The Deprived – Film PosterFor the Planning and production of my Film poster I did a lot of research into existing film posters in order to create a conventional product. I aimed to incorporate much of my research into my own idea as this would help me reach a higher level of quality, and a more effective overall product.

I began by analysing Posters that shared a common theme with my movie narrative and began researching into their codes and conventions such as colour schemes, layouts, and even common camera angles and shots. I then applied these into the planning and creation of my own product to capture the audiences attention and produce a poster that follows codes of similar genre poster. At the same time challenging certain aspects to make it innovative, and leave the audience intrigued, and asking questions, making it an even more effective promotional tool.

Inspirational posters These two posters promoting one of my groups biggest inspirational films, The Road , I found where the ones that inspired my piece the most. I liked the idea of having a faceless character on the poster, which adds to the code of enigma of the narrative, I was intrigued by this challenge of convention and wanted to use it in my own poster. So I decided to base my own idea largely on the structure of the bottom image, with the protagonist walking away from the camera. Although, apart from the main image, I did not take much more from these posters as my further inspiration, like colour scheme, layout and multi platform links came from other promotional devices.

Further InspirationSimilar to the road in genre and certain themes is The

Book of Eli. In both the road posters and in the Book of Eli they clearly represent a post-apocalyptic world, with essences of destruction, decay and degradation which are seen in the backgrounds to give some narrative of the poster. I needed to replicate this but to a slightly different narrative. The two show a world that has been eradicated, where as I wanted mine to show the themes of nature, and how when the world of men destroys themselves, nature will slowly retake its place. I did this by having my main image in a rural location with a dilapidated house in the background, and to remove this from the nuclear theme I included trees and birds, to show other than human the rest of the world is in a relative state of norm, following the human downfall into chaos.

This poster in particular influenced my placing of the texts on the page, for example it shows the title overlapping the body of Eli, which otherwise would be just dead space, and also it does not cover up any large details, which is what I tried, and successfully achieved in my own poster, only covering up dead spaces and no key imagery.

How does my product challenge conventions

of real media products?

I think in my product there are a few areas in particular where I have challenged conventions of real media products. For example, in the posters I researched like The Road colour is not used to give the idea and feel of hopelessness and death, but in mine I felt that by changing the shade of the sky from a light grey to a faded purple/red it would enhance the themes of blood and death further. Also can be seen as a use of pathetic fallacy, representing an mood or theme in the weather, or in my terms, representing death and blood in the sky., as it is looming over the character and the rest of human kind.

Another area is the way I have represented my main image and the character, he is seen facing away from the camera giving a greater sense of enigma to the narrative leaving the audience asking important questions and giving possible hints to later narratives and themes.( E.g. the map) Another possibly more subtle but still non conventional is the placing of the title. As it is not centralised, it does not abide by the vast majority of posters I have looked at, as I wanted to, like the book of Eli did, fill in only the areas of space that would not compromise any other details of the poster.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I believe I have planned and created an effective promotional

poster that both conforms to codes and conventions but also in areas challenges

forms to allow my product to be imaginative and individual among most similar genre posters. I have used and

developed conventions to fit in and bide by my own narrative and themes, to

which I think I have done successfully and overall I am very pleased with the

outcome.