Movie Poster Reflection

The Conventions of a film Poster

There are many items within a film poster that occur in many posters, however some a very individual and do not follow the trend for example the King Kong poster does not follow any of the trends. However the conventions of a film Poster tend to be:

1.    Initially there will be a large masthead which willl be the centre point of the poster and my aim is to make it as vivid and eyecatching as possible.   
2.    You may then have the actor’s names as if the audience know who is in the film they may like a certain actor’s films and it may make them want to see that film.
3.    A poster may also have quotes from the film which depict the action so the audience has an idea of what will occur.
4.    Every poster has a large image or images from the film or a still image to give the audience an idea of who stars in the film and the majority give them an idea of what the film is about and the genre of the film. The image tends to be the centre piece of the poster and it is there to catch the eye of the audience.
5.    The majority of the film posters will have credits on the bottom of the page which will include names of the producers directors etc as with the actors the audience may be led towards a famous persons films for example Stephen Spielberg.
6.    The films may also have their web address so that the audience are able to have a look at the trailer of the film online.
7.    The posters will also have the small icons of all the added parts of the film for example the sound editors may be Dolby stereo or it may be ORION pictures (as shown below are examples)
8.   The poster may also feature the release date to give the audience the date at which they can first see the film.
9.   They may also contain the awards that the film has already won.

Movie poster Reflection

     Below are some of the posters that i looked at to give me an idea of what i should aim to make my poster look like they are all of the horror genre and have the one main charecter featured in most but not all therefore giving me the potential idea of not using the charecters at all.

 

    

     
As can be seen above all these posters have different coventions and are very different in terms of the images and what they portray. I feel that for my poster i can use these posters to my advantage and incorporate some of the conventions however the images are very iconic and have a lasting effect on the audiences memory and therefore it will be key that i create an image which will have a similar effect but obviously may not be on the same scale as these shown above.

Before carrying out the process of making the movie poster I carried out some work to indentify the conventions of a film poster which involved identifying what the common factors of a film poster are. I then took this into account and drew up a sketch of what I would like the poster to be like this included all aspects including the small icons which are in the film for example Dolby stereo. i liked the look of the friday 13th movie poster as features below as it is easy to identify the genre as soon as you see it. When I had created this on paper I opened a Photoshop page and opened an A3 size blank sheet to work on.

I then first made the title “FLASHBACK” I made this size 142pt font and used Lucida Fax font for the title with the colour orange with yellow drop shadows to give the effect of the fire which was going to place towards the end of the film however this is a hidden issue that the audience will not know from the trailer.

Following this I set a background, I chose plain grey to be the colour as one of the last shots we see is of the man walking into the darkness therefore black depicts this appropriately. However I later decided that incorporating fire to the poster would indicate that a fire may take place at some point and give the potential audience something else to think about rather than just murders and typical horror movie scenes.

When I had set the background and title the next main issue was to find an image, I felt that a still image from the film would be the best option and therefore I used the most powerful image which is that of the murderer’s eyes staring back at the audience so that the poster catches the audience’s eye.

The bulk of the poster contains a line associated to the film, so I this case I used “ONE MAN GOES BACK TO PASTURES OLD, BUT IS NOT ALONE” as I thought this captured what happened in the film significantly. This was size 24pt font with lucida fax font in the colour orange. I chose orange as like with my magazine cover everything to do with the film is in orange so that the audience recognises it and so that it stands out from the rest of the text. Orange is a good depicter of fire and with the fire being the hidden issue in the film I thought using orange would maybe make the audience wonder why it was orange and not a typical horror font such as red.

I then created the credits at the end naming all the producers directors names etc I used Niagara Engraved as this was a straight font which is similar to that which is used in most of the film posters, I made sure to include all the people’s names who are mentioned the most on the other film covers on mine.

Finally I added the web address so that the audience could read up on the film if they were interested this was also size 24 font and lucida fax font.

Once the large scale pieces had been done I added the advertisements at the bottom for the sound and pictures who had created the film as this was a typical convention on most of the film posters. These are placed right at the bottom of the page and are very small as they are insignificant to the film that is being promoted.

I followed the convention of many of the film posters by incorporating ratings which would be given by the leading newspapers in the UK so that it gave the poster a professional outlook and represented a film poster in every sense.

For my image I used a class mate as my model to look like a potential murderer I made him wear a mask that may be associated with a horror character so that his facial expressions weren’t that of a typical human and it made him look more like he was about to commit murder rather than looking like an innocent school boy. I used freddie cruger as someone to base my charecter around however with the little money available to create a proper charecter it was very hard to do so therefore i looked at using masks with ragegd clothing to somewhat resemble the picture illustated below.

For my poster i used the image that is shown below however on photoshop i edited this image so it made the mask look alot more realistic and makes it stand out to the audience i made the blood marks bolder and made the creases in the facial pattern alot darker so they stood out i also darkened the jacket so that the zip could not be seen therefore with the darker jacket peices of the face stood out even more to the audience making it even more appropriate and making it that bit more realistic adding to the scariness of the face.

When reviewing my poster i found that when i printed it, the print cropped some of the page due to dimensions and to ovade this i had to move everything that was being cropped in slightly. This didnt have a great affect on the overall outlook just caused a small hinderance while trying to finalise small peices of the poster.