Initial Research Into Film Posters - Michael

The Godfather

This is a teaser poster for the film The Godfather.

The poster does not include much detail as the film would have been greatly anticipated, so the poster only has the title of the film and a silhouette of the character playing the role, most likely because we all know the character. The poster shows little apart from the title, the silhouette and a puppeteer hand over the word “Godfather;” this hints at the fact that he is in charge.

The poster is very minimalist and very different to a lot of posters, even other teaser posters,  as this has no tagline. The poster stands out because of the absence of things going on so that your eye is drawn towards the emptiness and creates an atmospheres very similar to the actual film. Another reason this teaser poster works is that it is bold, that it doesn’t need any information about the film and this sense of confidence also connects to the film and mystery. One of the small bits of information on this poster, is that is produced by paramount and the name of the famous actor “Marlon Brando”. This uses the absence of information as a part of its advertisement and seems very focused on power.

I would like our poster to be dark and simple as well. I think as we are saying our film is based on a best-selling novel, we need to reflect the fact that a lot of our audience will have prior knowledge. Films in our action thriller genre are often famous as much for their style as what happens (Bond is a good example) and our poster needs to hint at a distinctive style, as this one does.

The Muppets

 

This is a teaser poster for the film The Muppets.

This poster is an extreme close up of the face of the iconic frog (Kermit) from the franchise posed  in a recognisable fashion. The image is very clear with a white background so that the character stands out. The poster only needs to show a small part of his face as the character is very popular for a lot of people and doesn’t need any context as people will know who the character is from their knowledge of pop culture even if they can’t remember the name. 

There is no tagline for this poster, but the focus on the frog is to remind people about the character who hasn’t been used in a while. They also had similar posters of the other characters from the franchise in teaser posters showing only small parts of their faces. This is a tongue-in-cheek, almost parody approach that works well with the subversive humour of the show. The poster includes the title of the film which, due to the popularity of the original show, is all they need. This shows that the producers are aware of the popularity of the characters and didn’t feel that much more was needed to get the audience attention.  The final thing they added to the poster was “in theatres Thanksgiving” which suggests a rough date for release. It is common to release a film expected to attract a big family audience over a public holiday so parents can take their children as a holiday treat.

 

Obviously, this poster is way outside our genre but is still useful to look at because it shows what you can do when a poster reflects a film that has an established audience. Even though it is a children's film it reflects how minmalist and simple oyu can be when the film is known and anticiapted.

 

Lara Croft Tomb Raider

 

This is a theatrical poster for the film Lara Croft

 

In this poster we can see an ancient tomb style wall in the background. The main image is of the main character (Lara Croft) carrying two pistols. You can see the title of the film stand out and it is now recognisable to many people, including fans of the video games, comics and other mediums that this franchise uses. The poster uses a long shot which captures most of the characters so is a “long shot” also they decided to use a low angle which gives “Lara Croft” a sense of status to go with her expression of anger or annoyance. The colours are dark blues and blacks which create a sense of danger with only her face lit so that we focus on it.

 

The main character on this poster is recognisable from two sides which brings together too audiences firstly people who were mostly fans of the video games will recognise the character, the other group will be people who are fans of the actor Angelina Jolie who is an international celebrity, so is most like to have a large following that will want to see her play her latest role. The genre can be guessed more easily due aspects of the image e.g you can see weapons, so you can expect a lot of action. Her character’s figure is dark apart from her face so that the dark theme is suggested but people will still know that “Angelina Jolie” is in the film as they want as many people aware of that as she is probably more popular than the franchise.  The actress is wearing more revealing clothing which suggests that this film will have a more male focused audience like the game version, and is also why they have chosen an attractive actress.

 

This poster, unlike the teaser posters, includes credits of the actors, directors and producers etc. This is very small as its main job is to make the poster and film look more professional and isn’t really there to be read. The poster is actually quite simple not much action is taking place although the guns suggest an action film. Again, this is adding to my impression that we can take quite a simple, stylish, minimal approach to our poster. We need a key image, probably the main actor, and to let the name of the film do most of the work.