Horror Poster analysis Connotations and denotation The mast head is placed in the bottom centre third, it’s a Big red font, its bold and is capitalised; there is a selling line above it; it’s a sans serif font. The mast head reads “BELLADONNA”. The text is slightly blurred and stretched. Most posters place their masthead in the bottom thirds because it is the easiest to see when in a movie theatre it also allows the image to be highlighted more. The masthead is in a blood shade of red this connotes obviously blood which is a common convention of horror; the red also stands out from the white background; it also compliments the eye really well because they are both very harsh colours. The blurring of the title also connotes a strange or supernatural aspect, much like how ghosts appear to be translucent or blurry. The selling line or anchorage text is there to add additional information, it’s a black smaller serif font, it seems to be a traditional font. It is all capitalised but the beginning of certain words seems to be slightly larger than the rest, for example “Game”, “Niklas Halllin”. The selling line seems to be more of a highlighter of the masthead than anything else, it borders it and with the black fill it makes the red fill of “belladonna” stand out more. “Niklas Hallin” gives the poster a star factor bringing in more audiences who are a fan of his work.
Most posters have the genre and a sneak peek into the film, this one obviously says in the selling line that it’s a film and game. The main image is an extreme close up of an eye, the colour is saturated apart from the outside of the iris this is highlighted by the saturated colour. The image is simple and striking, the orange in the image is a very horror convention and connotes things such as dry blood and fire. The greyscale background both makes the image more threatening and unsettling bringing out the orange; it also makes the masthead stand out from the background. There is some additional text at the top giving a small catch line they do this so that they can grab your attention quickly, the white font makes it stand out from the background of black without making it stand out from the image and masthead. The information on the bottom is a billing block and is needed in every poster; like most magazines they have decided to put it in the bottom so that its conventional but some magazines chose to put it in the top