The movie poster “Silence of the Lambs” uses many different aspects that help make the movie poster create suspense and mystery for the viewer. Viewers see a pale woman with a butterfly over her mouth with a dark background. The creators of the poster use many different types of visual images to compel people to see this movie. The types of visual images that the creators used in this poster is warm colors, a focal point and chiaroscuro helps add to the suspense and mystery that this poster gives off to the viewer.

The most important factor to this movie poster is the use of warm colors. In the movie poster, the woman’s eyes and parts of the butterfly are red. The red that is used is not vibrant like most reds that will pop out, but the red the creators used is a dark red, almost to the extent of being a brownish red. The color red is used in movie posters because it is associated with blood and violence. The poster used red in the color of the butterfly because the butterfly is associated in a way to the violence that will be occurring in the movie. Another reason why the creators of the poster decided to use red was because they were trying to create suspense before people got to see the movie. The way they did this was by creating a sense of worry for the girl in the poster. By using a warm color like red, this poster helped create a sense of danger and worry for the viewer of the poster because of how we associate the color red with blood and violence.

Another important factor in the movie poster “Silence of the Lambs” is the focal point of the butterfly in the middle of the poster. Our eyes are drawn to this because the butterfly has the warm colors of brownish red and orange. Our eyes are drawn to this because the warm colors of the butterfly are in front of the white background of a woman’s mouth. The creators of the poster placed the butterfly in front of the woman’s because it is symbolic of the butterfly trying to silence her. The butterfly also has a white skull on its back which also draws the eyes to it because it pops out since it is surrounded by warm colors. The white skull draws our eyes because we associate a white skull with death. In this instance, the creators used the focal point of the butterfly to catch our attention and question why it is there and what the meaning of the butterfly is and why it is associated with violence and death.

This movie poster does a good job of using chiaroscuro when the creators transitioned from light to dark in the poster. In the poster, the light is the woman’s face and then it transitions to a dark background. This is symbolic of the fight between the fight between good and evil in the movie. This gives the viewer of the poster the sense that something bad is going to happen in the movie. Also, the woman’s skin is light and pale and looks like she might be dead. The use of light to dark in this poster helps add to the mystery and suspense that this poster gives off.

Through using chiaroscuro, focal point and warm colors, the poster creates an image what we can get a good image of what we can expect the movie to be like. This poster made good use of the colors it uses because of the of the mystery that it gives the viewer. The viewer may ask many different question like why the butterfly is the only part of the poster that has color or why it is covering the girl’s mouth. By using these different elements in this poster, it makes the people looking at it ask question and helps build mystery around it.

 