Influences on film posters

We have started doing some research into many crime and action film posters and found that most film posters had similar elements in terms of costumes and props used. From this, we were significantly intrigued by the layout of the posters as the main character(s) are outlined very superior and/or important on the basis of the scale of the image shown. We analysed specific film posters (most of which are our trailer influences), and have reproduced the film posters to our own film poster to help analyse key concepts and potentials of each poster. We then evaluated reasons why these film posters have influenced us in any form of aspects such as text, layout, colours used, costume, props, effects and scaling. Finally, we then decided which film poster is our most favourite and explain why we decided to choose it.

1)

 

The poster of 'The Godfather II' has a black background layout. Only Robert De Niro (main character) fades into the black background where there is a bright yellow tone around Rover De Niro's image. The use of a bright yellow tone produces a warming effect and accentuates Robert De Niro's power and importance involved in the film. This idea of bright colours clashing against a dark dull black background can be used to highlight the significance of characters involved in our film which would effectively ensure the audience is aware of such indication. 

On the bottom right corner, there is a negative effect of other characters involved in the film which can represent a feeling of mystery as well as goodness. The shade of black can be considered as a negative connotation such as death and violence, but at the same time, elegance and authority. The shade of white/grey can be associated with coolness and innocence of the characters, which can therefore result in mixed indications and/or thoughts among the audience as to whether these characters are either 'villains' or 'heroic' characters. This suggests that the film will stimulate a very imaginative response from the audience. 

The concept of having characters in the bottom right can be useful for our film poster as it can help the audience establish the relevance of our film title 'Only The Family'. The large scaling of Robert De Niro (our main character in our case) compared to the other images and text can also help the audience determine the concept of  control our main character has over his group membership, which is referred as 'his men' (family). 

The costume of suit outfits was a major aspect of emphasizing the genre and theme of the film in which we believe to follow. 

The text used in this film poser was not necessarily inviting, as we thought that the cross symbol and hand had obviously some relation to The Godfather film but would strongly have no purpose to use it for our own film poster.

2)

From the film poster of 'Mean Streets', we liked the concept of the streets inside the gun as it clearly relates to the title of the film. Yet again, we found that the film poster had a black background, which near enough has the same purpose of the Godfather's film poster of negative connotation of death and violence. The word 'mean' from the title is clearly represented by the use of a gun and the word 'streets' are illustrated within the area of the gun as it could imply that this certain location is highly involved in the storyline of the film and adds the impression that all the dirt (killing) appears to happen in the location shown. This illustration was extremely convincing and we thought we could apply this idea to our own film poster as shown in our sketch of the film poster. We thought we could use this idea by adding the main character on the top of the gun to emphasise his domineering position in the hierarchy of his group membership. We also added the members of the group memberships at the bottom of the gun who are also crime syndicates. The whole effectiveness of this is to mainly indicate their power in the group membership and that they're controlled by the main character who is near the top of the gun. This would also be relevant towards our film poster as it can relate to our film title of 'Only the Family'.

The colour red is the colour of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, danger, power, strength and desire. The use of red can also hint the genre and film of the film poster which can stereotypically be either a horror/thriller/crime/action film. This also makes text and images to the foreground which increases audience awareness.

With text, we liked the style and layout of the font used as it seems to be bold and strong in which we are aiming for our own film poster. However, we thought that the credits used was pretty limited and narrow where we decided that this aspect of the film poster would not be replicated in our own film poster.

Overall, we thought that this film poster isn't particularly ideal for our own film poster as it we would want to reveal our main characters and imply more of their class and status through the use of costume. The idea of having a map of streets in a gun was actually a clever illustration considering the title was mean street and it can relate to each other very strongly, but it would be extremely difficult for us to reproduce this in the form of 'Only the Family' in a gun due to the complexity of interpretations. The word 'only' would be very difficult for us to illustrate in our film poster.

We also believed that the film poster was generally simplistic and concise which does not meet our preference.


3)

With 'Goodfellas', we thought that this film had a interesting layout as it also uses a black background where we have a shot of the main characters standing beside each other. The characters costume is the same where their black suit camouflages with the background meaning the white shirt is more definable. We like the use of costume of characters as it allows the audience to establish their role in the film as well as the genre of the film.  We liked the layout of the credits on the bottom which is something that we are more looking for as we believe it looks more professional. 

As Reservoir Dogs was a key influence for our film trailer we decided to do elaborative research on their film posters. We looked at a range of their films posters and analysed them:

4)

We thought that this version wasn't distinctive as it appeared to look more like a magazine cover. The layout and template of the text seemed more of a magazine cover. However, we thought that blood effect was pretty impressive despite that it would look more realistic with a darker shade of red. We also didn't like the idea of having the character holding the gun in that specific angle and the characters facial expression as it didn't appear to look serious and we wanted our poster to seem prestige and look elegant.

5)

We really liked this style of the reservoir dog poster in terms of the style and layout of the text. We liked the use of font as this seems to have the characteristic's of class and elegance. It looks professional and the use of both colours (white and red) accentuates the genre of the film, as mentioned earlier, the theme of red is associated with blood and violence. Also the costume of a black and white suit and sunglasses is a classical outfit for classy men and a hitman. This would therefore be easier for the audience to establish that this would involve crime and effectively notice the genre of the film. We also like the fact how the text size vary with a few words.

A problem with this film poster is that we didn't really like the concept of the warhol effect used. This is because we thought it took away the realism and removes the serious expressions of the main character. We want express our main character as humorless and an important man and therefore this expression can be flawed by not showing the main characters features (just like The Godfather 2 poster). 

6)

We liked the whole of idea of the division of all four main characters where they all wear the same costumes which demonstrates their status and coolness. This idea of all wearing sunglasses and black and white suit can be applied to our film poster as it can easily relate to our film title of 'Only The Family'. We also liked the font style used in this poster as it looks bold and strong. The four characters applied onto the title also looked prominent, in which we thought will look great in our film poster. 

On a general perspective, we thought that the film poster seemed a bit plain and lacked some essentials of a film poster. It also had a weird touch as it used bright colours such as yellow, pink and orange which somehow does make it standout but doesn't suit the film poster in any way in terms of genre. 

7)

We thought that this film poster was eye-catching to some extent. We thought that it was a bit more different to all the others as it uses a long shot of the four main characters. This therefore reveals the characters costume to a much bigger scale in which allows the characters to express their body gesture. In doing so, this therefore allows the characters to represent themselves as gangsters and walk in a cool manner in which would be suitable for the audience to identify the idea behind the film. 

The blood splatter in the background was personally poor as we thought it wasn't as good as film poster 4. Also the font style for the phrase on the bottom and title wasn't as good as film poster 5 as it appears to look more suitable for comedy or romantic films.