November Homework: Pre-Production Research

Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis helped me to understand the different elements within a movie poster, mise-en scene, lighting, camera angles - all of this is what I shall include into my own movie posters as these are key parts of what makes a movie poster stand out as well as teach the audience what the film's story is going to be. Because of the textual analysis, I have thought about and incorporated camera angles, mise-en scene and lighting in my posters to convey the emotions and situations by the characters and stories within the hypothetical movie.

An example of this would be the poster for Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 which I analysed:

Harry Potter - The Deathly Hallows Part 2

This poster from the final Harry Potter film uses close-up camera angles to convey the raw emotion between the protagonist and the antagonist. The camera angle also shows Voldemort holding the Elder wand which, in the Harry Potter universe, is the most powerful wand in the world. This implies that he has the upper hand in the battle, that he is overpowering Harry and all the other wizards who are fighting against him.

The darkness and red blood stains on the poster also imply that Voldemort has killed people with the wand to get to a powerful position against Harry. This adds to the fact that Voldemort is evil since evil people kill. Also, the position of the stains are towards harry which can imply that Voldemort has killed people who are close to harry - His parents.

Just by looking at this poster alone, I can tell that the guy on the right is evil and the guy on the left is good. I can infer this because Harry looks more human looking which gets the audience to sympathise with him more than Voldemort since he looks less human and more evil than Harry.

The wand also helps convey the opposites of the two characters as it divides them down the middle which shows that the wand is what they are both fighting for and that they want the wand for two different reasons. Voldey wants it for evil uses whereas Potter wants to destroy it since it's too powerful for any person.

The poster also utilises the enigma code. The slogan "It all ends" intrigues the audience to go watch the film, even for people who haven't watched the previous films, they might want to go see this since  it's the climax of the entire franchise. It's the end of the decade-long film series and the slogan makes the audience want to be apart of the end.

Movie Poster Survey

My survey gave me a clear view of my audience, the responses on my survey help shape what the two posters would look like, the responses to these questions helped a lot:

"What genre of film do you enjoy and why?" - were mainly horror, comedy and adventure films due to the escapism, entertainment and ease of viewing pleasure to the audience. With this information, I knew that I had the option to do either of the three posters as it would appeal more to the majority of the audience.

Another question I asked on my survey was "How old are you?" - The majority of the replies were 30+ years older and the lowest age range was 15-20 years older, with this information, I can target my two movie posters to mid teens and adults as this is what the majority of the age range would want to see. 

"What do you look for in a movie poster?" - This question was one I needed the responeses to the most as the responses to this question directly shaped what my poster would look like. The majority of the replies looked for the genre within a movie poster so I need to emphasize the genre on my poster so the audience can clearly see what the type of film they are going to see. The second most common answer was who's starring in the film, because of this, I need to make the cast stand out so that the audience can see who is starring in the film clearly and easily.

"What part of the movie poster do you enjoy to look at the most?" - The response which was most popular was the pictures on the poster, because of this I need to make picture the main focus of the poster which also ties in with the question previously, I need to make the picture the main focus while also making it clear of what genre the movie is going to be.

This might be difficult to convey to the audience as I need to think about other perspectives, about how different audiences will react to the poster and see what I need to make stand out more to make a movie poster which not only says what it is using pictures but also make it stand out among other posters.