In recent years, the print material used for advertising a film often consists of more than one standard poster. Often a film has several posters which are used for promoting the film. Often these consist of individual ones of each of the star actors, if it is a Hollywood film with very famous actors and actresses in. I have decided to analyse the film posters for the movie 'Into the Woods' as it was a high budget film which contains many big names such as Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt and Anna Kendrick and subsequently there are many posters of individual characters.
This first posters is one which is the "main" poster used when promoting the film, this means it is the one which was used most in cinemas and on billboards to promote the film. I believe this has been chosen as it shows all of the main actors and characters on the poster as well as stating their names.
The first thing that stands out to me when looking at this poster is the title, it is placed in the center of the image and is fairly large, this means that is stands out and is the first thing to capture the audiences attention. It has also been placed in gold text which stands out against the dark colored images behind it. It has also been placed so that it does not overlap with any of the actors directly, this means that both the title and the actors are clearly visible for the audience and one does not detract from the other. Just above the title in a slightly smaller print is the production company of the film 'Disney'. It is placed in Disney's font instead of that of the title, but is also gold which makes it fit in with the other text on the poster. The production company title is a lot smaller than that of the main title but as it is still place in the center of the image it is still clearly visible and the audience will be able to notice it. They may have done this because Disney is an extremely well known media conglomerate and thus has a reputation for creating high quality, family friendly, movies. It not only attracts an audience who have watched other Disney movies and wish to watch this one but it also makes it clear who the target audience of the movie is, a family audience. The designers of the poster may have also done this because Disney is well known for working with some of the actors which appear within the movie, such as Johnny Depp, where he started in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise which is an extremely successful movie not only in terms of revenue but in popularity. People who enjoyed that movie will see the collaboration of company and actor and be led to believe that this movie will be just as good.
The names of all of the main actors and actresses, who also appear on the poster, are placed in the same gold coloured text at the top of the page, however in a slightly different font to the title. The names are also placed in capitalized letters which makes them stand out slightly more. Typically when a person looks at an image their eyes well start at the center of the image and then look up and down, by placing the names at the top they are subsequently the second thing the audience sees after the name of the film, this has also been done because when film posters are exhibited, the names are just above eye level of the average adult which makes them more eye catching. Although the names are large they do not detract from the overall image as they, much like the title, do not overlap with any of the images of the actors. This is something we will have to take into deep consideration when creating out own film poster.
The final bit of text which appears on the poster is the institutional information, placed in a white font, extremely small at the bottom of the page. This information is not meant to catch the audiences attention and is there for legal purposes and not to try to promote the film. The only bit of information which the creates of the poster want the audience to see is the release date which is placed in a slightly larger font at the bottom of this information. On our own poster I will probably make this text slightly larger than the information on this page because I feel like it could be easily missed as it is quite small on this specific poster.
The genre of the film is similar to the genre of our film, a fantasy film which contains elements which are darker and scarier. However, this specific film will contain less of the dark element of the genre because it is a family audience targeted film. The images therefore reflect the genre. Our own movie will be a 12 and therefore it will be allowed to be slightly more scary instead of a dimmed down version of horror. Another poster from the advising campaign for this movie is on the right above, this one only shows one of the characters. Both of the posters I have looked at so far have the same background of a dark wood containing lots of twisted trees (which connote horror as they are scary looking and are often used in horror films).
This poster contains all of the same titles as the first poster the only difference lays in the choice of images. There are different posters for each of the characters. A few of these are shown to the left. These images are combined in different ways to create the overall poster. These posters for individual characters do not contain all of the smaller writing or the names of the actors and actresses. These specific actor posters contain an enlarge picture of the character which dominates most of the image. They then contain a small version of the title of the film, not as big as the title on the poster containing all of the characters, but it is still eye catching as it is placed in the gold font which stands out against the dark gloomy background. The name of the actor which appears on the poster is placed above the title in a white font which again stands out against the gloomy background. Below the title is the time of release of the film, as this poster is one of the earlier ones it merely says "Christmas" instead of a specific date. Above the character is the name of the character for example the "Cinderella" poster contains the character name above her head. This makes it apparent which actor is playing which character. The font used is different from anything else used on any of the posters, it has a more handwriting effect. This may have been used to empathise that this is based on a written fairlytale.
These two separate character posters also have animated versions which appear online. Disney has done this to create something new and interesting and make the film stand out online from other standard posters. The movement consists of a slight shift in lighting and a movement of the fog which appears within the poster. These animated posters are something which is very new to the movie advertising business and is used mostly to make ones poster stand out from the norm.
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