What I have always looked for in movie posters, is characters. Nice close up shots of the main characters that create a story and history for them. I love posters which capture the mood of a person and show the context of their existence in the film, their whole life story. I always need portraiture photographs of people which look deep into theirs lives, which speak to me about them, characters that I can get lost in and move around inside their worlds with them. I look for the same thing in movie posters myself.
These posters show specific elements of posters which I find to be the most capturing and gripping.
I love how some posters use objects and everyday visual elements to form other more elaborate and almost symbolic images. Above, for example, the camera angle of looking up at the skyscraper buildings of the city, create the basic outline of the protagonist from The Spirit. The composition here is crucial to the overall piece, without the buildings being placed correctly the final image would not represent the hero in a silhouetted form. The colour of the middle building is also extremely relevant to the film. As the film is a Frank Miller piece, the colour palette will be quite monochrome and mooted, there is little background colour to the film set. The main colour usage in his films, is the blood and red objects through the film/s. The tie of the hero, is one of the mayor elements that you recognise him by, along with his mask and hat, so using the Empire State Building (or at least a building of similar structure) as his tie shows the audience its significance to the film. Also the usage of the building gives a hint that the film is an urban set piece, and more than likely New York.
This poster has the similar affect as the one above, it uses the city to set the basis for the film, but also morphs the main qualities of the film into something else. Here they have used the coat/cloak of the protagonist to look as if a black blanket covering the city as if nightmare or danger. This shows how he is their protector, he is shielding the city from danger, but it also shows that the film will be set mostly at night or in dark environments, and also that his character is not completely moral and also has his bad qualities just like the enemy which he is fighting.
This was one of my favourite, if not my most favourite poster for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This poster had such an elegance and soft feel to it, the gentle warm palette shows the softness of the film and the family audience which it was aimed at. It also shows the strong bonds between the characters, the bonds which are made are the warm delicate colours and the bonds which are broken can be the red strong colours either side of the poster. Also the colour red is used on the figure toward the front of the poster, bowing to the audience, which could be an indication to his characters personality, evil, dark and macabre? The same use of image manipulation is used here, the character at the front of the piece is bowing to the audience as the curtain behind him is lifted to reveal the show. Two points can be raised here, three possibly actually. The first is that the curtain that rises behind him is the cloak or gown of Parnassus himself, the oldest man in the poster. The second is that the words of the title are also shown slightly faded through his cloak or on it; this shows that the title is being projected by lights onto the cloak which makes it feel more like a performance. The third point is that behind the curtain there is revealed, the setting of London. This sets the scene instantly and makes the audience feels as if the curtain is opening for them, as if enticing them into the world in which Gilliam has created. The character that Tom Waits portrays, the bowler hat wearing man behind Parnassus, holds a stopwatch/pocket watch close to Parnassus' head. Along with the transportation that is on the bridge in London, the audience begin to understand that there is a theme of travel, voyages and discovery throughout the film.
I have begun to have a love of character based posters, film posters which show certain and specific characters to the plot. This poster above, like most Gilliam posters or DVD covers, includes all of the mayor cast in snapshots from the film. This allows the audience to know exactly who is in the film and to make their own collections of how many famous faces are appearing in the film. It also helps those who are less familiar with names, familiarise the actors by their faces. I like the method of adding the faces to the front of the piece, and this is something that I will play about with when creating my own poster. However I do also find that these posters which show exactly who is staring in the film, tend to look slightly more amateurish and unprofessional, although this is personal preference and at the end of the day I do still like the technique.
I choice this short film poster; as I am a big fan of Spike Jonze, loved the film for which the poster was made, and love the surrealism that the film holds in it. This poster, although does not show much in the way of plot, does show the key characters and the weird visual style of them. I love how the photograph has been taken in a natural environment and how the colours and very summery, and warm and earthy; there is a juxtaposition of the setting and feel against the unnatural look of the 'computer people'. I do find it good as it is very simplistic and only includes the title and credits for the film.
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