The document discusses the author's research into film posters for both a professional feature film and a student short film project. The author analyzed several posters, including "The Dark Knight Rises", identifying common elements like the main character, film title, and production company credits. Most posters followed guidelines having the character in the center, background image, and text placements. The author then designed a poster for their student short film, applying what they learned. They created a template summarizing typical poster elements and concluded posters should look professional while adhering to these conventions.

1. Research – Film Posters
By Callum Mitchell

2. Initial thoughts.
Researching film posters was an exiting topic for me
due to the fact at this very moment I am in the
process of designing a poster for a professional film
so not only did I have to research posters and see
generic conventions for our media project but also I
had to do it for the professional feature film I am
designing for. Firstly I looked into a professional
feature film poster to see what that looks like. I had
a choice of a few different high quality successful
films but I chose a specific poster that I loved the
design of which was "The Dark Knight Rises". This
was the first poster that I analyzed.

3. First poster
This was the poster I analysed and straight
from the get go you can see that it is a well
designed poster and of high quality. I
decided to break the poster down further.
I found that the poster contains:
• A picture of the main character
• The main actors names
• The logo
• The film title
• A background image
• The release date
• The companies that created and
produced the film
• The main cast and crew involved
• A slogan

4. The next thing I wanted to do was look at these in detail. I looked at the poster and
analysed it from a graphic designers point of view and I decided to split it up into
three different parts (image above). First you have the subject of the poster. This is
often the main character. In this case it is 'Batman' this can also be maybe a logo or in
our case a lottery ticket. It can be anything that is the subject of the film but the point
is that that stays in the center of the poster as that is what the producers want you to
focus on. The importance of this is to make it stand out. The image is either
generated or just high quality because it is a focal point.

5. First poster thoughts.
I found that this professional poster followed a certain set
of guidelines and that everything is set out in a specific
order with the:
• Background
• Main character/subject
• Logo/film name
• Slogan/actors
I decided that I wanted to see if any other film posters
followed these similar guidelines. I wanted to look into
the different types of films including short films and low
budget films.

6. Second poster
The second poster I looked into was a
short film poster, just one I found off
Google. I didn’t want to do any research
into the short film but just analyse the
poster.
Again, this poster contained:
• A picture of the main character
• The logo
• The film title
• A background image
• The companies that created and
produced the film
• The main cast and crew involved
• A slogan

7. Text at the top again telling you what the
film is. The text itself doesn’t really have
much relevance but it’s the positioning it
what matters.
The main character (or supposedly) is in the
center of the image again for something to
focus on.
Again there is a background image, setting
the scene of the film and giving it a colour
foundation.
There is the title of the film (name) to tell
you what the film is and shows the logo and
style of the film designs.
The generic cast and crew display in the
same way as they are displayed In all the
other film posters. They all have this
presented in the same way.
Finally the website is displayed which I
haven’t seen on the feature films however
the short films kind of need to for the
publicity.

8. Third poster
After speaking to the director, I decided
to go ahead and make the poster for
the short film I am designing for. I came
up with this poster and it does have
similar aspects to the other poster that
I have researched however we don’t
have a main character focus. This is
because we didn’t have an image that
wasn’t blurry so we had to make do
with what we had so I decided to blur
out the whole background. This doesn’t
mean there isn’t a focus point to the
poster as there is the roman helmet
however in terms of designing there
isn’t an official focus of the poster. That
being said, we do have the other things
featured such as the generic cast and
the title.

9. Fourth Poster
For the final poster analysis I decided to
look at the film poster we made last
year and compare it to the existing
professional posters I have already
looked into. Bearing in mind before this
poster was created, we hadn’t
researched anything.
Our poster contains:
• A main focal point
• The logo
• The film title
• A background image
• The companies that created and
produced the film
• The main cast and crew involved

10. Post-research thoughts
After a lot of research I have come to
the conclusion that most film posters
have similar rules and guidelines to
follow. I have developed a diagram
which I feel that is a template for all
film posters to follow. This diagram is
based on my research into film posters.
Each poster should have some quote on
the top or slogan of some kind and then
has a main focus point in the center of
the poster, the title of the film and the
cast and crew involved in the film. All
this should be set out in the similar way
and must look professional. Personally I
think that in our film poster we should
abide by these rules and follow the
rules of posters and the diagram I have
created.

11. Extra research
I then decided to do some further research into posters however these posters are a
bit different. I stumbled across a website recently that was really interesting in terms
of graphic design. The website publishes designs and designers takes on different
designs. I found a page that had many clever graphically based takes on movie posters.
The only problem with these is the fact that they are mainly art based rather than
computer graphics. I really like some of these adaptions of feature film posters and I
feel that it might be interesting to maybe make a version of our film poster in this style
to see how it looks.