This is by no means a perfect answer, but in order to get you thinking about what sort of things you can be writing when analysing a film poster in your exam, here is a short piece that I wrote under exam conditions on this poster for 'Inception', the forthcoming Chrisopher Nolan film which I am very excited about. Keyu-words which may be useful to you have been written in bold.-Mr. Brown
1. (a) Write an analysis of the Inception poster. Which aspects do you think could be improved?
You should comment on layout, use of images, text and colour.
The first thing that we notice when looking at the poster for Inception is that it is very dark – all the colours used come from a dark blue palette which carries the connotation that this will be a gritty, dark film which deals with serious themes. The only thing in the poster which stands out as not being a shade of blue, black or white is the title of the movie, which is written in a dark red, connoting danger.
Rather than simply give the name of the director, the designers of this poster have written ‘from the director of The Dark Knight’, choosing to embolden the title of that film. This is an interesting technique for giving us clues as to what to expect from this film, as the audience can assume that there will be a similar style of storytelling in ‘Inception’. We might also make the link that ‘The Dark Knight’ is a film about one man on a quest against evil, and the poster for ‘Inception’ also contains an image of one man, standing alone – so perhaps we can expect the film to be similar.
The designers have used the caption ‘your mind is the scene of the crime’ in the poster. The use of the word ‘your’ is a clever technique for capturing the attention of the person looking at the poster, as it implies that the audience is being spoken to directly.
Other than the title of the movie, the largest piece of text in the layout of this poster is the name of Leonardo Dicaprio. It is clearly important to the makers of this film that their audience knows that they have such a high-profile famous actor in their movie and so this is placed right at the top of the poster in a large white font. It is also interesting to notice that they have left more space between the letters of his name than any other text on the poster as an indicator that this actor is the most important reason to go see this film.
The phrase ‘Experience it Summer 2010 in IMAX’ at the bottom of this poster is also important, as a modern audience expects Summer to be the time when we have the release ‘Summer Blockbusters’ (big budget action films). We also, as with ‘The Dark Knight’, expect any particularly important action films to be released in iMax so it is important that this is mentioned.
The layout of this poster is very simple – one large image taking up the entire space of the poster with text placed at the top and bottom. The fact that this image is very dark is useful to the designers as it allows them to easily place white text over the top of it and have it stand out. The designers also help the text of their poster to stand out by using a sans-serif font, which is particularly useful for small chunks of text which need to be read easily.
The image used is very powerful and immediately hits upon some of the themes to be expected from this film. By denoting a man surrounded by large buildings, it makes him appear powerless and out of control. This is heightened by the fact that he is up to his knees in water, which would not usually be flowing through a city. We can also see clouds forming in the sky, suggesting that a storm might be coming. We also see that the man in the foreground is holding a gun.
The connotation of this is that ‘Inception’ is a film about one man’s struggle against powerful forces which are out of his control. It is unconventional to have our hero stood calmly in a smart suit however, as we would expect him to be in something more casual and to be looking more active.
