Conventions of a Poster

When creating a film poster, it is important to consider the codes and conventions because without it the final product would not be as effective as I would have missed out the key elements. This is why it was important for me to research further about the codes and conventions of film posters. 

A convention of a film poster is to feature the main image of the protagonist/antagonist or if the film has an important location then this may also be used. Typically like the example, we would see a menacing image of the antagonist but it is not unusual for a poster to have an image of the victim screaming.

Also, it's important to take their character's facial expression and body language into consideration because this will reveal a lot about the character itself. 

An evil facial expression like this one connotes the character cannot be trusted and the body language connotes they are planning on their attack of the victim.

The title is another way to entice the audience so this needs to appear rather large and needs to stand out against the background. 

Like this example, the colour is red which connotes death and danger which gives a reason as to why the choice of colour was made. 

Also, the tagline will typically appear above the title but will not stand out as much like the title would.

Another key convention is including the institutional information which typically appears at the bottom of all posters. Alongside this the release date is usually written as well.

The institutional information would not necessarily stand out in the poster as the text would be smaller but the release date would need to stand out because it is vital information for the audience to know.

Many posters make the release date's text larger than the institutional information.

However, something the previous example did not do is provide the name of of the main actor. For this example we can see that the film's main star's name has been featured on the poster as it allows the film to widen its audience.