Film Poster Research

A film poster is a means of advertising a film by designing a poster that illustrates the theme, background, characters, title and release date of a film. A successful film poster needs to persuade an audience to watch the film, as well as informing an audience when and where they can watch a film.

A conventional theme that is used in almost all film posters is the text at the bottom of the poster. The text gives details on the cast, production and distribution companies that were involved with the film. The font used in this piece of text is called 'Steel Tongs'

It is also conventional for film posters to have a slogan / tag line. Tag lines should be like a marketing pitch to an audience, persuading them to watch the film.

'Your mind is the scene of the crime' subtely gives away hints of the film's storyline to the audience, as well as showing the genre of the film. I also think it hooks the audience into wanting to know more about the film.
Another important aspect of this film poster is that it states some of the director's previous work. Because of this, its suggesting that fans of Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' could like 'Inception'

Before the age of digital design, film posters were often constructed with illustrations of artist's interpretations of the film. Saul Bass' work is a notable example of this. As well as title sequence design, he also designed film posters.


Saul Bass' film poster for Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' is designed well because it looks strange and eccentric.

I liked this film poster because of how the numbers / code forms the picture of Gary Oldman, I think it links to the conventions of espionage / spy thriller films. It also uses conventional cast listing that most film posters use. In addition to this, the tag line states that the film is based on a classic novel. This helps to persuade the audience to watch the film because the book was good, suggesting that the film would be good as well.