Research into Film Posters

Film posters are used to advertise a specific film, they normally include text or/and a image. Nowadays they often contain photographs of the main actors. Whereas prior to the 1990s they often contained illustrations instead of photos. The writing on a film poster usually contains the name of the film in big, stand-out lettering, it may also include: characters names, a tag line, the release date and the directors name.

Film posters are commonly found inside and outside cinemas and also on the street or in shops. The same image can also appear in newspapers or magazines, on the internet, as a flyer or in DVD casings.

A teaser poster is a promotional poster that aims to not give away many details to the plot, theme or characters. The main reason for the teaser poster is to grab the attention of the audience and generate hype about the film, and a tagline is often included.

Here are some teaser posters that I gained inspiration from for my film poster:

In this poster I liked the colour scheme as it highlighted strong bright colours, in comparison to a dark background. This is how my poster needs to look whether the colours were light again dark or vice versa.

I liked this poster as it has inspired me to have an eye catching image on the front that will give a clear outline of what the film is about and the style of genre it is.

This film poster is clearly directed at sci-fi fans due to the view of the globe and a robotic eye in the background, the audience can gather this impression without even having to look up or know anything about "Transformers" as a whole. With this in mind I have a clear idea of how my poster needs to look in terms of fitting the look of a psychological thriller, and the audience need to be clear on this even at a slight glance at the poster, this will be effective advertising if I achieve this and it will vastly increase the "hype" around my short film.