Genre as a marketing tool

Genre can be used as a marketing tool as people generally have a 'favourite' genre of film whether its horror, Comedy or Romantic-Comedy. Each genre of film has its own marketing conventions, for example if a film is a Rom-Com then the advertising usually features the colours pink and/or red as they are romantic colours.

This poster for "The Orphan" shows that the film is going to be a horror. Horror film advertising uses dark colours with heavy shadowing. This film poster includes both of these generic features. Also horror movie posters which feature the main human villan emphasises a feature to make them appear less human/ "normal". In this poster they have made the young girl very pale and made her eyes very dark so you can not differentiate her pupil to the rest of her eye.

Text also plays a key part in marketing. The text for the heading, 'ORPHAN', on this poster looks as if it has been scratched into the picture, which gives a sinister feel. Also at the bottom of the poster the words 'CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?' are in bold and in red, the bold text makes it stand out and the colour red is associated with evil and suggests that the secret is going to be an evil twist.