Planning and Research Stage
What are the Conventions of a poster?
The conventions of a poster are easy to see and differ from genre to genre, for example an action film will most likely have an explosion in the background or a weapon of some sort with the titles instantly grabbing your attention, whilst a romantic film will have a picture of the main characters hugging each other with bold titles in pastel colours such as blues or pinks.
Here I have created a small list of conventions which are used in film posters.
1) A large title: This will attract the attention of anyone who sees the poster, it also has to stand out so that the publics eyes are drawn to it.
2) Bold colours: These are used to justify your chosen genre, for example I wouldn't use bright colours for a horror movie such as Friday the 13th it would not suit the film Bold colours are needed to stand out from the background.
3) A Picture from the film: This is essential for anyone who creates a film poster to use, because the picture is a snap shot from your film or a summary of your film in a subtle way and also shows who stars in the film, if you don't recognise the name's of the actors.
4) Use of Persuasive language: This will persuade the viewers of the poster to go and watch the film, normally a catchy phrase from the film will tempt the viewer to go, such as Batman's catch phrase in the new film "To conquer fear you must become fear".
5) Names: The use of the characters name or directors name alone will convince the audience to watch the film, for example people used to watch film's if a famous director directed the film such as Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg.
6) Certificate and Authorisation: At the bottom of the film poster it is vital that the creator of the film poster puts the certificate of the film, for example 15, so you only get the people you are aiming at to watch this film, also who was in association with the company who created this film, such as Universal Studios.
Examples of Existing Posters
This is an example of a film poster. This particular poster is a cinema poster which doesn't include the actors names or who was in association with the film company who made this film.
This film poster is taken from 'The Avangers'.
This poster is bold and eye catching and uses 'The Avengers' colours to good effect, these are blue and silver.
In this poster the name is huge advertisement because it is a long established comic book name that has been brought up-to-date and made modern to appeal to a new generation of audience.
This in an action film because of the explosions in the background and the weapon that the woman is holding also Captain America is in the background, who is an icon for Marvel and helps promote the film.
Below is another poster, the difference in this poster to the one above is that this poster includes who the film was in association with.
This film poster is taken from the film 'Predators'
There are several differences that I can see when I compare it to 'The Avengers' Cinema Poster. For example the promotional phrase for the film is located at the top of the poster 'Fear is Born' suggesting to me that someone is about to face their greatest fear. I believe that this person who is about to face their fears is the male at the front of the poster.
A similarity between the two posters is that the picture takes up the entire poster which is a common feature of all posters and is an important one, because without this picture nobody knows what the film is about.
This is a horror/thriller and the reason why I know this is because of the dark colours that are used and the scary image at the back of the poster depicts to me as if this creature is creeping up behind the male and is trying to kill him. There are also three dots coming out of his head, which look like lasers for a gun or some kind of weapon. Also the title shows to me its a horror/thriller because it is in a silver colour which is worn down and made to look animistic and savage, all most like a jungle scene.
I have used a software called Adobe Photoshop Cs4 which is used to create film posters and give tutiorials which guides you in using the software as easily as possible.
Finally at the bottom of the poster there are all of the important association writings which tells the viewer who directed, produced, starred in and who helped create this film.
I have used Photoshop cs4 to create this poster, because it's excellent for editing and merging images to create a new product all together.
I will take on board a few of these common features when I am creating my film poster for Binary Productions film 'A Passion Of A Bleeding Rose'.
This is Binary Productions first draft film poster. You can see it has blood red colours and the words 'Bleeding Rose' in a bright blood red text in order to emphasise the fact that it is about death, which is why we have used a rose, because a rose is a symbol of love and death.
This is a draft version of our film poster 'Passion Of A Bleeding Rose', we have added a publicity phrase at the top of the poster 'Just keep calm and Carry on', this phrase is important to the film because Rose has taught Chris all of beliefs in England and wants her son, Chris, to know this.
Planning of our new Poster
We have completely changed the idea of our first poster and have started to construct a better poster which points out the main themes of our film short 'Passion Of A Bleeding Rose'
We started off by taking an ariel photograph of a circular dinner table on a green screen which we editing out in Photoshop by lacing a run around on the image. The themes on this table are the rose's which represent love and death in the film, the shattered dinner plate and the un-shattered dinner plate to represent a relation which once was fine then broken because the plate are fragile and so are relationships and family.
We have added a plain black background and beginning to add the title of the film in the same style and font as represented in the film and our films tag line which was 'She was a THORN in his side'.
Finally we have added the convention of text at the bottom of the poster telling the audience who is in the film and who directed and produced the film including the film company names such as 'THX' and 'Adobe' film.
Final Film Poster
This is our final film poster.
To create the information at the bottom of this poster we used a font called steel tongs, this is used in every poster created, only the professional film posters have a lot more information because of the amount of people it take to develop and create a movie.
