PSYCHO Movie Poster

Watching the thrilling movie 'Psycho', a must see scene is the shower scene, take a look! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdAJrEgsU70

This movie poster is a convention of a thriller, showing the suspense and horrific events of the movie. Your eyes are directly taken to the main focal point of the hand, showing the struggle of a person just trying to stay alive and standing. A sense of mystery is given because the shower curtain is blocking and blurring the view of the person, this makes you unknown to the state that they are in, but as you can see there are elements of blurred red, we can infer they are bleeding giving a definite sense of mystery again. The words 'Check In, Unpack, Relax, Take a Shower.' gives you an unsettled feeling. We can infer this movie could be placed in a hotel. Also the correlation between the picture and the word 'shower' is something that caught my eye, giving mystery back to the photo. The words down the side of this picture again confuse people by making the movie sound polite, this is called an oxymoron, pretending something is in fact the opposite of what it is. This draws you into the poster let alone the movie. The release date on this poster is at the bottom written in red. We could infer the colour red is used because of its representation, red is a connotation of blood, death, anger and lust etc. these is also conventions of a thriller (blood, anger etc). Last the word 'Sightmare' used gives a sense of shock and mystery, implying that it is real life drawing in more viewers to the poster. It leaves you with a question. This poster sums up most of the movie that I’ve encountered, analytical review of the shower scene up soon! Watch This Space!!

First Analysis

So i recently started off the Media Studies As level and i'm already into it, we got stuck straight in so I thought i would start off my blogging with an analysis:

     This is a still image from the first version of ‘the Texas chain saw massacre’. The camera shoots this shot from low down, looking up at the subject. This is called a low angle shot; this is used in this frame to show authority of the subject. This can demonstrate who is in power, in this case, ‘leather face’. Added power in this shot is shown by the raising of the hands with a chainsaw in it. Creating violent tension. This action of the hands could also suggest someone is about to be hurt, even killed.

           Even from it being taken from below head height, we could imply this is a point of view camera shot, showing it through the victims eyes, in that case the low angle shot could show the struggle of the person about to take the blow of the chainsaw. Even the way that only one person is in the frame in an open area can make you feel as if it’s from your point of view.

           The frame is composed on a golden mean; this means the main focal points are on a diagonal line, in this case a steep one. The main focal points are the chainsaw and the figure (leather face). As you can see this is a fairly old film and isn’t as defined as new movies but the main focal points are more focused than the background, emphasising them drawing your attention to the main part of each frame.

          The background in this image is a sun set which could symbolize the decent of the day, also the chainsaw and maybe the person that’s about to die, the sun is creating a red coloured sky, the colour red resembles anger and blood, which fits well in the story line of this movie.

          If you look closely to the figure ‘leather face’ you will see that they have created a mask to make him look more threatening and insane, this adds to the whole mis-en-sene of the frame making it look more brutal. Overall this image is only one piece of incredible footage of the first chainsaw massacre film.

Thanks for reading!