Tuesday, 5 July 2011

Research Task - Film Poster of Underworld


This film poster follows many of the now common features of a vampire genre film. Like "Daybreakers" it follows the desaturated colour scheme to connote the darker toned world that is filled with these supernatural creatures, making it easily recognisable to the audience of what type of film it is. The black outfit of the title character is used to connote her as one of these creatures through the obvious connotations of evil and the twisted nature they have and fits in with this bleak world, connoted by the sickly blue colour which bleeds over the town seen in the poster, showing the world is consumed by this battle between supernatural creatures. Also the moon that is a dominant feature in the background is very important as if you look closely, there is a silhouette of a werewolf on the moon. This shows that it isn't only vampires who terrorise the film's world as the full moon is a well known feature of the werewolf lore. It also connotes the vampires unusual fear since werewolves are one of the few things that can kill them while in their comfort zone of the dark. So the moon represents the different feelings that each type of creature since the dark is usually a safe place for vampires but its also the time when the werewolves emerge, meaning that vampires are no longer safe at anytime.

An interesting feature of this poster is that it doesnt "name drop" or have any taglines (even thought the website address at the bottom could be argued as a tagline itself). It only has the title "Underworld", the date its released and a website address. This tells the audience that the film itself is a much lower budget film compared to that of "Blade" for example which name dropped Wesley Snipes in both the poster and the trailer. Its possibly down to the actress either being not well known at that moment or that the film itself didn't get enough publicity due to the lower budget look of the film to gain a more gritty, frieghting appearance like most traditional horror/supernatural films. The title is in eletric blue and has gothic style typography which fits in with the tone of the film as we see elements of gothic archutecture in the poster like what the title character is standing on. The electric blue likely connotes how the war between the two species is the main focus of the film but yet still contained within the supernatural world as the blue clashes with the other blues present but shows that the human world know nothing about it, given the name "Underworld" as it happens underground and away from humanity so it doesnt raise suspision. The use of the website address is an example of how times have changed throughout cinema and films as in older films like "Blade", there was little emphasis on the internet until it became more popular and widely used in the 2000's so people at the time would be more likely to check the website for extra information and exclusive downloads if they sign up to the website for example. With deveolpments of chatrooms and social networking sites, websites can easily be passed on to others via Facebook showing that it has become a more common, even complusary now to develop a website for the film.

All this is down to the poster being a teaser poster, so the lack of name dropping is purposful done so when the audience see it and want to know more about the film, they are only given a website address to search for. This forces the target audeince to activily search out this film, rather then just sit back and wait for a trailer to be seen on TV etc. They learn about which actors are present in the film and wha tthe general storyline is, along with countless extra behind the scenes features so the audience become more engrossed with the film itself. When compared to the actual poster which would have been released just before or when the film was actually released, we see more of the traditional features seen in previous posters.


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