Ancillary Task (Film Poster)

Research

Before we create a poster for our groups short I am going to research other films posters and bisect them to see their conventions and styles. I will be attempting to answer the same few questions for each different movie poster, the questions include:

• What elements exist in each poster?
• Where are specific elements positioned? 
• Do the fonts used reflect the genre or narrative of the film? If so, how? 
• How are specific elements used to attract target audiences? 

 The first film poster I have looked at is a poster for The Shawshank Redemption, here is one of the posters used  below:

 
This is the simplest poster produced for the film and shows Tim Robbins character Andy Dufresne in an edited shot caputred from the film. This is not know if you havent seen the film but whilst watching the film you would recognise the poster. This poster has 6 main elements, I shall go through each from top to bottom. The first elemet at the top is whats called the "Tag line" this is a snappy, whitty line best explained by Wikipeida as "The concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a product (like a film), or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product. This films story has strong message of hope and what hope (and the lack of) can do to people. So the tag line cleverly uses the words like a metaphore but also has the double meaning because the film is also set in a prison. So the tag line is very succsesful in what they used to achive becuase I think it sums up the whole film in short and with multipule meanings. The second element is the picutre used, the piciture is taken from the fill but has an effect that has raised the contrast and excentuated the rain. The pose the man is in resebles something religious which attracts a target audeinece of people who are religious. The next and thrid element is the top billed cast which is above the name of the film implying that it is more important but the size and colour of the font makes it look less sagnificant that the actual film name, then below the names of the actors is the film title. This is in a thin font whitch is normally hard to see from a distance but becuase the background is so dark and the text is light creamy white is stands out very well furthermore the word Shawshank is larger than all other text on the poster showing its importance. The fith and panulitimate element is all the main people envolved in making and producuing the film. this part of any film poster is a legal requirement and is a good way for the people behind the scenees to get regconized for their work. Then the last element is the relese date, in this poster they simply say this fall instead of an acutaul date. I am also considering the order that these elements come in. I most western cultures people read fron left to right and top to bottom. When making out poster we shall consider this like the makers of this poster have. The tag line and centre image gets us intrested, then we regonise the famous actors in the film that add more intrest thenn we are told the name so we can find out more about the film and how to see it and finally we are told when its out so we can look forward to seeing it. The fonts used are simple and look like they have a hand written style and when in a prison the only way any inmates could record infomation is by writing it down, its not possible for them to type or used a computer so the simple fon tthat looks hand written but still clear works well to give an insight to the film. Here are some other posters for the same film 

            

This version of the poster loses the tag line but adds a review and adds photos of the main charicters.
For our film poster we plan to do something more like the bottom poster with the charicters names and pictures side by side on the poster and have the film title centered like in these but at the top instead.