Movie Poster Analysis: The Marked Ones

This analysis is around the horror movie Paranormal Activity The Marked Ones, the story is based around a student called Jesse who is possessed by a demonic entity after the death of his neighbour which he investigates into which leads him to be marked for a possession by this demon. The film was released in January 2014 on the 1^st. I have chosen to analyse this poster as it is a horror movie and also is similar to my trailer in which we will use scare factors such as closing doors and characters going missing in the film.

Firstly with the poster is the overall main image, this is of a religious statue usually of a saint. This connects with the whole religious and anti-demon statues seen throughout the film. These are to prevent the demon from accessing a house so straight away it is a clear indication that it has a religious connection. Another feature of the main image is the face being a skull head. This represents death and evil which can also link to the possessive demon throughout the film. The last feature with the statue would be the marked symbol which is on the statues forehead. Being red this sticks out and draws attention to itself as the majority of the poster is of different dark shades of grey so this helps it to separate itself from the rest of the poster. The symbol is a red triangle which may have some link to the demon and its belonging of being marked by the demon,.

 The poster is dark not showing much more than 5 colours something I will also carry through to my poster as I believe the darkness can be a positive as I would not want it to be a rainbow as this would bring the wrong impression to my ancillary products as well as the trailer. The colours are mostly of a grey pallet going from light grey to a dark ash black for the corners. The text stands out even more with the grey background colours with the red then white texts. I believe the red texts have a lot of relevance to the actual movie with red usually seen as evil or as blood. From this I will use the red somehow in my poster as it represents blood. 

Movie Magazine analysis: Fangoria

This is my analysis of a Fangoria horror magazine front cover featuring Insidious chapter 2

Trailer Analysis - The Marked Ones

The Marked ones is one in the series of the Paranormal Activity films which follows a poltergeist who possess a house. The film is based around Jesse who is a student and after the death of his neighbour becomes to change after waking up to find circular bite marks on his arm and later investigating his neighbours house finds out he is a marked one from a demon.

The establishing shot of this trailer is four fast shots ranging from a police car with its sirens on, some kind of helicopter, four gang members around a high end car, the last shot is a pair of men playing basketball from a very low angle. The opening audio to the trailer is a Heavy rap song of a Latino genre, this backs up that it is a rough area with the use of hip hop rap music to set the tone. This kind of music would not be found in a wealthy estate to describe its class and instead is used here for this area of Oxnard, Los Angeles. All these first establishing shots how’s it is sub urban area with violence shown through gang activity, this is backed up by showing a Latino Mexican gang. These establishing shots also show that there is a sense of reality as this is usually seen in American neighbourhoods such as this one.

 

The shots following this begin to establish the main character Jesse. This establishing camera work is off the main characters personal video camera giving a point of view from all angles of Jesse this type of shooting can also be seen in Project X following the main characters POV, this gives the film a more realistic edge compared to other films where they would just use the normal way of shooting a film from a stable platform of a tripod instead of in this case using a portable camera in all shots. This all shows some events going through normal day with different things happening from a house party to getting chased away by the same Latino gang shown at the beginning which shows that they are violent by chasing a teenager, having these two linking together means that they may become some kind of enemy later on in the plot. There is a side of Religion shown by Jesse walking past a shop that sells Religious statues, this also links to the films poster which defines that it is religiously linked to it with using such statues as the religious ones. The tone of the story drops when the music stops and goes silent with Police sirens from when they find the neighbour dead being taken away in the ambulance.

 

 

 

The trailer starts to develop more into the story when entering the murdered neighbours house to find stacks of video tapes along with other religious paraphernalia such as dream catchers and wooden crosses which this is then back up with one of the female characters saying "This is some black magic shit" Showing that they are worried about what all of the items in the basement are about with religion. Jesse then finds a picture of himself in the basement which establishes they were being watched by the neighbour. Creating a link between a marked one and the main character Jesse makes the storyline tie together both characters.

The cuts start to become more rapid later in the trailer. Later on after this scene there are slow fades from each scene when Jesse finds a bite mark and what leads on from this saying he had a crazy dream. Being a mobile camcorder the shots are medium close ups to get the full size of jesses top half of his body in frame. Jesse is wearing a T-shirt in the majority of scenes given he is a normal teenager and not wearing any clothing item that may state he is different from this. He does not seem to be involved with a gang as when his friend films one of them at 0:58 seconds into the trailer he warns him “don’t point the camera at them” proving it is a hostile area to be in as Jesse is fearful of what may happen if the camera is pointed at the gang.

When the gang attacks them Jesse lashes out and they fly away showing the destructive force of what has bitten him. This is shown through an effective shaky cam to give a more realistic edge to this scene with him being jumped. Title frames begin in 1:16 saying “This is not a gift” which clearly shows that he has gained some kind of power from the bite but not a gift which means it is a bad thing as a gift is a good thing. The fast fades carry on into the next three cuts when he wakes up sweating and some older character which may be his mother coming to see what is wrong with him, followed up by a close up in the mirror with Jesse inspecting his eye which is then followed with an ECU pealing black lines from his eye. Black flutters of the screen are a an effective edit to be used such as this part in the trailer given it builds up tension alongside the sound

 

 

 

Title scenes start to increase as the tension builds with another one saying “this is not an accident” which means that Jesse was chosen to be marked by the demon for a cause, it was not just a random attack and it is aimed at him. The next scene is in an open park with the girlfriend of Jesse investigating about the marked ones. A medium close up is used in this scene to show the pictures of her family members on the table. This entire story builds up to an attack at 1:45 when their car breaks down. The scene is in a darkened alley at night with not much light except a street light and a garage light to the right of the car. A darkened figure emerges in front of the car and instantly recognised to be the demon. The camera work from the passenger of the car goes shaky once again giving more tension as the viewer’s know something big is going to happen here when the camera sways from either side of the car looking at the door handle and then back to Jesse. All sound cuts part from the passenger’s speech when the demon attacks the car from Jesse’s side. After this climatic attack a title scene appears with cuts of the Triangular demon mark which can be found on the movie poster, the title scene says “this is only the beginning” this is an interesting title frame as it opens up the plot meaning that there is much. More jump cuts follow this leading to the couple going to see a religious person on Jesses bite. When signing the cross on Jesse the woman’s hand is blocked by Jesse. This gives the impression that the demon is anti-religious and rejects religion shown by the denied attempt to do the cross on Jesse.

The next sections to the trailer are all rapid jump cuts which show off different parts of action in the film. Starting with a man firing a shotgun, this being a firearm it shows that he is using to inflict pain on something and the way it is shot with the only light source being from the cameras on board light it makes it more effective with its realism. A dark church is the next clip in the line of these jump cuts showing the female character at her knees reading from a book from a high angle looking down on her. This adds to the story as she is clearly concentrating on reading the book to her left. With the one gleaming light coming in from the door behind it sets the tone of a creepy church as it is completely empty except from her and Jesse and he is sitting behind looking down at his lap in with a kind of guilt look to him.

Final section to this trailer builds up to interior shots which are all blacked out except when the cameras light are shining on it. All sound is muted here except from a woman whispering Spanish which sounds like a prayer once again linking to a religious connection. The camera sways from angle to angle showing a house with marked flooring of a religious star. Quickly moving to two young girls who are missing eyes just standing there speaking to the camera revealing other people who have been possessed by the demon.

The trailer concludes with Jesse running up cellar stairs only to have the door to it close on him going straight to black only to have the sound of the door closing to conclude the ending of the action. The film’s title is shown to be glowing like an electric sign using the same text style found in the movie poster, and then with the use of a Twitter hash tag #TheMarkedOnes using twitter as a platform to promote the film from and also to get people to start to talk on the trailer with the film’s title becoming a trending topic on twitter.