Research - Film Posters

As part of my media project I have to create a film magazine front cover and I have to create a film poster, I am going to start with the film poster as this looks the most fun and is something different. I am going to start by doing some research into film poster to see the typical codes and conventions behind them.

'The Expendables 2'

I have started by looking at the film poster for the film ‘The Expendable 2’ this is a big Hollywood blockbuster film that has lots of big name actors appearing in the film, this seems to be one of the main points that the distribution company are trying to get across to the audience as they have the names of each of the actors and pictures of each and every one of them. Having seen the film and not entirely liking the film I can to the assumption that the main idea of the film was to get as many big name actors in the film as they were able to and then just give a basic story line that is typical of an action movie, this theme seems to have been carried across to the poster as the image isn't all that powerful as it is just shots of each of the actors with an explosion in the background, this poster doesn't appeal to me and the only reason that they want the people to go and see the film is because of the actors within it.

  

As you can see it does have to typical codes and conventions that are typical of a film poster, these are: the title, the tagline of the film, main photo – the main focus of the poster, the names of the main actors along the top, the names of the supporting actors at the bottom and the release date of the film. I am going to need to think of these when it comes to producing my own film poster. I also like the fact that this poster is landscape rather than portrait.

'Unknown'

This film poster is entirely different from the first, although it has a very well-known actor and is playing off the fact that this is the actors typical role within films, it is still very powerful. It is because of the actor involved that the poster is able to be very bare, with just the powerful shot of the actor, Liam Neeson. This film poster is not displaying the names of every actor or actress involved in the film because it is mainly focussing on the story rather than just the actors and actresses involved. This film poster is very minimalistic which means that the codes and conventions that are in the poster are relied on entirely to make the poster meaning that they need to be very powerful and I believe that this poster has achieved this.

 After looking at both of the film posters, there are things that I like about both, the first poster is very packed and gets all of the codes and conventions onto the poster meaning that the fact that the image isn't one of much power it is still getting the audience enticed through a different mean, in this case the high profiled actors. The second film poster for the film ‘Unknown’ is different entirely and is very minimalistic, I like the image as it conveys the film very well in the fact that just from that one shot the audience is able to tell the genre of the film.