Research: Typography (Mr. S)

Typography

Typography, a fancy word for 'font', is how the writing is presented to the audience. When analysing typography, we look at these four aspects:

1. style
2. size
3. letter case
4. colour

Picking the right type of all of these can be conventional toward a specific audience. It also informs the audience of the genre. It's hard to explain why a Comic Sans font makes us think of something like a Disney movie. But from a media perspective, the font looks like untidy handwriting. A trait among children is untidy handwriting, therefore a child will be able to relate and interact with a movie that hints at what they learn in school - handwriting. 

The font of 'Toy Story' looks playful, because they are aligned rather oddly which represents something like building blocks scattered around or the proportions of a child's handwriting. It's chunky and big, appealing to children more because they can ready it with ease. The colours used are a little more complicated; blue is always seen as neutral but red we often associate with love or danger. Gold, however, draws 'winning' to mind, which would imply there is a happy ending.

This font we immediately know is not intended to attract young children. This is because is lacks the colour and decoration that a younger audience like. It's small, so it could be hard to read. The font is rather thin and look a bit like bones, especially because they're white; maybe representing death. It also looks a bit olden and vampires are ancient myths.

This font is very similar to the one of Toy Story but there are still significant differences. For example, unlike Toy Story, the characters are lined up forming neat words. A young audience may be uninterested in something that looks normal or boring. There is no other kind of decoration, and the title itself is beyond a child's comprehension, they won't even know what 'almighty' means.

All three of these examples are in CAPITALS but their characteristics is what makes them conventional to their specific genre. 

Thriller Specific

This font for 28 Days Later is really similar to the kind of font in advertisements for the army. This gives the audience an impression of some kind of war or fight movie. It's actually based on the apocalypse which is indeed a iconic war theme, between humans and zombies, in movies. It looks a bit faded and scratched which could represent  a number of things: the effects of war, or the time it's set in, or the hardships during those '28 days'. Children might not like the characteristics of this font because it is in no way playful or mild, so the target audience at first impression is at least 15+. There is no indication of blood, gore or violence apart from the colour red. The red is also faded, which points a judgement in the direction of 'spilled blood' rather than 'hearts beating', aka love.

American Psycho is a lot more conventional in terms of it;s sub-genre, which we can assume to be a slasher thriller due to the background of blood splattered. The font itself looks quite sophisticated, not elegant, but 'higher class' compared to the font on 28 Days Later. I think this is a running theme with the killer because on the DVD cover he is dressed in a suit, so the font suits him. The blood is a major contrast to this font, as if one of the two doesn't belong there. When I see this font I think of offices and order. The audience might expect issues to arise such as corruption or class. It is obvious that this movie isn't directed toward children because of the blood and the word 'psycho' - something that is hard to fully grasp the meaning of even as an adult. 

The Devil Inside font looks as though 28 Days Later and American Psycho has been morphed. There's the smart look which could for this movie be translated into maturity, as there's an aged woman right next to it. Immediately we know that this is to be determined for adults. The reference of the devil is religious which can be scary or misunderstood by a young person. There is also the 'faded' look, like 28 Days Later. The effect is actually all over the image. Again, it could represent maturity which is basically age - and many stories of the devil/satanism are extremely old. I think the most interesting part is the second D in reverse. That could be a mirror effect, perhaps representing a split-personality? The actual title supports this theory, 'The devil inside'. Use of colour is like the previous two examples and many other thrillers.

What will I consider?

I like the look of this font because it starts off normal then is becomes distorted. The personalized character theme I want to include in my opening is mental health, specifically madness, so that could be really conventional to my idea. However I'm not sure about using the colour red because my opening will be a 15, and red for thrillers always foreshadows death which is unlikely to be included in my idea, simply because of the age classification.

 I think this could be a stronger choice because it's all one colour, white, and contracts with that black background. This would be majorly effective for my opening because we plan to have most of the scene in a dimly lit, almost pitch black room with a bit of lighting on the main character. More significantly, the other character in our ideas will actually be dressed in white which is what the font would contrast. The style of the actual writing is also convenient because one of my sub-genres is sci-fi, and fonts like that can typically be associated with medical documents.

I like this font because again there's the idea of distortion. The space in between the lettering is uneven, adding onto that 'mentally unstable' idea. The style of the font might be seen as weird for a thriller, but because the woman in my opening is going to be pregnant, that style could be used to represent the theme of children. However the trick with this style is that it makes us think of ominous children like in The Unborn and Orphan, rather than normal and happy children like in Toy Story.

Conclusion: What will I use and why?

I'm definitely going to use a distortion effect to represent 'madness'. I don't want to use the colour red because I am still unsure of if blood will be a part of our iconography. And according to the style, I think The Ring font is the most effective in relation to my plot.