The Alpine Stalker
Brand identity · Poster Design · Generative AI
Project Overview
This project stemmed from an assignment that required the use of generative AI to create a scary movie trailer sequence. I created The Alpine Stalker, centered around a classic setup: an isolated cabin at night, watched by something in the tree line before it ever shows itself, paired with a fast-paced, scary vibe throughout. I committed fully to a late-80s/early-90s slasher aesthetic, then packaged it as a modern streaming release, like a lost VHS-era slasher film. AI use was limited to one specific role in the pipeline, which was the video aspect.
Design Overview
The piece runs on warm-versus-cool contrast: a cold navy forest and sky against warm amber light spilling from the cabin windows, inviting, but also exposing the cabin as the only visible thing in the dark.
The low camera angle looks up through the trees, putting the viewer in the position of the watcher rather than the watched; no characters are shown, so the threat is built entirely through framing and light. The title uses a glowing red display type styled after hand-painted VHS box art, paired with a quieter serif tagline, the classic loud-title, quiet-tagline split of '80s and '90s slasher posters. Modern elements (Netflix bar, festival laurels) are left untouched, which is what sells the "contemporary release, retro aesthetic" idea.
My Process
Ideation: The Alpine Stalker reinterprets a familiar horror setup, an isolated cabin watched by something unseen, through a late-80s/early-90s slasher lens, packaged as a present-day streaming release.
Research: Reference was pulled from era-specific slasher and cabin-horror marketing: warm/cool lighting for safety-versus-threat, glowing neon-red titles, and the low-angle "watched from the trees" composition.
Sketching: Early exploration locked in the navy-forest-versus-amber-window contrast, a low angle framing the viewer as the watcher, and a glowing red title paired with a quieter serif tagline.
Fine-tuning: Genmo was the only AI tool used, exclusively for the raw video clips. Editing, color grading, sound design/SFX, and VFX were all done by hand, unifying the footage and poster into one VHS-era campaign.