Ancillary Research

We have taken 3 posters from what we think are the three most successful psychological thrillers. Inception, Seven and Psycho. Inceptions poster looks automatically like a hollywood block buster, the graphics and detail within the poster show that there has been a lot of time spent on it to make it as good as it can be to make the distribution process successful. The poster shows extremely large buildings, sleek, modern and black either side with water running through the middle, Leonardo De Caprio is stood with his back facing the audience with his head turned slightly so we are able to recognise him. He has a gun in his hand which makes him look powerful but his other hand is in his pocket which reflects that his body language is very calm and relaxed even though being in the midst of the collasel sized buildings and the fact he is up to his knees in water. The main colour theme of this poster is black,grey and red, this is a recurring colour theme within the movie and on the website. This reflects the dangerous and dark genre of the film very well.

This film poster is not as highly polished as inception as it was made in 1960 so the access to technical editing was very limited. The main character, the women, takes up most of the poster, she in a bra and underskirt making her look seductive but her expression is pretified, selling sex with scare. The main male character is completely red, this speaks volumes as it later turns out he is evil. The title Psycho is also written in yellow but it is torn up into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle put back together showing this film is a murder msytery.

This films poster has very dark and gritty colours, dark mud browns, yellows and blacks, as well as subtle bits of red. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman have their faces put on the poster very close up. They are back to back, looking inquisitively and seriously into the camera. Between them is the seven deadly sins written in a list vertically. Each word has a red slash through it, almost like ticking them off a checklist which gives away that this film has the seven deadly sins as the theme and it is most definately a murder mystery!


These film posters worked well to fit the forms and convention of our film genre. The pattern through out these posters shows bold, bright colours and text. The colours are definately suited to the films and you can tell straight away they are thrillers, yet each are so very different from one another. So we decided to make our film poster focus on scissors and the hair rather than putting the characters in the poster, this doesn't fit to the forms and conventions of most thriller film posters but we thought it very abstract and unique and would make the audience form ideas in their head about the film rather than giving them a very obvious clue about what happens. If we were to realistically distribute and market this film i think the film poster we make would work successfully to attract our specific target audience as it looks mature enough for 30 year olds yet simple enough for 16 year olds.