My Research On Film Posters

What Is A Film Poster?

A film Poster is a promotional sheet, page or image that is created alongside a film to advertise and create awareness for it. Often multiple styles of posters are created, some to be brought by fans others to be displayed in public areas.

Why Are They Made?

The main purpose of a film poster is to promote a oncoming film by flooding a possible audience with key aspects of the film.

How Do They Work?

Film Posters often use screen grabs or character shots from the film and display them in eye catching locations to quickly make viewers want to see the film.

Where Do We See Them?

We consume Film Posters regally in multiple locations and areas, but mainly they are displayed in areas of high traffic, more so, near the location of their target audience. Places like Cinemas, DVD shops, internet sites and on public areas like bus stops and billboards.

When Are They Released?

There is no set time for a Film Poster to be release but often they coincide with the launch of trailers or other promotional elements. The time period can vary from 1 month to 6 months before the films release date, this gives possible viewers lots of time to see the Film Posters and to gain "hype" over the film.

Who Are Film Posters Aimed At?

Film Posters are aimed at primarily the target audience of the film in which it promotes, this allows them to increase the number of consumers who go to see the film, the posters are also aimed at people who have already seen the film in after launch sales.

How Do Film Posters Help To Fill Cinemas?

Much like the Trailers , the main and most important reason why and how Film Posters attract people to the cinema is because they are designed to show off a films USP's (Unique Selling Point), for Film Posters the characters are often the USP which is displayed.

Finished Film Trailer

This is a link to our finished A2 Media Trailer, "Old Habits Die Hard". A hard hitting Social Realism about addition and working class struggles.


http://youtu.be/ZxR5VxbK31Q 

Issues While Filming & Editing

During our filming process for the trailer we ran into a few problems which we had to adapt our plan to get around. The problems ranged from actors to location but each we overcame to the best of our abilities.

With our actors the first main issue we accrued was illness, due to this many scenes were postponed till the following filming session as dialogue between characters couldn't be film. We got around this by rearranging our film schedule slightly so it wasn't a long term hindrance to our filming.

Another issue we faced was with our characters and their costumes, in order to portray a span of time we had the actors change clothes to show that it was in fact a different time, the problem we faced was due mainly to the characters profiles as finding suitable clothes which match their characters personality was difficult. By selecting clothing from ourselves and our actors however we managed to get a selection of clothing that we felt was suitable to each character.

On top of the obvious locational issues such as weather and lighting, which we avoided via weather forecasts before filming, the issue of wind was what most effected or filming, it degraded the sound quality and visible footage, we then re-filmed the poor scenes using wind blocks and microphones so that the quality was better.

The largest problem we had during the editing process was converting the footage, as the camera films and stores the clips into a format that is not compatible with the Macs we had to convert the files into Mac friendly formats, this was a major issue as it was very time consuming and lead to much wasted time waiting for it to finish converting.

Production Logo

 Luke and I decided to create our own production company in order to make our trailer and the seem more realistic. We decided on the name "Indi-Pendent Productions" as the film we are creating is a social realism with low budget and tech, meaning the company which would make it, much like "Working Title", would be a small independent company. The layout of the beginning section of the name "Indi" gives reference to the genre and more niche market the film belongs in.

 We picked the dark green colour to not only tie in further consistencies with the text in the trailer but to also connote to the audience the subject matter of the trailer subconsciously, we did this as we could avoid the excessive use of drugs within the trailer so the film would become more accessible to a larger audience.


Although not a key part of the trailer we believe that it is effective in achieve its aims as both a production logo and a subliminal connotation.