The document discusses and analyzes several film posters, summarizing the key elements and symbolism used in each poster's design: 1) The poster for the film "Amour" features a close-up of a woman's face being held gently by a man, symbolizing the film's title of "Love" without revealing details of the plot. 2) The poster for "What Richard Did" features a mugshot-like photo of the main character which creates an unsettling feeling about him despite revealing nothing of the plot. 3) The "Hard Candy" poster shows a girl standing on a bear trap, using red colors and bait imagery to unexpectedly change perceptions about her role in the potentially

1. The film is called ‘Amour’, French for
‘Love’. The poster is very simple,
perhaps reflecting or contrasting the
films portrayal of this couples love for
each other and their life together. The
image shows a medium close up of
the woman's face, with an over the
shoulder shot of the man who is
holding the woman's face in his
hands. As any image that is on a film
poster is out of context, it is important
and conventional that the audience
are given a symbolic moment of the
film to look at or in this case a
visualisation of the title with the hands
on the face being a loving gesture. I
think that this is effective as it does
not give too much away and the
audience can be left to conjure up a
variety of subtexts from the image.
Another feature of the poster is the
addition of an awards logo above the
title; showing it is a very good film,
enticing an audience to watch it.

2. This film is called ‘What Richard Did’ and
presents a very simple poster which I
find to be extremely effective. The title of
the film first off leads to many questions.
As an audience we assume the boy in
the poster is Richard. I think the colours
of the poster are very significant, with the
saturation being very low and the neutral
colours used creating a very pure
effective which does in fact contrast with
the film. Again, at the top we have the
merits of the film, this time accompanied
by some film critics reviews to give faith
to the audience that this is a good film. I
think that this film is poster is effective as
it reveals nothing about what Richard did
however the mug-shot like photo and
direct address that the actor is making to
the audience gives us as an audience an
uneasy feel about the boy. There may be
more to him than we are presented with.

3. This film is called ‘Hard Candy’. This film
tackles the subject of paedophilia. We see
on the poster a girl who is assumed to be
quite young due to the hoodie and satchel,
conventionally teenager-like clothing. She
is standing on a bear trap which instantly
adds some form of shock to the audience
due to the nature of the weapon/device.
We see however, that the trap has not
closed despite the girl standing on the
trigger. This then leads to questions of the
girl being bait. The colour red that the girl
wears has the annotations of danger,
blood, warnings which could very much
change the perspective of the film is the
girl is in fact the antagonist. We are also
given a single quote which talks about the
intensity of the film. Underneath the title,
there are the details of the production
team, with a rating of ‘R’ at the bottom left
hand corner and the producers and
companies along the bottom line of the
poster.

4. The film ‘E.T.’ is a film by Steven Spielberg.
The poster consists of a full moon, taking
up the majority of the poster, a bicycle
flying across the skyline and silhouettes of
trees a the bottom. The tree silhouettes at
the bottom give perspective to the poster,
showing that the bicycle is very high.
Before the title, we are told that Spielberg
is the director and underneath the title of
‘E.T.’ we are given a slogan-like sentence
being ‘The Extra-Terrestrial In His
Adventures On Earth’. The poster
successfully combines both earth and
outer-space by having the natural trees
and the person on the bike backed by the
large picture of the moon and the night sky.
On this poster, there are no reviews or
recommendations; the director is the
selling point of this film.

5. This film is called ‘Perfume – The Story of
a Murder’. It has the silhouette of a
woman, gouged into with roses petals
pouring out and flying off. The gouge into
her symbolises the murder however the
petals can symbolise the ‘Perfume’ of the
film. The colour red here symbolises the
blood and the danger of the murderer. At
the top of the poster a tagline tells us that
this film is from the director of another
popular film. It is also revealed that the
film is based on the best selling novel.
Both of these statements give unique
selling points to the audience; opening up
the market to the people who may have
read the book or watched the directors
previous films.