The idea of using a bloody hand print was in my mind for some time and I finally decided this was what I was going to do as I have not come across a poster with this feature/image. However, I did not have the skills to create a bloody hand print using software on the computer, so I decided to do it in 'real life' using stage blood or paint.
To start off with I needed someone who was willing to have their hand painted to make my poster. My friend volunteered and we got to work straight away. Firstly, I needed to find a shade of red that looked like fresh blood; it is essential that promotional materials for films are as close to perfect as possible or there will be a negative view of the film before its even released and the target audience will not take it seriously. Below is a photo of the various shades of red that I sampled on paper to see which was the most appropriate. I did not use stage blood for my poster as it was not viscous enough; it bled right through the paper, therefore I eliminated stage blood for use in my poster.
To begin with, I got 4 sheets of canvas paper as it is very thick and I wanted the hand print to look as if it were on a wall rather than paper; to make it look more realistic and professional. At this point the hand prints were only 'testers' so I could determine what kind of hand print I wanted. below are photos of the various types of hand prints that my friend and I tested out. Originally, I wanted the hand print to be smeared as if the victim had been dragged away. However, as shown below in the first picture on the left, the hand print does not look like a hand print at all, just a red smudge. I could not posibly use such an image for my poster, so I asked my friend to drag her hand only slightly, in the hope that the hand print would be a smeared, but not so much that it was unrecognizable. This is the image on the right and it is obvious that it is a hand print, but it still looks distorted and unprofessional; therefore, I dismissed the idea of having a smared hand print and decided that I was going to have a 'normal' one.
I had now chosen what hand print I was going to use, so my friend imprinted her hand onto my first piece of canvas paper. However, as you can see on the left photo below, the image is striking but it is very plain too; there is too much white space around the edges. This image may catch my audience's eye but it doesn't look very realistic so it may not be taken seriously. Therefore, I decided to add blood spatters all over the white spaces around the hand print. I did this by dipping a paintbrush into the paint mixture that I had previously prepared before and 'flicking' it all over the paper. This created a spattered look as you can see in the right hand picture below, which fills the empty space making the poster more interesting, professional and realistic to look at.
I was pleased with the extra feature I added to my poster, but I was not happy with the lighting of the photo that I took above. The picture is too light and I wanted it to be dismal and dark, hereby following the conventions of a horror film. Therefore I changed the lighting slightly as I was working with dimmer switches; I closed the curtains and dimmed the lights. I also changed the positioning of the camera; I stood back further to see if the picture would be more effective from further away. As you can see the picture is slightly darker and there is some light surrounding the hand print as I used the flash on my camera on this occasion. However, I was still not completely content with the lighting; it was still not dark enough. So I turned the lights off completely and turned the flash up to the maximum brightness on my camera. The result is the right hand picture below. As you can see the light around the hand print is far more distinct and the spatters of red paint can still be seen around the edges. I was very pleased with this result and I decided this image was good enough to be my final poster.
Now that I had the perfect image for my poster, it was time to begin editing it in PhotoShop 8. My first decision was choosing the font I was going to use. This was a crucial decision as if the wrong decision is made then the font may make the poster look unprofessional which would spoil the whole appearance. This would be an incredible waste of my time if this were to happen as I had worked so hard to get the image as close to perfect as possible. Another problem that could arise from this is that my target audience may not take my poster very seriously; this could be a very big problem if my film were to be commercialised as a lot of money would have been wasted printing and distributing the posters only for them to be ignored.
Initially I wanted to use a font that appeared to be 'dripping' but as I had added 'blood spatters' to my poster I thought that this would be a bit too much; the spatters and dripping font may detract from the actual poster itself.
I decided to use the same font that I used on my magazine cover. Not only will this be recognisable to my target audience but it ticks all the boxes in terms of following horror film conventions; the font is clear and easy to read and it looks very 'stony'; one of my classmates pointed out that it looks like the writing on a gravestone. The font I used was Trajan Pro. Before I had actually made this poster I had wanted to have the font in red to symbolise blood; however this would have blended in with the red hand print and the image itself is obvious enough to the audience what the genre of my film is.
Font Editing -
I used two different effects on the title of my poster:
Bevel and Emboss -
- Style – outer bevel
- Technique – smooth
- Depth – 100%
- Direction – down
- Size – 32px
- Sharpen – 15px
Inner Shadow -
– Red, darken
- Opacity – 100%
- Angle – global light, -120°
- Distance – 16px
- Choke – 28%
As you can see in the picture above of my title, the effects are very exaggerated as opposed to other effects used in previous titles; my magazine. Achieving the final look of this title was a case of trial and error; I tested out different styles for each effect and decided which was best. Special font effects were still relatively new to me which is why I did so much experimentation. When I came across the 'distance' tab in the inner shadow section I found it to be very effective as it gave a very striking red shadow behind the black font as seen in the title above.
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