Ancillary Task, "The Final Destination" film poster

Ancillary tasks: Analyse a Movie poster.

Here I am analysing the poster for the horror film, “The Final Destination”. I will be looking for the use of layout, fonts, colours, images used, language, representation and conventions.

The dark colours of this poster can indicate vulnerability, darkness, terror and unawareness. This can draw the audience in and make them want to know more about the film, therefore making the poster appeal more.

Typical conventions are shown here. The big face in the centre of the page is made to look like a shattered mirror, and broken shards of class, similar to the font style we saw in “Wrong Turn 3”. The tag line at the top of the poster is also a convention of film posters, therefore making it more obvious. The top half of the face picture shows normal humans face, but then at the bottom of the face where the mirror is showing it is broken more, it shows what looks to be a skeleton, which indicates death and danger.

The layout of the picture being right in the middle of the page can be a sign of its vulnerability, or in this case, the vulnerability of the victim characters in the film. The character is also in the primary optical areas of the page. Though it is said that the left hand side is said to be the more dominant side, in the case it is the centre that is the most dominant. The face right in the centre of the picture shows the emphasis on the victim and the fact that the face is broken up, can indicate something horrific. The route of the eye follows across the page towards the tag line, it then scans down the face diagonally over the title towards the title of the film, and then in terminal area is shows the cinema release date.

The font used for the title shows the writing as glowing edges, almost giving it a supernatural feel to it. In some ways this film is about supernatural, as it is about fate and escaping death, not like in “Wrong Turn” where real life people were doing the killing. The text also is rather small, which shows its significance in the story line, and it is also all in capitals, which seems to be a theme with horror film posters. The “Final Destination” shown in white can signify its innocence, but can also be used as a contrast to the black background, and making it stand out better.

Typical representation of horror films are shown here, as they are using a human character as the victim, and the supernatural as the antagonist.