Codes and Conventions of Movie Posters

What is a movie poster?• A movie poster is one of the main ways of advertising a movie and its release date.

A movie poster may be displayed inside or outside of a cinema in order to advertise the movie and entice viewers.

• Movie posters can also be displayed on billboards and on public transport so that people will notice it at least once and perhaps consider going to see the movie.

• A movie poster should include a masthead of the movie title, image(s) of the main character(s), director and producer, production company, tagline, and the viewer of the movie poster should be able to tell the genre and style of the film through the movie poster.

Comedy Film PostersCharacter names, enticing fans of theirs to go and see this film.

Images of the characters, conveying their personality.

Masthead of Movie title.

From the director of ‘Meet the parents’. This informs this directors fans the same director has directed this film.

Billing blockTagline from movie.

Plain background for characters to stand out.

Date of release.

Comedy Film Posters• This movie poster for ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ is

very plain and simple yet we can tell from the poster it is off the comedy genre. The two characters are placed in a position we can see them both clearly. The top character shows comedy within his facial expression as he has wide eyes and looks as though he is laughing. The bottom character has his head placed in his hand suggesting that the top character is irritating him.

• The title of the film is below the characters and is contrasted in color in order for the viewer to be attracted to the movie title.

• The unique selling point for this comedy film would be the image on this poster as it portrays the movies genre.

• The billing block at the bottom of this movie poster is in white writing so it contrasts with the black jacket the character is wearing.

Conventions found in all film posters

Billing block

TitleTagline

Actress’/Actors

Director

Main Image

Release Date

General Features of the Comedy Genre

• Comedy genre movie posters will have a

comedic main image to attract the viewers

attention.

• They will often have a humorous tagline

from the main movie.