’s much more eye catching due to it being

bright and bold. - This led me to change all the lettering to red, I found that by

changing the lettering it made our poster stand out due to the contrast between the black and white image

and text.

•I then played around with the positioning of the text. This is because I wanted a position of our branded font which would best reflect our narrative. •As you can see here, I had changed the font being in a straight line (as stated above- page 8 of this presentation) to it being jagged. This is because I wanted it to be reflective of Flora being sinister as well as her family being dysfunctional (which are issues explored in our narrative). •I then asked our potential audience which they would prefer. From this research I found that the audience did prefer it the text being jagged due to the fact that it ‘look interesting and different’.

•However I decided not to have our branded font jagged due to the fact that it was a lot harder to read, unless our audience were closer to the poster. I thought that this would not help our company (‘Young Ambition Production’) in promoting our product which would reduce it being successful within the horror industry.

•After changing our branded font back to the original position I began with (going downwards), I then noticed the colour of the text was far too bright. •This led me to change the colour of the font to a darker red. This is because the red originally was suppose to be symbolic of blood, however the bright red was not a true reflection of blood as blood is of a darker colour. From there I changed it to a darker red, which in effect made it look more realistic and professional, which I think our poster lacked before (it looking professional).

•Additionally by changing the font to a darker red our poster followed the convention of real media product e.g. ‘A Haunted House’, which also uses dark red rather than bright.

•From there I changed all the lettering to be of the same colour. •I picked the shade of this particular red using the ‘Eyedropper tool’ in ‘Photoshop’. By using this tool enabled me to get the same shade of red I used on the bow. •By using the same shade of colours made the poster to look profession, as this is a technique used by companies to avoid clashing colours, which I personally thought our poster needed.

How the crack effect was created

Look on the next page for description.

• Here we wanted to know how to create a crack texture effect for both our poster and magazine front cover.

• In order to do this, we had to result to using ‘Web 2.0’ as a way of learning the different effects we can create during the post production stage of our poster and magazine front cover.

• We found this website to be extremely useful due to the fact that we were able to follow the instruction careful enabling us to produce a realistic illusion of our protagonist (Flora) being broken in half. This was effect as it reflected our narrative e.g. the idea of something not being quite right with Flora.

• Here using the ‘Crack Effect Brush’ we carefully painted on the crack using the brush tool with the template of style provided.