By: Anisah Kalam 13A3

What makes a good film poster?

When producing a film, it’s important to have a poster that links to it effectively and looks appealing towards the target audience. For my poster, I will look at the conventions that are followed by horror film posters to build ideas.

The best form of software that is suitable to use to produce a film poster is Adobe Photoshop. This is a powerful editing programme with

various specialised features that allow you to edit pictures/posters on a professional level.

This is the main tool bar that’s featured in the Adobe Photoshop software, for example; lasso tool allows you to simply drag a freehand selection around the object or area you want to select, in a similar way to how you would outline something on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil. This tool can help you isolate an area of an image, so it can be further edited. The lasso tool will be important to use for my poster, as I would want the ghost in the poster to glow.

Generally, horror film posters consist of the colours red and black, to create a contrast look. The colours red and black mainly evokes mysteriousness, darkness and danger. These elements are vital to have within a horror poster, because it symbolise the eeriness of the genre of the film.

Film posters usually consist of the title, a slogan, a focus or a still image from the film, and the names of the producers/actors. I want my poster to include a slogan because it’s a statement that reveals the idea of the storyline, so in this case, I’m planning to include the line “Hickory dickory dock” which is the line used in the background theme tune for 12/12.

The title in the poster should be bold as it’s the central focus, in this case it would be 12:12. It would be relevant for the poster to include the protagonists/antagonists to give the audience a glimpse of what the characters look like.