Research (Ancillary Products): Poster

For my first ancillary product I will be choosing to make a poster of my short film.


Poster purpose?

The purpose of a film poster is to advertise an upcoming film release, this is done by producing awareness to the public about the film and is placed around popular areas of interest, to gain the most interest; in turn raising awareness for the release and therefore generates a hype for a target audience. The poster introduces the film cast and frequently uses direct advertisement in order to engage with the audience, making it easier for them to read it and gain as much valuable information as possible. A film poster provides a range of information about a films upcoming release including the name of the film and cinematic release date, as well as sometimes reviews of the film. These types of information help to attract an audience through naming popular A-list actors but also informs them about important information such as certification age as it will determine the suitability of the film. The graphics and pictures included in the poster, attractive audience to the poster quick and therefore gaining the most attention as possible and also letting the audience decide if they want to go and see the film or not. 

Poster conventions?

For my Ancillary products I have chosen to develop a film poster to go with my short film. To do this I need to get a feel for the conventions of film posters for my genre; by making this Presentation first to give the main majority of important conventions within a film (short) poster: 






Then, for more research into posters, I created this mood board for a more detailed view on how posters are shown and what they portray to the audience depending on the genre of the film.

This mood board gave me a sense of the generic features of a film poster for my genre. I also enjoyed how 'coming of age' film posters modified these conventions to attract a audience willing to watch the film. For example, 'The Cave', 'StaticHD' and 'World War Z' film posters all used a dark colour scheme to add a scary vibe to the audience watching it. All of the posters that I looked at varied typography, types of images and conventions to appeal to their target audiences.
As my film trailer portrays young boys as a big plot within the storyline, I have decided to represent both characters in my film poster. This mood board also shows me that I would need to use typography thats suits the 'mood' I want to present and that I need to use particular conventions such as release date and a star system to attract my target audience to wanting to watch it. In our film, the poster needs to represent a sense of vulnerability of how the back door has been left open, and how they are home alone without any adults to respond to their needs. From this mood board, I can picture my poster of the film to have relatively dark colours, contrary to the fact of it's quite a dark thriller horror, and also to represent the stalkers clothes being dark, both relatable and giving the audience a chill down their spine when they see the poster. This therefore will further attract the audience that is perfect to watch the short film.