Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Artists often learn from
one another, especially with regard to technique. In particular,
visual artists—illustrators, painters, and the like—use
techniques that writers can adopt, just as the reverse is true.
In this post, we'll take a
look at how horror movie poster artists use color to express themes,
evoke emotions, and sell films. Microsoft's Bing image browser lets
users choose the color (that is, the predominant color) of images.
(Other browsers may do so as well; I'm not sure.) This ability helps
observers to focus on an artist's exploitation of a particular color
as a means of highlighting and conveying themes and emotions.
Sometimes, a writer may be
able to accomplish something similar, through description, but, even
when doing so is impossible, the painter's use of color can show a
writer what the painter emphasized; as a result, the writer can view
his or her own subject through the eyes of another artist, one who
is, in all likelihood, more visually oriented than writers, in general, as we tend to be more linguistic than visual in our orientation.
Against a black
background, a poster for Craig Anderson's 2016 movie Red
Christmas
shows a round, red Christmas ornament inside which is a human fetus,
umbilicus attached. The ornament, transformed by the presence of the
fetus into a womb image, drips blood. The poster's text, in white
font to the left of the ornament-womb, against the black background,
reads, “This Christmas the only thing under the tree is terror.”
By
using only the image of the ornament-womb, the artist stresses the
metaphor which compares the ornament to a mother's womb. The metaphor
also alludes to the birth of Christ, for Jesus's birth is celebrated
on Christmas Day, a holiday often represented by the colors green and
red. However, blood leaks from the ornament-womb, suggesting the
fetus's viability is at risk. Thus, red, which is both one of the
colors of Christmas and of blood, fuses the holiday with a
suggestion of violence. (In the movie, a woman sought to abort her
fetus, but the procedure failed when the clinic was bombed, and her
child, a son, survived. Now, on Christmas Day, he returns to exact
vengeance.)
The
poster seems simple, but it attains depth through the artist's expert
used of an image that is both metaphorical and allusive on several
levels. Writers frequently use metaphors, too, of course, sometimes
as central tropes, but, more often, as figures of speech related to
specific narrative points, rather than as an all-encompassing,
unifying, central trope. By using metaphors more deliberately and
purposefully, writers can heighten and enrich the horror they seek to
effect. The tip from this artist to writers seems to be not only to
think in images, but also to use metaphors to encapsulate the story's
theme.
A
poster for Alexandre Aja's 2010 comedy horror film Piranha
3D, a
spoof of the 1978 film Piranha, both
alludes to and lampoons the famous poster for Steven Spielberg's 1975
horror movie, Jaws.
Here are the posters, side by side:
In
both posters, positioned at the top center, a young, nude blonde
swims upon the surface of the ocean. In the Jaws
poster, a shark, its mouth open to show its long, jagged teeth,
streaks toward the unsuspecting swimmer. There is no accompanying
text; the artist is willing to let the images speak for themselves.
In the Piranha 3D
poster, a piranha, shown
close-up, appears huge in relation to the woman above it. Behind this
fish, a school of other sharp-toothed piranha crowd the sea. Their
shadowy presence looks eerie, as their features are somewhat
indistinct, making them resemble fish, but also plants or rocks,
emphasizing their primitive, prehistoric origin. They are clearly a
species altogether different from that of human beings. The caption,
in title case and sea-green letters, beneath the movie's title, which
appears in all-capital, blood-red letters, advises, “Sea, Sex, and
Blood—Don't Scream . . . Just Swim!”
The
Piranha 3D
poster's school of piranha, as opposed to the single shark in the
Jaws
poster, suggests that the latter movie is many times more horrific
than the latter film; after all, an entire school of the deadly fish,
not a lone shark, are about to attack the helpless swimmer. The
unlikelihood of the swimmer's escaping the predatory piranha by
swimming heightens the horror, just as the tongue-in-cheek advice
heightens the poster's humor.
Since
both posters promote horror movies associated with attacks by marine
predators, their dominant color is green; however, the Jaws
poster also employs shades and hues of blue (another sea color,
reflective of the sky), while Piranha
3D includes grays and red
(in the title). In the latter poster, the swimmer is also more
clearly seen, as is her golden skin and her blonde hair, which helps
her assume presence among the predatory fish that are about to attack
her. The woman's placement near the top of each poster devotes much
more room to depict the ocean below her. She is small, in comparison
to the shark or the school of piranha, which emphasizes her
helplessness while highlighting the shark or the size of the school
of piranha, which makes them seem all the more formidable.
What
lesson does the Piranha
3D poster offer horror
novelists and short story writers? If a story is to include humor
alongside horror, the humor is apt to arise from the situation.
Although the situation itself is horrific, the humor is accomplished
by undercutting the horror. The story alternates between presenting
scenes that are truly horrific and, at the end (or, sometimes,
during) the same scenes, undermining the horror, perhaps with
ludicrous advice (swim—maybe you can outpace the piranha) or some
other means. Mixing humor and horror is difficult. Before attempting
such a feat, it is a good idea to study how screenwriters accomplish
this task. Buffy the
Vampire Slayer offers some
excellent examples.
These
posters also show the need to design the action of a scene to
maximize its horror. The woman's comparably small size, her
isolation—she is alone in the sea—and her utter helplessness in
the face of predators much larger than she, increase the horror of
her situation. At the same time, the poster's design focuses the
action of the scene on the conflict between the woman, as victim, and
the shark or piranha as monstrous creatures intent upon attacking,
killing, and gorging upon her, even before she dies. A well-planned
combination of images can both direct action and unify the scene in
which it occurs.
Some
horror movie posters use a dominant color because the color is
suggested by the film's title (Red
Eye, Red
Water, Red
Christmas); because the
color is associated with a holiday or the season of the year during
which the story unfolds (Red
Christmas uses red;
Halloween, orange); because the
color has symbolic associations with the movie's subject matter (Red
Eye's caption makes it plain
that this is one of the reasons for its use of red: “He wants to
see your insides”); because it contrasts sharply with, and,
therefore, emphasizes, the subject matter or its representation, in
the case of The Eyes of
Laura Mars, by way of a
synecdoche, which shows the whites of her eyes against her shadowed
face and a black background); or, in some cases, as an alternate way
to convey a condition or a situation (dark blue is often used to
represent darkness, as it is in the poster for Poltergeist
and many other films, because black is too
dark). Doubtlessly, there are many other reasons that a particular
color is chosen. What is done with the color is what separates
amateur designers and artists from the pros. Use the color selection
tab on Bing or the image browser of your choice, and see what you can
discover.
Many
other horror movie posters show how carefully planned images can
convey unity, theme, action, emotion, and other elements of a story
using color, the positioning of models (in stories, characters),
settings, figures of speech, lighting, camera angles, points of view,
and other elements of storytelling and cinema. Studying them can
suggest similar ways of accomplishing these goals in a novel or a
short story.