Final Poster Design!

We'd originally been playing around with using graphics and symbols to get across this idea of technology and our cult using Photoshop, but decided that though this correlated with our trailer, on its own didn't make logical sense - it was almost too subliminal and psychological, too linked into our cult as opposed to advertising the film itself. We decided to go with a photographic image in the end - after one unproductive afternoon Googling Google, we stumbled upon this image of Google reflected in an eye (above - we can't seem to find a source!) We thought this could work for our cult as well - replacing the Google logo with our cult's symbol being reflected into the eye, we liked the concept, that hint at brainwashing we wanted to get across - it reminded me of the brainwashing sequence in The Ipcress File, and the close up of his eyes as the flashing images reflect in it - I liked this idea that the cult was visually penetrating the brainwashee, or that the cult was always inside of us.

The Original Image:

We used our actress - Lauren Bradley's eye, because not only were they piercingly blue, but it established this idea that she was the cult's puppet, that she had been manipulated and brainwashed like all the other cult members even though she figure headed it and that the cult were in complete control of her. It took quite a few attempts to get all the positioning quite right - we used the dark room, keeping the whole room in darkness except for a laptop we placed on Lauren's knee with the symbol on its screen and tried to reflect directly into her pupil - we thought the artifical light of the laptop onto her face gave that technological feel to the shot, the whiteness and hints of blue it reflected. This was the best shot and I think we got it almost exactly how we'd envisioned it, we now just needed to edit it.

First Edit:

We wanted her face to have the same white finish it had in the trailer, and enhanced the exposure of the shot, lowering the saturation very slightly but also upping the contrast so that her eye lashes, and particularly the logo, stood out the most. We added slight tints of blue to add that technological feel and increased the whites of her eyes to make them unnaturally white - we wanted it to look like she was mid brainwashing, stunned and blinded.

Almost Final Edit:

Here we added in the font - we compositioned the eye slightly more to the right and added in the titles in our chosen font, Typewriter Condensed - borrowing the bottom credits from another film poster. We enlarged the whole picture very slightly as we wanted the majority of the lower half to be white, smoothing out her skin on Photoshop and again increasing the levels of white and the contrast just a touch. We wanted to refit the text, it seems stretched and we wanted the The Resolution very slightly bigger and the tagline - 'We are the answer, the only answer' - slightly smaller as well as eliminating the white background it has unfitting to the poster's, we wanted it to be just text on top of the image.

Poster designs

This is a basic design of a poster. It includes symbols for the background, which makes the overall poster look crowded. I decided to put our logo in the middle to convey its importance, and to show that this symbol means The Resolution, the jagged edges are to portray that nothing is simple, everything has its pros and cons.

The blood drips are to portray the effects that surround the cult, and we are the only safe place. The typography is simple, but it is hard to read over the symbols.

Inspiration: Communist Propaganda

For our poster we began looking to this idea of political posters and this idea of recruiting people through propaganda, specifically Communist propaganda. I don't think cults have too much propaganda, because generally their cults revolve around some level of illegality I'm not sure they're allowed to advertise quite as overtly as political parties who set up huge, costly advertising campaigns and we looked back to old dictatorships who used brainwashing in much the same way cults did. In the Communist posters we looked at, we were inspired by their use of images and symbols and words, as opposed to photographs - colour schemes seemed to be particularly important, most of the Communist propaganda being heavily dominated by red. I think repetition and this idea of subliminal messaging is key - repeating slogans, symbols - the first is quite predominant in these posters, and relaying and relaying them until they're inside people's heads.

The Psychology of the Poster.

The main features of psychological thrillers are: character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Another aspect of psychological horror is its use of body horror. The purpose is to develop a feeling of unease by playing on human fears of the abnormal, human experimentation, disease and suffering.

These are a few posters of psychological thrillers:

Paranormal Activity has a black and white image of a couple in bed huddled together pointing towards a shadow on the open bedroom door. The image has a time on the bottom right which is portraying that the couple are being watched. It has a quote from the premiere of the film from a newspaper or critic saying its "one of the scariest films of all time." The title of the film is in red which stands out against the black on white writing surrounding it, it is a larger font and the letters are well spaced making it easy to read. The font of the white writing looks like a typewriter and at the bottom is in capitals portraying that it is an important statement for the film and is meant to make the audience think before and after the film.

The Ring poster has a white glowing ring of light surrounding the white child like handwriting title the lower case lettering with large spaces between the letters. The white on black is a well known convention of psychological thriller films. "BEFORE YOU DIE, YOU SEE" is in capitals to create suspense they have offset the writing to make it more scary and to look like a reflection. The shape of the ring is the shape of the moon and by having it still glowing looks like an offset ofan eclipse which would lead to complete darkness which plays on peoples fears of anything coming out of the darkness.

The Butterfly Effect poster has the protagonist male and his love interest taking up the alloted space. The lighting is blue tinted with more emphasis on the male as the female is facing sideways of the camera. There is a reflection in the males left eye making it stand out and it contrasts the light pale colours of the faces.  The names of the actors on the poster are written in white across the top in capital letters. The title is in red signifying blood, lust and romance. The letters vary in size which is effective because it is confusing hence following the ideas from the film.