My A2 Media powerpoint examining the codes and conventions for thriller movie posters.

1. Codes and
Conventions for
Thriller Movie
Posters
By Sam Burgess

2. • One of the ancillary tasks is
to create a poster for the
film. Film posters are a
form of advertisement for
movies. However unlike
film trailers, posters are
physical items, so they can
be placed almost
anywhere.
• The most common places
these posters are found are:
along the side of buses, in
magazines, on billboards, and
inside cinemas themselves.

3. Research
• Posters are designed very differently. To have an
understanding of what codes and conventions the genre
and posters usually have, I researched 9 different thriller
(as I plan to create a thriller trailer) movie posters. The 9
posters I looked at were:

4. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

5. The Untouchables (1987)

6. Pulp Fiction (1994)

7. Seven (1995)

8. The Usual Suspects (1995)

9. Memento (2000)

10. The Dark Knight (2008)

11. Inception (2010)

12. Gone Girl (2014)

13. Protagonist
The lead of each film stands in the
foreground and in the centre of every
poster, on most of them their character
takes up the most amount of space.
This is to draw your attention to who
the protagonist of the film will be.

14. Tag line
• 7 of the 9 posters incorporate a
tag line, the tag line is a
convention used to increase
excitement. Advertisers also
aim to create a tag line that the
audience will remember easily.
So whenever they think of the
phrase, they will think of the
movie.

15. Text
• 8 of the 9 include the lead actor’s
name in bold, if the actor is well
recognised the studio are likely to
use their name to sell the movie.
Also the marketing team are likely
to copy the title’s font and use it
for the actor’s names.
• This also applies to directors that
are “big”.

16. Colour
• Almost all the posters use black,
some use it to create a dark
mood, others use it to emphasize
the brighter parts of the poster.
Every poster’s title is created in a
colour which is completely
opposite the colour of the
background. Making the title of
the film stand out is essential to a
film poster.

17. Image
• The most important aspect of
a film poster is the main
image. The image will use up
most of the space on the
poster, so the designers need
to make it very interesting.
• Some posters incorporate the
theme of the film into their
image.