Stitches poster analysis
- 2. COLOUR SCHEME From first glance, this poster looks like a poster for a horror film straight away. This is partly because of the dark colours that have been used through the choice of image. The dark colours are a typical convention associated with horror and with anything 'scary'. The use of blue connotes coldness, and the black and greys add a certain mystery to the image and poster overall. The bright red nose, lips and cuts on the face bring the connotation of blood and violence, associated with the genre of horror. The yellow of the text 'Stitches' however, suggests a more light hearted side to the film, which makes sense as the film is classed as a 'comedy/horror'. The poster is therefore hinting at this through its colour choices.
- 3. MIse en sce ne The use of the knife in this poster is a classic icon of horror cinematography and has an instant association with horror and themes of murder, death, violence, fear etc. It has been used a number of time in classic horror films, from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 'Psycho' to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 'The Shining'. The use of stitches on the face also suggests violence and evokes fear from the viewer, and is a typical convention of a horror to have some kind of injury, deformity etc, on a character, adding to their creepiness and overall fear factor.
- 4. MIse en sce ne The use of the clown as the main, and only, character featured on the poster is classicly very scary and typical of a horror film, especially so because of the 1990 film 'IT' about a predatory, murderous clown. The clown character is especially scary because of the juxtaposition it creates between the innocence of the child entertainer and the evil that it has now become. It Is taking something seen to be innocent, fun and jokey and twisting it to create an evil and horrifying character, similar to when children are used in horror films, and objects such as dols and toys etc.
- 5. The fact we can only see his head, through a closeup shot, creates a sense of mystery around the character. His eye colour is very piercing and the viewer is instantly drawn to it. Also, the fact one of this eyes is missing is very creepy. His gritty, dirty and stubbly face, with smudged make up and wild, crazy hair makes makes him visually look very scary and goes against typical innocent image of a clown We can't see anything in the background, again adding mystery and posing questions to the viewer
- 6. The text The thing that makes this poster not look very good, or professional, in my opinion is the text for the title. Up close, the idea of the stitching on the letters is clever and makes sense in terms of relating to the title of the film, but the colours used don't look very good and take away from the scariness of the image used and the dark and creepy colours and mise en scene. However, the text used does look quite comical and relates to the comedy side to this film, therefore having a reason for looking like this.