Codes and Conventions of Film Posters

Film posters are another form of film promotion that tries to draw in their target audience before the film hits the screens. They have an artistic value and a lot of people buy film posters to put them on their walls, such as Audrey Hepburn’s ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ which is an iconic film poster known by many.

Iconography always make clear on film posters what type of genre the film belongs to, for example, if the film poster includes a weapon, dark lighting and so on, target audiences will be able to recognise the horror genre straight away.

Teaser posters are also used early on in the promotion process which is a poster that reveals an image, and does not reveal a lot of information. Also, if a film features A-List actors/ actresses, they are usually shown off on the teaser posters, without revealing the name of the film, which entices the fans of those celebrities to want to wait and find out the name of the film and when it will be released.

There are often a range of different film posters released just for one film, as it shows different aspects of the film. These posters sometimes may just feature an image, some will feature an image and the name of the film, and sometimes a range of characters are used. Although all the posters are all different, a similarity is always kept the same or feature similar images. A brilliant example for this would be ‘The Twilight Saga, Eclipse’ (below are just four of the many film posters that the ‘Twilight’ film makers have released!)

The image on a film poster will always reflect the narrative of the film that it is promoting.

The image and its background will always take up the entire poster and text will be placed over the visual, without covering up main visual parts of the poster.

Due to the fact that when looking at a film poster, our eyes go from the centre to the top, to the bottom and then side to side, image is always placed in the middle as this is what tends to draw the audience in. The name of the film and tag line is then placed at the top, the second place our eyes go, because it is one of the first places the audience will see. Important text such as the release date, actor’s names and the website is placed at the bottom so the audience will be able to take that information away with them, fresh in their minds as it is the last thing they will see.

Symbiotic links are also a comment convention of horror film posters, and film posters in general. These allow audiences to peice together the promotional methods (posters, trailers etc) and allows them to understand and recognise key elements about the film that they are wishing to go and view in the cinema.

It is important that the posters are not overcrowded with information and different images as it is hard to digest and difficult to read.

Studies show that you only have 11 seconds to grab the attention of your audience which may only give them the time to read and digest the title and the tagline. This means that both of these features must me punchy, simple and easy to read and understand.

Most film posters are read from about 8 ft away which means it is crucial to make the text legible.

Taglines are designed to grab attention and to promote the film. Taglines on a film poster must be short, catchy, enticing and memorable. They have to relate to the film in some way, or suggest its genre or tone. In some cases, films have one of more tag line but then some films do not feature any. Tag lines are usually placed somewhere near the title of the film and are written in simple font, both upper and lower case.

Another convention that we see when looking at film poster’s is that when the films bring out sequels, the posters all have something in common and there are similarities between them all. For example, The Saw sequels all feature a form of torture in their film posters. In each poster, the colours used are similar e.g. white and black with the occasional splash of red, to symbolise blood.