POSTER: Analysing conventions of film posters

The basic conventions of a film poster is the:

• Title


• Tag line


• Images


• Release date


• Age certificate


• Web site address.

But a good film poster is creative gives the viewer an idea of the storyline without giving it all away using design thinking making it appealing to the target audience. A good example of design thinking is when we where analysing a film poster called 'Against The Wall' the tag line was 'Art Or Crime?' The designer set the image up someone with a hoodie on and his face covered sitting on the floor back against a brick wall and off to the side is a large image of a spray can with a label on it reading 'hello my name is' then in graffiti style writing 'BRAZE' connecting back to the tag line 'Art Or Crime?'.

We then looked at titles like the devices that they use to make them interesting like a rhetorical question, puns, triple emphasis, contrasts, single words sentence and alliteration. We originally had 'Emotional Effects' as the film is about the effects of the attack on this young girl which are all emotional not really physical accept in her body language the way she moves and the way she dresses. The title later changed as it wasn't very interesting to 'Twisted' which is a lot harsher an grabs peoples attention.

The tag line needs to add a bit extra to the title to the audience a better idea of what the film is going to be about for example the tag line for 'Against The Wall' is 'Art Or Crime' which shows that the film is about graffiti and people's opinion of it, for 'Twisted' our poster we used a rhetorical question 'Is it just her?' to show the audience that not everything is as it seems within the film and almost daring them to watch and see if they can spot if it is.