Advanced Portfolio - Josh and Charlotte: March 2011

We've done some poster research to try and find how posters for real media texts are created to pull in the target audience.

Charlotte

Juno (Reitman, 2007)

'Juno', released in 2007, is a film aimed at a target audience of people aged 16-25, which explains the use of bright colours and bold patterns, as these are usually aimed at younger audiences, and these are also fitting with the comedy theme of the film.
The orange stripes also mirror the stripes of the females T-shirt and the males socks, giving the poster a running theme, making it more memorable to a viewer. Another running theme seems to be circles - the circle on his T-shirt, the large 'O' in 'Juno' and of course her bump - these could all be symbols of pregnancy,'the circle of life' etc.
The comic style print suggests the film is funny and quite light hearted, and the pose of the actors also gives this impression - the couple look a tad mis-matched, with him looking into the distance looking quite vacant, and her looking directly into the camera with a neutral expression - this already gives clues to the films plot, suggesting she is in control and he is quite idle (this is how the power is held throughout the film.) This also challenges traditional gender conventions.
The characters are quite young themselves, appealing to a younger audience as they can relate to the characters, and they are also dressed to represent their youth - the male in his school's sport kit, for example.
The tagline of the film is a pun - 'the bumps along the way' - showing the audience immediately the genre of the film - a comedy.
The conventions of the poster follow the conventions of most film posters - it uses the rule of thirds to make the poster aesthetically pleasing, with the characters aligned on the left of the poster with the title and reviews on the right.
I chose to explore this film poster as it follows the same themes of our film - its a comedy about an unconventional romance between two teenagers. Its light-hearted nature mirrors that in our film.

Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)

This poster is also advertising a comedy, this time 'Pineapple Express', released in 2008.
This film is aimed at audiences again under 30, but this time a little older, hence its 18+ rating.
The characters holding guns on the poster shows that the film will include violence, which is important to show audiences before they consider seeing the film.
The characters facial expressions, particularly the character on the right are quite humorous which shows the audience that the film is a comedy, and although it includes violence it is also quite high-spirited.
The representations of three men in their 20s here allow for enigma to be created - the audience wonder why their clothes are in the state they are in, and why one of them is injured - perhaps this question is answered in the film. This engages more of the target audience.
The title in a bright red also has connatations of violence, again warning audiences about what the film contains and drawing in the right target audience for the film.
The film poster follows the usual conventions, it is in three distinct sections - the title, the image and the 'smallprint' at the base of the page.
I chose to study this poster as it shares one of the themes of our film, comedy. It also has a theme of rising to achieve something although the characters lives are usually mundane, which is similar to our character.

Airplane! (Abrahams, 1980)

This poster is again advertising a comedy, this time 'Airplane!', released in 1980.
Because of the films age, the poster is simpler than the other examples, however still draws in the target audience the film is aimed at - basically anyone 16+ looking for a comedy. It also still uses the usual poster conventions despite its age - again, three distinct sections, allowing the viewer to clearly follow around the poster and take in all the information without too many distractions from the imagery.
The image of the plane tied in a knot is funny in itself, and gives the immediate impression of what the audience can expect in the film.
The dramatic title suggests that the film is a parody of serious disaster films, whilst the colour again has connatations of violence and peril.
The tagline for the film is a joke itself, and the extra tagline under the title -'Thank God it's only a motion picture!' shows the audience this is a lighthearted film that isn't going to be a serious watch.
I chose to study this poster as it is a comedy, and shows this more clearly on the poster than any other posters I have seen advertising a comedy film, which I think would be fun to explore.

Our Film Poster

We have decided to go against our first idea of having superimposed images of the female protagonist surrounding our male protagonist, as we thought this would make the frame too busy and draw away the emphasis from the title. So, instead, we want to have just one image of the female and male together, as if they were a couple, on the bottom left corner of the poster, with a larger image of the males face looking bored and glum in black and white - the desaturation emphasises his boredom without the female in his life, where the high colour saturation of the image on the left is the contrast to this.

Josh

Candy (Armfield, 2006)

Young adults are represented on this poster - Ledger and Cornish were in their early to mid twenties when the film was shot - and the couple's seemingly carefree attitude, signified by their elated facial expressions, is syonymous with youth. Their body language, the high key lighting and the bright colours of the character's clothes and the text of the title and cast members all add to this theme of happiness and romance.

However, the incongruous black background and ominous tagline - 'more is never enough' - hints at a darker side to the movie, and genereates audience interest as a result. Every piece of text is centred, taking attention away from this aspect of the poster and focussing it on the characters. They are clearly in love, laughing merrily and looking into each other's eyes. The fact that they take up the entire poster is significant, as is the absence of the other cast member named, Geoffrey Rush. It is obvious from this poster that the film will be centred around the character's relationship, therefore labelling it as a romance film. It may also point to the pair's obsession or ignorance, as they only have eyes for each other and not for anyone, or anything, else. The lower-case, pink title links with this theme, as it suggests both innocence and naivety; contrasted against the aforementioned black background and tagline, it can be deduced that this state, as well as the character's relationship, will be broken.

I chose to analyse this film's poster as our own film features an unconventional romance, as this one does (the couple's blissful state gives way to a descent into heroin addiction, which gradually tears them apart.) Also, the stereotypical image of a man and a woman in love could also work effectivey on the poster for our film, despite the fact that our protagonist and his love interest are only together in his dreams.

Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

This incredibly intricate and complicated poster features myriad props, characters and text, as well as a ripped paper aesthetic. Having seen the film, I recognised many of these - in particular the props - and their relaiton to the plot. As a result, those who the poster is advertising to receive an unprecedented insight into the film's content, although they will be unaware of the props' significance to the story and who the characters are. This is in contrast to more mainstream film posters which follow narrow conventions, for example the clichéd collection of characters standing in a line:

This fits in with the film's New Wave status and its challenging and adapting of previous cinematic traditions. Its hybridity of genre is also a signifier of this, which is shown through props: crime, through the police badge; romance, through the connections between characters and the seductive appearance of the woman in her bra; film noir, through the woman in the blonde wig's hair and costume; and perhaps drama, through the characters' pensive expressions. The innovation present on this poster would help to engage audiences and generate enigma code, particularly through the aforementioned collection of seemingly unrelated props.

Most of the poster is taken up by the collection of images, with just the production company (ARP présente), director's name (UN FILM DE WONG KAR-WAI) and title of the film intruding upon this. The absence of the cast's names here is significant, suggesting a multi-layed film driven not by plot but message; indeed, some critics have viewed it as being an allegory for the search for identity by the people of Hong Kong. The small print at the bottom does feature the cast, although this is secondary to the eclectic mix of images above it.

I chose to analyse this film's poster because, having studied it for Film Studies, I knew that it contained one unconventional romance that is covered in depth and a number of others that are also touched upon; this relates to the relationship between the protagonist and his love interest in our film. The poster's foregrounding of props can also be linked to Alone, Together as they are fairly important in our film as well. The items used to make the card and the card itself, the flowers, the food eaten by the main character, the cigarette: all contribute to the film's appeal.

The Lovely Bones (Jackson, 2009)

The rule of thirds is used in this poster, with three distinct sections: the field at the bottom, the tree and title in the middle and the sky, along with the cast's names, at the top. This motif is linked to the premise of the film: a young girl, after being raped and murdered, watches from Heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her own death. The field represents Earth, the sky Heaven and the middle section - including the birds flying upwards from the tree and the girl running - the connection between the two. While this gives an insight into the film's plot, there is an ambiguity of genre, with only slight indications of the drama/thriller/fantasy film that The Lovely Bones is described as on IMDB. These are the running girl - suggesting she is running either from danger or towards a goal - and the aforementioned Heaven/Earth imagery. The contrast between the dark field and the soft blues, pinks and golds of the sky also reinforces the drama/thriller element, implying an opposition between light and dark in the film. Nevertheless, the lack of a clear genre represented in the poster generates enigma code, encouraging audience engagement and interest. This seems to be one of the key functions of film poster, seeing as enigma code is present in the posters for Candy - with the incongruous tagline - and Chungking Express, with the eclectic collection of images.

While this poster is by no means a typical example, it does conform to certain conventions, namely the large title, the rule of thirds and the cast's names highly visible. However, the fact that the screenplay credits are also highlighted, being the same size text as that for the cast, suggests an emphasis on story.

Filming was on the most part very successful - we did all the shots in two days, the first was very rainy so it meant we couldn't film our outdoor scenes (the field scene and the male protagonist walking along the street to the females house) but we were very lucky to have great sunny weather on the second day of shooting meeting we could film all these scenes and the lighting was perfect.

The field scene in particular worked really well - the lighting was very high key and yellow, making it look very ethereal and dream-like naturally, and at times beams of sunlight would reflect off the lens, creating really nice effects.

Although the grass in the field was not as long as we'd imagined, we managed to give it the illusion that it was long and bushy by filming lower to the ground.

You can see here how the light has reflected to create beams across the screen.

The breakfast/daytime sequence was really fun to film and I think we got some great footage. We wanted to highlight the boring routine of the main characters day, so we used shots with quite a long duration, and showed that all he really does with his day is eat and sleep. We also used bossanova jazz style music, which has connotations of boredom and lethargy (lift music, hotel lobby music). I think this has worked perfectly with the sequence and really enhanced it.

We wanted the second dream sequence to seem more realistic than the first, to show that he has a range of dreams about her and not just one recurring one. In this one, he also features in the dream, which is the trigger for him to do something about it and try and 'get the girl'. We didn't want it to seem surreal or as dream-like as the first dream, as the stark realism of the dream is what makes his desire grow to the point where he has to react.

We decided to put a lot of photos of the female protagonist on his wall to show his obsession with her.

The montage was really interesting to shoot, as all the clips were so short and we weren't used to that type of filming. But shooting like this got easier as it went along, and we found we could create the same montage effect by filming 30 second clips of footage and cutting them up into clips of the best bits. We wanted this part of the film to have quite a manic, fast feel about it, as we wanted to increase the pace significantly to contrast to the slow start of the film.