conventions of a poster

Actor’s names

On a film poster the main actors name will be in a medium font. Often if the actor is very well know it may show it bigger and the other actors names will be around it in a smaller font. This helps to promote that if the audience likes this actor then they may indeed enjoy the film. If the actors have never been heard of it may say something like “from the upcoming actor…” this manipulates the audience to believe that they have good actors as it says upcoming it tricks the audience to believe that the film is worth watching as it has a new actor in.

Picture (iconography)

Often on a thriller poster we can see that the colours are dulled down to create a dampened mysterious mood. The pictures tend to hold the main actor and/or the place that the film is set.

Billing block

The billing block is always located at the bottom portion of the poster. The font that is used is called a highly condensed typeface and this is where the height of the text is often 3 times bigger than the width and is normally 25 or 35 the percentage of the height of the title of the film. It generally contains the credits that you would normally get at the end of the film so things like the producers, directors and people like the makeup artists etc. generally the information that is needed in the billing block is a lot and this is why a condensed typefaces because it allows all the information to be added.

Audience suitability

The audience suitability is often found in the billing block and this is just the age restrictions that have been put on the film, so this is PG, 12a, 15 or 18. Most thrillers are of 12a or over but normally fall into the 15/18 bracket.

Promotion

This is often is the director of the producers have done a previous success film they will claim off the fame of that that film had produced and hope that the target audience will fall for the fact that if they enjoyed that previous film they may enjoy this film. The poster would say something like “from the makers of…” or “from the producer of…” this helps to get the word out to a greater target audience.

The poster could also have references to a big selling book or novel. For example the twilight series is a bestselling book that was made into a film, therefor the posters had “from the bestselling book series by Stephenie Meyer”.