Film Posters

A film poster is created in order to advertise and promote a film. Film posters can come in all different shapes and sizes, to fit on the sides of buses, on billboards, at train station, on phone boxes, pretty much anywhere you would find a member of the public passing by.

Today's posters usually obtain a number of conventions:

• Photograph of main star
• Title
• Tagline
• Certificate
• Billing Block
• Release Date
• Background images to give more detail
• Graphics

These conventions all come under 3 specific codes:

1. Technical codes
2. Written codes
3. Symbolic codes

These are all included so the audience can pick all the information about the film that they need in a quick glance. In that case, it is important for the poster to capture the interest of their target audience, if it fails to do that, then there is not much chance of people wanting to watch the movie. 

Film posters have been used since the very early days of film. They began as just simple placards as a sort of TV guide outside a movie theatre, but now they have developed into a much bigger idea. By the early 1900's, film posters began to have artistic illustrations on them to suit their theme and to promote their films, this gradually progressed into having stills from the actual film as the main image for their film posters.

Originally, film posters were only made for the use of movie theatres, and had to be returned to the distributor after the time period of the show being shown was ended. In the 1940's, films could be shown around the country for several years, so film posters would be reused and recycled until they were too tattered to be used again. However, some posters were not reused or recycled and became collectibles. People collect film memorabilia in forms of posters, scrapbook, autographs and film magazines. The classic "one sheet" film poster would be the collectors ideal poster to own for each film. Today, film posters that were once practically free to get you hands on are being sold at very high prices, The record price for a posters was set on November 15th, 2005 when US$690,000 was paid for a poster of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis from the Reel Poster Gallery in London (source: wikipedia). Unlike in the 1940's when film posters were only distributed to theaters and poster venues by the movie venues, you can now purchase film posters online or in shops like HMV for not a high price. Modern film posters are not very rare or valuable.

As the film industry exploded, main different types of film posters were created for all different purposes and angles of promotion.

• 27" x 41" - Referred to as "One sheet"
• 41" x 81" - Referred to as "3 sheet"
• 81" x 81" - Referred to as "6 Sheet"
• 246"x108" - Referred to as "24 Sheet
• Insert Cards
• International Posters
• Glass Slides
• Banners
• Standees
• Door Panels
• Lobby Cards - Like posters but smaller and can be collected. Their value depends on their age, quality and popularity. 
• Teaser Posters - Also known as an advance poster is an early poster, created before the final details have been set. They usually just involved an image and no writing as to not reveal to much information, and making people want to know more. An example of this is the one above for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final installment on the Harry Potter series. The poster contains no film title, just the  main image, the tagline and the date of release. A poster like this will work for such an iconic movie franchise, without even a film title, we know its advertising Harry Potter due to image of famous Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint who are well known for their parts in Harry Potter. The tagline incorporates the date of release, and notifies the audience in only a short words that this is the final film, this is were "it all ends".

• Personality Posters - These posters are used where there may a few main characters so each character will have their own personal poster which promotes the film. A personality poster will contain an image of the character along with the name of the character and/or actor, as well as a tagline specific to their role in the film.