In this session, we looked at movie posters and their techniques in getting an audience’s attention. For example, They use scaling, framing, negative space also known as black space and holding devices. I will explain briefly what they mean.

POSTER TECHNIQUES

Scaling: Usually the most important character or element is shown at a larger scale or size than the rest of the elements or characters featured.

Framing: This is when things are grouped using positioning, lines or colour to make things stand out and be eye-catching to the audience. Also, using camera techniques & angles, low = power and scale high = no power and small

Black-Space: This is also referred to as negative space, where your eye is not to be drawn to. Blank spaces on the poster make you look for something interesting to look at to draw you into it. This is used a lot in horror posters.

Holding Devices: These are shapes on the poster that have other elements in them too, for example, a white moon shape with a boy riding a bicycle inside it (ET poster) The shape is often familiar to the film, series etc.

GRAPHIC TECHNIQUES

Fonts: There is a custom font often used in posters for the blurb, tagline and legal information at the bottom of the poster this is called Universal Accreditation. The fonts used in posters are important so that they can be easily read and draw attention.

Colour: Colour use in a poster is very important it sets the mood of the viewer and draws attention to things it can also give an impression of what the content of the movie series will be like, for example, a horror film poster would most probably be dark colours and a feel-good movie would perhaps have bright colours.

Rule Of Thirds: This is when the poster is split into 3 segments to attract the viewer’s attention to these areas. A horizontal and vertical line will split the poster into 4, the golden ratio 4 sections to observe.

Eyeliners & Expressions: The expression of a character on a poster is very important as it reflects the mood of that person and also their emotion, they could be smiling showing happiness or looking sad by having a blank expression. If two people are at eye level on a poster they could be portraying conflict, a person looking up high could be showing a courageous side and someone with a very large expression could be showing power.

FANTASY CONVENTIONS

Colours: Usually have bright colours in them, highly saturated with colour to attract attention.

Synergy: Traditional ideas, a struggle between two sides good versus bad.

Iconography: images involving magic, medieval-era, a protagonist that is easily noticeable, a good poster design that tells you a lot without any words.

Younger Target, Older Appeal: Appeals to a younger genre that love fantasy and also to older fans but is appealing to a new audience. A good example would be The Golden Compass movie poster.

In groups, we dissected a movie poster and looked at its techniques in getting an audience.

left is our work (I wrote the text at the top) and right is what we have to do:

Keyword: Star Power: using celebrities in advertising

We could improve on the task by having more time such as having an extra 5 minutes as we only had 25 minutes to do the task and we did it pretty late.

I learnt that I would never be able to look at a movie poster the same way again as I would be looking at all the details and graphical techniques they used and analysing each poster as I do so.

Font for bottom bands in posters – Universal Accreditation. This font is normally used in all posters and media as it is easy to read font and is of high quality. It is amazing how much effort they put into posters to make them look amazing and eye-catching.

This lesson was very interesting for me and it has taught me to look deeper at posters and also to look for hidden Easter eggs.

My 30-minute poster:

Here is my poster that I designed as an idea for the brief.  I have made it bright in colour, I have used the flames for this, this is to draw attention to the poster. I have tried to frame the poster using the flames drawing the eyes of the viewer to the two swords crossing in the centre. The rest of the poster is black as this part is not intended to show anything, this is the negative black space.

The poster above for John Wick 2 depicts Keanu Reeves as the main character and he is in the middle of the poster framed by lots of hands with guns, he looks like a wanted man. All the colours are dark which suggests this is an action/crime film aimed at young adults. Scaling shows the main character is important in the film. His expression shows an element of vengeance.