Film Poster Essentials

Making a great and memorable poster is key to the marketing campaign of a film if the film poster is dull and uninteresting then that will effect the success of the film and it's overall grossing. Film posters are one of the cheapest and most effective ways to gain interest for a film, as they can be put up on walls, advertisements and buses for all to see.
To make the best poster the key elements needed are:

The image - The foundation of the poster is an image that illustrates the central theme of the movie. The image should be memorable and the meaning of the image and film should be easy to grasp and understand. It should also be an image which has a flat plane or colour on some part to allow the title to stand out against the picture.

Title - The title is key to the selling of the film as if there was no title no-one would know what film they are looking at. The title should be bold, easy on the eye and the main text on the poster. Some films however like to opt to put casts name the same size as the title if there is a famous actor/actress in the film. The design of this is they put the actors name bigger than the title particularly if the film has little money to put towards the marketing campaign so the film uses the actors popularity to gain interest. 




The expendables use the casts name to attract their audience.

Tagline - A poster generally has a tagline to draw people in and show what sort of film it is. The tagline is a short teaser of what is to come and is usually something memorable. It should be a smaller and different font from the title.




Additional Credits - Most posters include the people who were essential to making the film like the director, producer and composer as well as the film company and movie studio. This is normally used when for example the director is well known for making other films that gained a large amount of audiences so they write 'from the director of _____ and _____' which allows them to attract more people as it is more likely people who have seen and enjoyed the other two films will want to see this film as well.

Additional Details - Most posters include the time of release or 'coming soon' to generate interest. They also add the sound system used particularly if its something like IMAX as it is a relatively new. This is also the same with films in 3D. In a squashed font additional cast and crew are added, the URL for the movie's website, copyright notice and award information.