RESEARCH 10 - ANALYSIS OF THE PARANORMAL ACTIVITY POSTERS

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY POSTERS 

Here is a series of the hit movie ‘Paranormal Activity’  posters produced for each film. The posters all have similar features because they are part of one another, however they are different, to give hints to the audience about what this version will be about and to show them that it will be different in order for the audience to not think that it is going to be the same things.

Some similarities include:

·         Having the same black thick border for the information, like the name of the film and directors etc.

·         The quote at the top, making it continuous in order for the audience to feel as though they need to know what will happen next.

·         The same text, to add similarity to the film otherwise perhaps it would look to messy, and it wouldn’t identify the film very well.

·         The idea of the setting being in the bedroom, originating from the first movie.

·         The black shadow in all the posters.

·         Also in all four, it includes the characters that are being affected by the activity in the film.

Some differences are:

·         They are all at different stages, to show the audience how this is a continuous story.

·         The camera angle is always different, to perhaps portray how they are all different stories.

·         The quotes at the top, get snappier to not bore the audience and get straight to the point.

All the posters both compare and contrast with each other, but they also relate to horror conventions, otherwise the film wouldn’t have been successful. For instance by having a grey scale tone to the images, it implies that this film is about something dark and mysterious and by having no colour shows that there is no happiness in this film. Another conventions is that by including the black shadow it automatically tells the audience what genre of a film it is and what the film could be based on. Also normally in horror films, it is based on the darkness, and in the posters it starts with quite a bit of light and slowly into the film the amount of light projected in the rooms gets less and less, this could imply how the movie is has no light like a fairy-tale movie would and that by they’re being less and less light there is more darkness for this paranormal activity to begin.

By analysing these series of posters, it gives me an idea of how to follow horror conventions and what really attracts the audience. Also from looking at these posters I am able to see how to be able to make the posters into a chronological order if I wanted to, and what is needed to show to the audience that this paranormal activity would actually turn into a series of events. Also by looking at them individually I am able to pick out what really stood out to the audience and that for me personally would be the image because of how everything else is blacked out, so clearly this is successful because I myself as a consumer watched every single one of the paranormal activity films.