Horror Magazines Research

Selected Horror Magazines



Analysis
To gain a better understanding of how horror is promoted in magazines i have compiled these generic horror magazines in an attempt to analyze the key aspects, this will eventually help my a lot as research due to the fact the we will be making a horror magazine promoting our film. I have some experience in this due to the fact that last year I created a magazine front cover to promote a musician. I will present my findings in bullet point form.

• They all have a dark color scheme that is contrasted by a bright lurid title.
• The typography used is related to some sort of horror genre, for example fangoria uses vampiric font colored in red to semiotically represent blood.
• The named fangoria has the word fang in it relating to vampires or animals.
• They all have a antagonist from a horror movie on the front, this makes the audience instantly associate this with horror.
• They follow much of the conventions we learnt about last year, for example they have the title the side stories, the price and the tag-line in roughly the same place.

Horror Iconography and Ideology

Movie Posters




Questions
1.What visual and written codes are being used?
In the posters above the visual code patterns that emerge are that of darkness and colours associated with horror, and the text corresponds with the specific sub genre for example hatchet II is a slasher horror that has large dominant lettering, semiotically representing the antagonist.


2.What information do they provide about the films?
They give the title, the actors, the director, the opening dates and the credits.


3.What other information might you have expected but is missing?
some do not have taglines and some do not show the stars


4.In what ways do these posters create a sense of enigma?.
They are very vague when it comes to the protagonist and antagonist as well as mode of killing yet they do give a few reference to it, and also they show a bit of the setting in some of them.


5.How are the film producers trying to create a sense of danger and equilibrium?
By using dark oppressive colours and frightening imagery like weapons or gore, also they usually show the antagonist in a scary position.


6.What genre do these films belong to?
The horror genre, though there are sub genres like supernatural and slasher horror in there.


7.What are the generic conventions that are at work in these posters?
blood, gore, weapons, death, youth and fear. these all culminate to create an atmosphere of fear that we have come accustomed to.


8.What differing representations of 'the other' or the 'monster' do they present?
The often shroud it in mystery by only vaguely showing the antagonist but still they show enough to make one fearful due to the atmosphere created by all the other aspects of the poster

Key Elements of the Horror Genre Analysis

After analyzing both Friday the 13th and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre I have started to recognise patterns emerging. These being mainly of Antagonist vs. Protagonist. In both of the films there is an almost constant formulaic chase of the protagonist by the main antagonist, this journey is littered with death of the protagonist friends and stock characters, Capturing and escaping. In both films the antagonist had a lair, the decor in these were scary and semiotically frightening. There were also several similar stock situations that occurred for example the antagonist ariving out of nowhere. The difference were minor and only due to the fact that there quite disperate films, i could have found much more similar plot-lines. The overall point that I have gained from this exercise is the fact that there is a formula used by production companies and writers to create a horror film, this makes the audience more accustomed to the horror genre