This is the poster for the movie The Haunting in Connecticut. The story begins with a family moving to Connecticut in order to save money on the drive there for the family’s son to receive treatment for his cancer. However the young boy begins to see things and the family soon discover that their new home was formerly a funeral home where a young boy called Jonah was used as a demonic messenger allowing dark entities to cross over.
I believe the intended audience of this poster would have to be teenagers and older, because from the poster the film looks too scary for a young child to handle, and would not be in the best interests of those who are a lot older. The age group I would put this film in based on the poster would be those ranging from 13-50.
The poster shows a room with a view point that leads to a group of people sat at a table with a candle in the middle, holding hands. From this picture people would instantly have the word ‘séance’ spring to mind, as this is a horror movie poster and the position the people are in are typical of those who would perform a séance. At the top middle of the poster there is an image of a man, in relatively old fashioned looking clothes with his arms spread out, you cannot see his face however because his body is like that of somebody looking down upon the scene. The majority of the poster is just of the background to the photo because the photo has been taken from a distance of the people sitting at the table. It gives you the impression that you are a spectator watching the séance take place.
The poster for this film is mainly a dark coloured orangey brown with what look like scratches in it. This connotes to the audience the feel of a Victorian photo. This is appropriate as the movie has a lot of flash backs showing the audience that the time in which Jonah started crossing the dead into the living world, was in fact the Victorian times. There is a large white spot at the top of the poster with an image of a man with his arms spread out, this is there to make it stand out from the rest and also to make a clear cut between the rest of the poster, which is of a different scene. Most of the colour in this poster only appears where there are lighter areas such as around the candle. There are also shadows on the wall where the candle creates them; the shadows make the image look scarier and more eerie. The colours used in this poster are typical of horror movie posters, dark colours are usually used to create a scary depressing feel.
The people in the centre of the poster are not main characters in the film, but rather those that contribute to the back story of people coming to the house in Connecticut to perform séances to speak to the dead. The image of the man at the top of the poster however is of a main character, but you cannot see his face. His stance in the picture connotes power and freedom to me, and also makes him appear like Jesus on the cross, like he is being crucified, it connotes a religious tone.
This film had two taglines which are primarily the same. The first is ‘Some things cannot be explained’ and the second, seen on this poster, is ‘what if the only explanation for what you saw was unbelievable?’ The tagline works by asking you the audience a rhetorical question, in which the audience would want to know the answer to. Using a question brings people in because they want answers and in order to find them you have to watch the movie. In this case the audience would want to find out exactly what it is that is unbelievable. The tagline doesn’t reveal a lot about the film which has a huge plot and story line. It does however tell the audience that it has an unbelievable story behind it all. The fonts in which the tagline and film name are written are the same and are also both in white. However both of them look as though they have become dirty from their surroundings as some of the colour from the images around the writing has been smeared across the words. The tagline has been placed in between the two images and works as a divide to help the audience differentiate, and see that the two images are separate.
The most persuasive technique used in this poster would have to be that it is based on true events, luring people in to see if these events are real or not, and put their own judgement to the test. It would also scare the audience more knowing that it is not a work of fiction but can be part of our own world and therefore leaves a lasting effect on the audience so that they can carry on to spread word of how effective and good the movie was.
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