Poster Analysis

Batman Begins Poster Analysis.

This Dark Knight poster is an advertising tool for The Dark Knight film. The title of the film is not the main focus on the poster, the batman figure is. This shows that the target audience for the poster are people who already know what the film is called, so-called 'hard-core' batman fans. The poster also used star appeal to attract new fans, by using names like 'Heath Ledger', 'Morgan Freeman' and 'Christian Bale' it is basically saying that the film is going to be good, as it attracted such huge actors to star in it. The tag line of the film is very mysterious. It is almost used just to tie the film into the thriller genre, without giving anything away about the film or exactly what it is about. It also creates questions centred around the film, such as 'why is it a world with no rules?' The positioning of the tag line makes it one of the main focuses of the poster,to give the poster some sort of solid background to make it a bit easier for people to understand. The image of the huge building with the batman logo burning into it suggests that batman has made this mess, and is just walking away from it, which again will have audiences asking questions. Also, the way the photo is shot, like a high angled shot, shows that batman is powerful. All the credits in the bottom are almost unreadable, like in most thriller posters. This is because most people don't want to read them, but they are there to tell people who the directors and producers etc  are. This is because some people will want to watch the film  because of who directed it. The release date at the bottom is there in bold, to make people aware of when they can see the film!

The Stangers Poster Analysis 

This thriller poster conforms to the thriller genre quite well. It uses dark colours and writing to mirror the unpleasent atmosphere in the film. The dark lighting emphasises many peoples fear of the unknown, which will attract people who enjoy the feeling of being scared. The light being on the people who are obviously 'the strangers' with the masks on, which drawers viewers attention to them. The tag line 'because you were home' is something all viewers can relate too.
The stars are again shown just above the title to attacts their fans, and the title is written in white to stand out against the deep colours of the background photo. The photograph is obviously an image taken especially for the trailer, not a still from the film.

Inception Poster Analysis

The Inception poster contains stills of most of the characters, placed in all different directions which really mirrors the style of the film, without giving anything away about the story, it doesn't conform with usual thriller genre posters as it is instantly confusing and seems to play mind games. Having the characters dressed in suits, makes the whole thing even more weird, as it is something so normal, placed in such a weird place. The whole poster fits into the 'something  extraordinary, somewhere ordinary' convention of a thriller film. The poster markets the film well, as its main focus is star appeal. Having Leonardo DiCaprio's name spread across the top of the poster shows that he is a huge part in the film, as well as attracting his fans to come and watch the film. The films tag line ' your mind is the scene of the crime' really involves each individual in the audience, which will attract them as well as really confuse them, which is the whole purpose of the film. The title in huge red writing has connotations of danger and anger. It also makes it a huge focus in the film because the red stands out on top of the quite dark background images. 'From the director of the dark knight' is placed under the title, to show the films status and attract the Dark Knight fans. There is no release date on this poster, which could mean it is a teaser poster, but the amount of information on the poster doesn't really fit into the 'teaser poster' category. 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Poster Analysis

This poster is a teaser poster for the new The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo film. The poster is very simplistic in that the whole thing is in black and white, with the release date almost stamped across the centre of the image. The only other information about the film is the tag line, and the website written in the corner. The tag line 'Evil shall with evil be expelled.' is really hard to understand which makes it seem like the producers want you to watch the film to understand what is going on in the teaser poster.  The way Daniel Craig (star appeal) has his hand round her could be seen in many ways - it could be some sort of embrace, or he could've caught her, or even be trying to strangle her inconspicuously.

Seven Poster Analysis

This poster mainly uses star appeal to promote this film. The use of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freemans names and faces will instantly attract audiences before they even know what the film is about. The use of the seven deadly sins down the centre of the poster gives an idea of what the film is centred around, alongside the title and the tag line 'seven deadly sins. Seven ways to die'. The title in red instantly gives connotations of blood, anger and danger, which backs up the tag line. The fact that the poster has a review on shows that it was released after the film was completed and the previews were shown. On this poster there seems to be no mention of the director, which is strange because David Fincher is such a huge director, his name alone would attract an audience for the film.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Promotional Package

• speech in the trailer - due to it being the theatrical version, placed onto of the constant music
• Quick cuts and fades to black to add effect
• Music is loud and is used to build suspense
• The trailer appears to be Linear
• Doesn't give much away about the film, leaves a lot for the audience to question.
• Keeps going back to the same shot of the road, looks really effective - especially at the end where you are shown the house.
• The costumes they are wearing are relevant to the characters they are playing, for example, detectives in suits. 

Black Swan Marketing Campaign

Black Swan is an American thriller film, released on the 21st January 2010 in the UK. It is high buget film (estimated at around $13,000,000) which raked in $106,952,327 gross profit.

The first poster from the films release uses a marketing 'still'.

The poster is used to market the film. At the bottom there is a list of who was involved in the making of the film, the producers, the actors and the credits the film has recieved - like it was selected for opening night of the venice film festival. This all shows that the film is obviously good, due to the credits it had recieved and the 'star appeal' above the title. The poster is eye catching and different to most film posters, as it is simplistic in that it is just Natalie Portmans face, it gives nothing away about the content or context of the film. This is a strong initial poster for a film release just to raise awareness that the film is being released because it will be remebered by audiences.

Black Swan Trailer

• Credits look effective, with the awards they've received, adds to audience appeal.
• Fades to black, look effective
• The beginning shot sets the scene of the trailer. Also it's longer than the others which looks good
• The editing almost appears to be jumpy as it speeds up, which reflects the film
• The trailer as a whole seems disorientated.
• As the trailer moves along, she begins to unfold, from being a ballerina at the beginning to her with red eyes at the end
• Some of the shots are put in to confuse audiences, without context of whats actually going on
• Star appeal is used at the end, to persuade audiences.
• Costumes are used to accentuate characters and their role in the film, they are very significant in this film, i.e White Swan and Black Swan indicates the difference in Nina's personality.

Breaking Dawn Trailer - Analysis

• Starts off linear - easier to understand
• Quick shots and fades to back look effective
• Titles fit in with the promotional package
• Music is used to build suspense and fits in with how the clips change
• The whole trailer build up and then settles towards the end before the title scene - looks effective
• No speech is used - just music
• Close up shots of faces etc are used a lot, which looks really effective
• "is only the beginning" is attention grabbing

Location Map

This is a map of one of our filiming locations - the home to which Carl and Ellie move to. Here you can see which rooms are the bedrooms and from this diagram we can choose where to shoot which shots and how to work out the shots of the police car on the driveway. 

Horne and Corden

This is the sort of shot we want to use for when Carl sees Oli. We like this because in the trailer the audience will not know if Oli is actually there or not, creating questions that the audience will want answered, which will mean that they will want to go and watch our film!

Practise Shots

We used today's lesson to choose the types of shot we would be using in our trailer. We each had seperate ideas, including a camera being held while Oli was running, filming Oli run from behind or just filming parts of Oli running. After filming all three and uploading them to the mac, we decided that this was our favourite and it looks most effective. This is because it looks very disjointed and mysterious while showing just what the audience need to see in a trailer.The fact that you can't tell that it is Oli thats running adds tension to quite a simplistic shot, which is exactly what a trailer needs.

These are photo's of us practasing our film shots, you can see here us trying to show Carl seeing Oli in the window, but viewing this shot in the photograph has shown us that this won't work, and we have looked at an example of the sort of shot we want to use, which is a shot from the BBC three comedy series 'Horne and Corden'.

Teaser Trailers

A 'teaser' campaign is an advertising campaign which consists of smaller advertisements that anticipate the larger film release advertising campaign, so a teaser trailer is a shorter trailer designed to anticipate the actual trailer, before the films released. They are usually only made for high-budget films and their main purpose is to inform audiences that the film is coming and the 'add to the hype' of the films release. They are often made while the film is still in production which can mean that they use versions of scenes that are not in the finished film. Some films (mainly pixar) use scenes that are only created for the trailer. Films such as 'The Da Vinci Code' released their teaser trailer before the film had begun shooting.Often, teaser trailers are only created for internet downloads, which often targets a films main target audience. 

Theatrical Trailers have a totally different purpose. They are created to attract an audience to the film, so they usually use the most exciting and funny scenes without producing spoilers. The scenes are not necessarily used in the order in which they appear in the feature film,  to create 

Marketing a film

There are three distinct area's of marketing a film: advertising; publicity and promotional deals. When making a film, producers put aside an overall marketing budget, which is considered in terms of return on ticket sales weighed against the costs.


A trailer is a short advert for a film put together by the distributors. It will usually comprise extracts from the movie in question with an added voice-over designed to sell the film. A shorter version of the trailer is released sometime before the film is due out is known as a 'teaser trailer'.


Trailers are a  significant marketing tool in the release of a film which are often released several weeks before the actual film release date to raise awareness of the film in question and get the films target audience interested in watching the film. They are normally previewed at cinemas first before a few are released for television viewing. For franchise films, like Harry Potter, a series of trailers are released towards the release date to gain huge interest in their already developed fan base and build anticipation. 


Posters are a primary medium for advertising a film comprising the central image that will also feature heavily in the publicity campaign. The main poster for a film concides with the release date, but there are often 'teaser' posters released with the trailers to further build the anticipation. Often, distributors release a third poster with comments from critics added, again to further their ticket sales. All of the posters released have a unifying features to make them instantly recognizable as part of the same campaign, but the posters style often varies according to where they are placed, for example a poster placed on a motorway will be much more simplified and eye catching than a poster in a a magazine, where people viewing the poster have much more time to read information about the film itself.