Film Poster Analysis- Horror Genre

 I created a piece of work containing many modern horror genre film posters, and analyzed how each effectively create the impression of belonging to the horror genre. Each uses dark, muted colors and sinister imagery and motifs to successfully foreshadow fear and danger within the narrative.

Mise en scene Research

As part of my research into the production of my very own five minute short film, I was first to understand how everything in front of the camera in each scene is essential in its overall genre adaptability, understanding, and effect upon the audience.
One definition of this exactly, everything in front of the camera, states:


Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story" —both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_sc%C3%A8ne)

It basically refers to everything placed in front of the camera, how it is arranged, and what purpose it has there (which the individual audience member is left to interpret). It includes several aspects of a scene, such as costume, props, lighting, composition, actors and set. I will research further into detail each of these aspects, in order to fully understand what I will need to incorporate in my final short film.

Set design 

An important element of "putting in the scene" is set design—the setting of a scene and the objects (props) therein. Set design can be used to amplify character emotion or the dominant mood of a film, or to establish aspects of the character.

Lighting 

The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting have a profound effect on the way an image is perceived. Light (and shade) can emphasise texture, shape, distance, mood, time of day or night, season, glamour; it affects the way colors are rendered, both in terms of hue and depth, and can focus attention on particular elements of the composition.

Space 

The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses, lighting, set design, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the

story world.

Costume 

Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear. Using certain colors or designs, costumes in narrative cinema are used to signify characters or to make clear distinctions between characters.

Acting 

There is enormous historical and cultural variation in performance styles in the cinema. Early melodramatic styles, clearly indebted to the 19th century theater, gave way in Western cinema to a relatively naturalistic style.