Horror Poster

The Media Prep: Image Production and Analysis
By Stephanie Kufferath
I was required to produce a Horror movie Poster that I created on my own with my own pictures and own ideas. My Poster shows a squid which is watching scuba divers in the ocean. His eye is in the foreground to make it look as if he is trying to follow them with his eyes and the divers can’t notice it. I think this is a good Horror movie poster because it is under the ocean in the depth of the sea and many people are scared of what might lie and wait for somebody down there. I took the picture on a diving Trip with my father in the red ocean in Egypt and now worked on it with Photoshop to make the squid more noticeable and put the anemones further into the background. I also screened in a title, a slogan, a directors name, actor names and a film company.
With lighting down the anemones and brightening up the squid the Hotspots are the squid in the foreground and the group of divers in the background swimming in the middle of the ocean. I also like that the viewer looks into the picture because behind the divers you can image the wide open see and the Poster gets its own depth. Another important thing that attracts the viewers attention are the colors because down in the ocean everything looses it’s color and everything is blue, but in this movie Picture the “main characters” which are the sea monsters and the divers are colored. I chose the picture with the squid because it is kind of red and this color represents a warning and draws attention to it. You can also identify it with blood and death that might come from the squid. The flippers and the oxygen bottles of the divers are yellow which builds a great contrast to the blue of the ocean.
I chose the title “depth because I think that the ocean is very deep and most people fear exactly this because they don’t know what might be living down there. I also think the title fits very well because in the Poster you can see that the bottom of the sea is falling down to the left side and goes deeper and deeper. The slogan says: “In the depth of the ocean nobody will ever find you, nor hear you scream”. I chose this slogan because it says exactly what people fear about the ocean because under the water it is difficult to communicate, you depend on your oxygen bottle and nobody will ever find you because in the middle of the ocean you are just a small person. The actors and directors I simply imagined because I wanted to create something new but it didn’t really refer to anything that I had in my mind.
In my Poster the signifier is the squid and the ocean because everybody knows what a squid is. The signified is the danger that comes from it because it can kill or attack the divers and there might be other cruel animals waiting in the depth.
All In all I personally think that this is a good example of a horror movie poster because the ocean is something we do not totally know and we have got no control of it, which is the reason why it is so scary. I also think that the poster portraits a psycho horror movie like “jaws” because in the ocean you can only see about 15 meters far and deep and for this reason a dangerous animal can come very quickly out of the dark without anybody noticing. In my opinion this poster makes the movie attractive because it doesn’t really show blood or an attack of somebody so that the action of the movie is taking place in the mind of someone who is looking at the poster.