Textual Analysis for Film Poster (Ancillary Task)

In order to fully understand how to make a high quality film poster, I must first look at professional film posters and analyse them to find out why they are high quality and what makes them professional. Also I must look at the key features that are similar in all thriller film posters to make sure I include these in my poster. The film poster I will study in depth are "The Taken" 

Here is the film poster for the film "The Taken".

The film itself is about a character who's daughter is kidnapped by some characters, they want money for her return. The main character who is played by Liam Neeson hunts for his daughter and her friend who is kidnapped. This film has gun fights, bar knuckle brawling and explosions. This film is the start of the famous kick ass line "I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want, but if you don't let my daughter go, I will find you, I will kill you." From looking at the film poster I will split up the film poster into categories and describe these in depth.

Title = The film title for Taken is near the bottom of the film poster, the film poster is coloured in red, I would believe that this has been done to insure that the reader does not get confused with the other text and therefore the colour red stands out from the rest. The colour red symbolises danger and/or romance, seeing as the film is about a father who hunts for his daughter i would suggest the colour red fits into both because he is getting his daughter for love but has to kill in order to get her. Just the word "Taken" is scary enough when read. This is a very abrupt title because the word "Taken" means that someone has purposely taken something from another person.

Images = There is 1 main image on this film poster which is a picture of the main character Liam Neeson holding a pistol in his right hand. This image takes up the whole entire middle of the film poster, this would show that this character is very important to take up a third of a film poster. Behind the main character there are snippets from the film, they show action in these shots. This would show the audience that there is action in the film but also that some of the characters might be in danger in this film which would further promote the genre of the film being an action thriller.

Colour Scheme = The  colour scheme for this poster is mainly a earthy grey.white and red. The character Liam Neeson is dressed in black. The earthy grey background is a simply background, there are no colour ramps or colour change. I believe they have done this because they want the audience to focus on other items on the poster rather then the background. The red text on the poster is used for the title and the release date, I believe they have done this because this makes the title and the release date stand out from the rest of the text. By having the main character dressed in black this could show that he is dark and mysterious. Black is an authoritative colour as well, this shows that Liam Neeson is in control of the film.

From analysing the film poster I have learnt that the colour scheme of the poster is important, all the colours in the poster must flow and be subtle to each other, this will create a high quality poster rather then a basic poster with block colours. I must also use a main character on the poster who is famous and has high bank ability, therefore when my target audience glance at the poster and see a famous bankable actor on the poster this will grab their attention, then they are more likely to watch the film because of this. In relation to the colour scheme if the title is in a different colour then this will grab more attention from the audience because the title is in a different colour from the rest of the poster.