Lit Log 1 The Rebranding of Psycho

The current poster for the movie Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock is very much of its time. It looks like a romcom poster, not one for a horror movie. That’s why I decided to redraw a poster of it in my own vision. As for the name of the film I have less of a problem with it but I do think it has a different meaning nowadays. Also the way that Hitchcock marketed this movie was weird, the trailer by itself is absolutely bizarre and would never be done now.

To start off we would change the name from Psycho to Broken. The film is all about tension and not knowing what’s going to happen next so when the title is Psycho that kind of gives away the mystery of it from the start. I also think that the movie plays Norman Bates off as a sympathetic character so this title further shows Norman and as a sympathetic character.

For the movie poster I realized that the original poster was very basic and didn’t offer much. It was also of its time and just wasn’t very eye-catching, it also didn’t have a centerpiece or a focus point. In my rendition of it I decided to have the focus point be on the Bates as a shadow figure of mother holds Norman Bates in her hands. I wanted to include the other characters so on the side peeling off of the middle were Marion Crane, Arbogast, Lila Crane and Sam Loomis, and Norman Bates’s taxidermy Owl. I want to give off this effect of importance in this poster for these side characters because even though Lila and Sam solve the mystery, they aren’t featured in the original poster at all. I also think that the owl adds a bit more of a spooky factor to it and is a fun little thing to put on the poster. I also think that having the title at the bottom is cool because it makes them feel like they are barely being held up.

When it comes to advertising this movie I think that I would go with a different approach then Alfred Hitchcock. First the trailer would be clips from the movie not him walking around the set. It would start off by hyping up how much money was on the line. Then we would go into a mad search with a bunch of characters questioning one another all leading to Marion’s scream at the end of the trailer.