Movie Posters Continued...

 As with the covers, I answered questions on posters as well. This was additional poster research, and like the magazine cover, this helped me understand posters, their features & how to lay out my own poster. 

The film poster which I think is the most effective is the ‘Dead Silence’ poster. I think it’s effective because it not only does it use the conventional features of a movie poster, but it uses them in non-conventional way like the others. For example, the text is not just a sans serif font coloured red, but it’s a stylised font, with an effect the makes it look eerie and emphasises the genre of the film. The image used is effective as it draws the audience’s eyes to the center of the poster, the eyes of the ‘puppet’ are looking straight at you, therefore it’s engaging with the audience and gives the audience an idea to what type of horror this film could focus on. The colour of the slogan is conventional as it’s red, which denotes danger, blood and death, which then links back to what is said; ‘YOU SCREAM. YOU DIE.’ The font is also a sans serif font which makes it easier to read which suggests they want people to read it.

Finally the dark background is effect as it gives the poster an element of mystery, especially because you can’t see all of the ‘puppet’ only the bow, top of the collar, face and finger, which suggests these are the key areas which need to be focused on.

Jurassic Park: The most outstanding feature of this poster is the logo. It’s the first thing you see when you first look at it, and is in the trailer and the beginning of the film. It clearly shows what the film will involve, and connotes many things; red background links to the red skies in the Jurassic era, trees at the bottom link to the ‘park’ and the silhouette of a T-Rex skeleton further cements our understanding. It really stands out from the background and I love the font used, it fits the film perfectly.

Silence of the Lambs: For this poster, I think the most outstanding feature is the image, particularly the contrast between the red eyes and the white face and the bug. Both are made clear, which suggests to me that both are more important than the face seeing as the face isn't clear. Because of this I am drawn to the bug and the red eyes, rather than the title.

Dead Silence: For this poster, I think there are two outstanding features, the first being the image and the contrast between the creepy doll and the zombie looking hand, the second being the title & font used. But if I had to choose I would say the title. This is because I think the effects used are outstanding and really effective. It really gives the poster that edge and really shows clearly, the genre of the film. It is also made clear by the dark background, so it jumps out  even more, and the ghostly look relates to the synopsis which states that; ‘Every town as a ghost story…’

Avatar: Finally, the most outstanding feature for the Avatar poster is the colour scheme. There is only one main colour used, and that is blue. All the other posters have different colours, whereas Avatar uses different shades of the one colour, this could be due to the fact that the creatures in the film are blue, and that the one shown on the poster is also blue, which then makes their eye stand out as it’s a light green/ yellow. The title is white with a blue glow around it.

I would change the Avatar poster, but not the rest. Purely because I feel this is the weakest poster as it does not have many of the conventional features of a poster. I would probably add a release date so that people would know when it comes out, billing block with information about the film and a slogan. I have noticed that there is a website in the bottom corner which has more information on the film, and that could be the reason why they decided not to put the main information on the poster, but I feel that the purpose of a poster is to give information about films and is a key part in the advertising of films. This is why I don’t feel the need to change the others as they have enough information for the audience.

Dead Silence & Silence of the Lambs: These are both horror movies, albeit different types of horror, and both use the same colour scheme; red, white & black. This aids the viewer’s understanding about the film as they would have seen horror posters before, and would associate these colours to horror films, for example if they have seen the poster for SAW they would recognise these colours on these two posters, and therefore recognise this as horror. This could also be evident in the fact that Dead Silence was written, directed and produced by the same team that did SAW.

Jurassic Park: The colour scheme for this poster aids the viewer’s understanding of the film as red represents the danger behind the dinosaurs, black represents mystery and power which could link to the strength and power of the dinosaurs, and orange represents energy, fascination, determination. So from these representations people would get the sense that it’s an adventure, thriller and energetic film.

Avatar: The colour scheme of the poster for Avatar is mainly blue & black. Blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, seriousness, trust & loyalty and black represents power & mystery. It could also be perceived as an alien colour and therefore viewers would get the impression that this might be a sci-fi/fantasy film. The representations of the two colours could also aid in their understanding.

Out of all of the posters I have only seen Avatar. The poster does match the film as the creature on the poster is one of the main characters in the film, and also the colour representations sum up the film well, the font is very alien-y and the colours match the surroundings in the film as well as the genre.