Analysis of film posters

Film posters have been used in the advertising of films since the earliest public exhibitions of films, and since then they have been fighting for our attention. Film posters have to be noticable enough to catch our attention, if only for a split second. They need to grab our attention, then hold it long enough for us to digest the information they contain. Graphic designers are constantly working to make the most noticable, most eye catching, and most attention holding poster. Film posters can be seen wherever we are - buses, magazines, billboards etc, it is hard to escape them, but the majority may not even register with us, despite the amount of money spent on them. Thousands and millions of pounds are spent on film posters, with, according to the OCR Media Studies textbook, 50% of the money pumped into a production going on promotion rather what is seen on screen.

I am going to look at 2 different film posters advertising thrillers and analyse them in order to discover how different companies advertise and attract their target audience.

Firstly I chose to analyse the film poster for the 1960 Hitchcock classic - 'Psycho'.

The poster is quite attention grabbing; only using a few colours - blue, yellow, red, black and white makes it stand out and draws attention. Obviously these colours have been picked for a reason, as red connotes feelings of anger, danger, passion, masculinity and power. In this poster the colour red is used to tint the males, which gives a suggestion of the image that Hitchcock will put across to his audience in the film. The graphic designer has chosen to tint the female and title in the poster as yellow, which connotes feminity, dishonesty, cowardice, hope and deceit, which straight away suggests how Hitchcock intends to portray females and his film in general to the public. It should also be noted that studies have shown that a yellow and red cloth enrages animals, which can suggest even further the ideas that will be shown in the movie. The blue background suggests truth, peace, harmony, strength, and calmness. It is obvious here that the film will cover up these feelings, just like in the poster, and replace them with much more negative feelings - those that red and yellow connote.

The characters shown in the poster are also used to attract audiences to the film. This is clear because the woman is shown as a clear femme fatale; wearing only underwear, but still looking attractive to the male audience. On the other hand, a male character is also shown without a top on, which is used to attract the female audience, and also to act as a role model and someone to connect to for the males.

The layout of the poster uses photos which look roughly cut and stuck down, which can reflect the uncertain and confusing narrative viewers of the film will be faced with. This layout also uses diagonals to attract and draw attention to the poster, and the point of the picture of the woman points downwards, highlighting the director's name.

The writing used on the poster is large, white, thin font, which gives the impression that it is modern (which it would have been at the time the posters would have been used). The font used for the title, 'Pyscho', is in capitals, is bold and yellow in colour, and looks as if it has been ripped and then stuck back together. This draws alot of attention to the title, and helps it to stick in our minds.

The other film poster I am going to analyse is the poster used to advertise "Wanted", a British thriller directed by Bekmambetov.

Straight away the audience's eyes are drawn in towards the guns, which are highlighted by the lighting, and symbolise death, anger, power and masculinity. The guns look modern which also gives us an idea of the kind of era the film will be set in. It should also be noted that, in the foreground, it is a woman who is holding the gun, which, especially with her tattoos, make her seem alot more masculine but still enables her to have the danger aspect which makes her similar to femme fatales; typical of thriller films. Looking closely at her tattoos, we can see "XIII", roman numerals for 13, which can be linked to North American gang culture, where members of the white supremacist gang, the Aryan Circle, use "13" as their symbol. The fact that she has the word "tear" written boldly on her arm could also link back to American gang culture, where tears are drawn to represent the number of people a person has killed. The word also obviously makes links to unhappiness. Her other tattoo is of different patterns of the numbers 0 and 1, which suggests it could be written in binary code, again linking to the modernism that will be expected to be seen in this film.

Despite seeing the woman in the foreground looking maculine and strong in her powerful stance, we can see behind her a man holding two guns; one pointing towards her and one pointing in our direction. This suggests that the man still holds more power than the female character. The background for the two characters is flat land below, making them seem superior to everyone below on the ground. It also makes them seem stronger and kind of Godly ; looking down on the world, with laws not applying to them. The whole poster is tinted with yellow, meaning the two colours are primarily yellow and black. The yellow aspect connotes hazards, intelligence, dishonesty, greed deceit and death. The colour yellow also used to be used to symbolise the devil. The black within the photo adds feelings of modernity, power, mystery, evil, death, unhappiness and unarchism, which can be reflected in the ideas that the poster suggests.

The font used to advertise the film is big, bold, sans serif, and a similar shade of yellow to the colour used on the poster. It easily grabs attention and the word, "wanted", sticks in our minds. The only other script used on the poster is in the same style as the title and simply tells us the date the film comes out.

By looking at these two film posters I have learnt how graphic designers intend to catch our attention, and how much these posters really tell the audience about the films.