Ancillary texts.1

Ancillary texts

Film poster:

The typical conventions of a film poster tend to contain an image with text

More modern posters use photography of the main actors

The text usually displays the title of the film in bold lettering style with names of actors around this title/above it

It may also include the tag line of the film the names of directors/producers and sometimes names of characters and always the release date

The point of a film poster is to advertise it so the most common places they are displayed are outside cinemas, sometimes nears shops, they are quite often advertised in magazines and newspapers with some magazines being directly about films. They are also displayed in bus stop advertisements and on the sides of buses this is obviously quite an effective way of advertising the film because a bus will get the most visibilityhowever the same can be said for the magazine and newspapers.

Film posters of 2012 seem to be quite focused on displaying the main character in close-up or medium-close-up framing this is effective because it engages the audience on a personal direct level whilst also drawing you to the title and release date of the film.