My Media Presentation on the Codes and Conventions of Movie Posters

1. Codes and Conventions of Movie
Posters

2. What is a movie poster?
•
A movie poster is one of the main ways of advertising a movie and its release date.
A movie poster may be displayed inside or outside of a cinema in order to
advertise the movie and entice viewers.
•
Movie posters can also be displayed on billboards and on public transport so that
people will notice it at least once and perhaps consider going to see the movie.
•
A movie poster should include a masthead of the movie title, image(s) of the main
character(s), director and producer, production company, tagline, and the viewer
of the movie poster should be able to tell the genre and style of the film through
the movie poster.

3. Comedy Film Posters
Plain background
for characters to
stand out.
Character names,
enticing fans of
theirs to go and see
this film.
From the director of
‘Meet the parents’. This
informs this directors
fans the same director
has directed this film.
Images of the
characters,
conveying their
personality.
Masthead of
Movie title.
Billing block
Date of release.
Tagline from
movie.

4. Comedy Film Posters
•
•
•
•
This movie poster for ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ is
very plain and simple yet we can tell from the
poster it is off the comedy genre. The two
characters are placed in a position we can see
them both clearly. The top character shows
comedy within his facial expression as he has
wide eyes and looks as though he is laughing. The
bottom character has his head placed in his hand
suggesting that the top character is irritating him.
The title of the film is below the characters and is
contrasted in color in order for the viewer to be
attracted to the movie title.
The unique selling point for this comedy film
would be the image on this poster as it portrays
the movies genre.
The billing block at the bottom of this movie
poster is in white writing so it contrasts with the
black jacket the character is wearing.

5. Conventions found in all film
posters

6. General Features of the Comedy
Genre
• They will often have
a humorous tagline
from the main
movie.
• Comedy genre movie
posters will have a
comedic main image to
attract the viewers
attention.