Research on Film Posters

I will now analyse a few film posters especially into their technical conventions and characteristics. The purpose of a film poster is to advertise the product to the target audience, the poster tries to encourage the audience to view the film and the poster would be very much for the financial, commercial processes of the film such as incorporating third party endorsements to increase the products revenue being the core reason and purpose of the posters. These film posters appear in dense public areas to increase the amount of people that see the posters, this can include in the underground, on billboards, busses, newspapers anywhere that the advertisers can get a range of audiences or the target audience to see the poster. The more the film producers pay out for adverts in more forms of media will increase the amount of people that are aware of the film and a range of audiences using different forms of media. Film posters alert the audience to the genre and/or theme of the film and let the audience recognize popular actors/stars casted, with an indication of the plot or events, this could influence the audiences opinion of the film after seeing the poster and effect the audiences will to see the film.

A less contemporary poster which is more of a classic Hollywood mainstream film is the official star wars poster. I believe that this classic poster is a good example of the producer’s attempts to interest the 1977 audience into this new futuristic space theme. Similarly to the gladiator poster this film also has a tagline saying 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' this is to let the audience know a bit about the films theme. Next I have noticed that the majority of film posters have the main character or protagonist on the films poster, this is often done to alert the audience to the actors, if the audience likes the work of certain actors, these actors will influence whether the audience would like to see the film. From the background the audience infers future information about the theme or genre of the film from the spaceships, robots, and the bright ' futuristic' light. As we move down the poster we see the title of the film in its trademark font that has developed over the years, also used in the credits of the film, and below we can find the billing block that includes the actors, producers and third party corporations . However, I noticed this poster dedicates a lot of space for the billing block and less space for the title of the film to accompany room for the montage of pictures, this is not usual in contemporary posters, they usually have the title clearly visible and the billing block very small.


Over time the posters were merely to advertise a mainstream film that was 'coming soon' and the aim of the poster was to interest the viewer, and recently there has been an increase in the attention for the advertising market in film posters. This attention is causing the conventions of film posters to develop in order to sell the product more efficiently to the audience; one method of this is called specific audience advertising which is explained below.
For the most effective advertising in posters, producers create a range of specific audience posters designed to sell the film most efficiently by targeting different groups within the audience such as age or gender. For example two posters of the same film could be released with one poster having a pink backdrop that would be aimed at girls; the other would have a blue backdrop targeting boys.

A good example of this is by the producers of the Harry Potter posters:

This audience specific poster is aimed towards the young female audience by advertising the narrative of a possible fantasy based romantic theme that could be interesting for the fans once noticing the second protagonist from the trio in the background indicating a plot of romance. This can be supported by the 'lovely' pink lanterns shining above that wouldn’t be in another audience specific poster directed at or even the official release poster. This is the official film poster for ‘Harry Potter and the half blooded prince'. In this poster the 'Harry Potter' logo isn't even completely visible which is a different option, this is because of the familiarity with this franchise. I also noticed that in this official poster the release date is made clearly visible, a marketing technique.

In this more contemporary example of the official 'Gladiator' poster I have noticed a few things that the majority of other mainstream film posters share in common.
Starting from the top working down, I noticed a catchphrase from the film known as a tagline, or slogan that sums up part or the whole film to the audience. Between this tagline we have our main character Russell Crowe with a sword and roman armour with an extra diagetic gaze pictured at a low angle suggesting power, this extra diagetic gaze involves the character looking directly at the camera in order to engage the audiences. Secondly we can guess the theme of this film by the characters armour and the background where we can see part of the Collusium. Underneath we have the names of the director and the main character in appropriate style and font to the roman era and finally in much larger letters we see the title of the film 'Gladiator'. Underneath the title in the small print are producers, advertisers and other third party corporations.



From researching a range of existing mainstream film posters I believe I can clearly identify the technical conventions of a film poster. I have noticed that in all film posters semiotics are used, this is the messages or meanings we can understand from the film poster from looking at the signs, symbolism, written messages and visual images. This is how the producers of the poster allow the audience to quickly process a lot of information about the film from visual imagery in the short space of seconds that people will spend looking at the poster. For this reason advertisers consider all the visual imagery, colours, titles fonts and even layout with the aim to increase the chances that the people that see the poster will also go and see the film.

There are many codes within film posters. Technical codes are considered when producing a film poster and this includes the use in the construction of a text, e.g. if there is a tagline included or film title or billing block. There are film posters that do not have a tagline or even a visible title.
Secondly written codes are considered carefully, this is the range of contexts in which words are used in the text itself, e.g. the actual words themselves that create a tagline or title.
And finally the last codes are symbolic codes, these are the system of signs embedded within the poster in the forms of connotations of images, colours used and even the font style. All of the technical conventions of film posters have to be considered within technical, written and symbolic codes to make sure the right audience is being targeted and that the audience is making right inferences into the film poster and about the film.

Through extended film poster research the typical conventions of a film poster include:
Names of the main actors or popular stars.
A picture/s of the main actor or an iconic image that is linked to the film.
The film Title.
A tagline, slogan or caption about the film.
Background imagery.
The billing block.