Download and read the script here:
Poster Analysis
A poster is produced with the intention of drawing in and selling the premise of a film to an audience. It attempts to appeal to its target audience through the use of design conventions, taking into account factors such as the qualities of the audience, the genre, and age rating. Genre especially influences choices when it comes to typography and usage of colour.
I have created a poster in an attempt to do this for my short script produced for the summer project. The film itself is a Western set at the peak of the old west, titled ‘Wanted Man’. It follows three characters who are not what they seem, as they share space sat around a campfire in the mountains isolated from civilisation. Over the course of the film the men become increasingly suspicious of one another causing the atmosphere to be like a powder keg about to explode.
The poster is aimed at fans of the western genre as a whole, though many of the design inspirations came from classic westerns from the 1950s and 60s, so it could be argued that it is aimed at the audience of those films more specifically. The western like many other genres has been present for a long period of time and so over the course of that period has had different generations of audiences. However, there are more similarities than differences between these generations. All of these audiences will expect certain qualities from this genre including tense duels, crime, a representation of good and bad, and everything ugly in between.
As mentioned many design choices were based upon existing classic western posters. Primarily, a lot of the iconography of the genre is transferable to each generation, audiences will recognise wide brim hats, revolvers, and horses as images synonymous with the western. To not include said iconography would do a disservice to oneself when representing said type of film.
For the choice of typography I wanted it to look like it had been painted and was slowly chipping away. This was to obtain an appearance of what looked like painted or printed text similar to a wanted poster from the old west, aligning with the themes of the law and criminals presented in the film. Additionally, the pieces of text are scaled to correspond with how important they are, largest being most important and vice versa. This is because the eye will be drawn to what it can see clearly, so the key information like the title, release date, tagline and primary cast credits must be displayed this way. Other aspects such as the billing block and other credits are simply present for legal reasons not to sell the film, so they are smaller in comparison. The tagline is especially important as it conveys the mystery of the story, as the audience begin to question who the characters really are and what their motives could be. This being the main theme of the narrative.
The colour choices also take inspiration from classic posters with their warm tones. However, unlike said posters in which these represent the tones and shades of the desert setting, Wanted Man takes place in the cold mountains of Colorado, so in fact represent something else. The short story chiefly takes place around a campfire, so the orange hues and tones represent, very simply, the setting. This is intended to subvert the audiences expectations of this being yet another western set in a desert, so when they come to watch the film they are pleasantly surprised by the choice of location.
In terms of representation there is very little diversity however this is relative to the film as there are only three characters. There are a variety of ages represented but gender and race is limited due to the story taking influence from classic westerns which were also not particularly diverse. In terms of how the characters are displayed I tried to portray their level of importance to the narrative through the way they are scaled, similarly to the text.
Overall, I think my poster was predominantly successful in what I was aiming for. It pays homage to the posters of old whilst still maintaining a modern quality and keeping the mystery of the narrative exactly that. However, that isn’t to say it is without flaw this largely being the way the text is laid out. The space often looks flat and the text is most likely the cause of this as more images would make the poster look cluttered. I think the audience would see the poster and perhaps feel it looks rigid and sterile unlike a western which is expected to be gritty and free of order, so they may feel this does not represent the type of film they would like to see. Other than that I would still say it could do the job of a poster effectively as not all audiences, especially younger ones, would be so judging as they have less nostalgia for the older films.
Comments