film poster analysis

Poster Analysis

The notebook is a classical romance story and the poster allows you to understand the narrative as two characters fall in love with the image of the two characters kissing, a general pose understood by audience members allowing them to know that they are in love.
The font for the poster is very simple but the title is quite bold and easily understood, the font type is simple yet it adds effect to the film itself. For the rest of the poster the font is quite small as it then doesn’t take over the importance of the image and background allowing audience members to see it all and to not be distracted by the oversized writing that you may get with other posters.
The image itself is quite stereotypical with a romantic genre film, the two characters who are the main characters in the film are kissing with the added effect of the rain which is also very stereotypical of the iconography in these types of films, for example in ‘four weddings and a funeral’ the last scene ends with a kiss that is spent in the rain, something that is very typical when it comes to down to creating the romantic love effect this is something that all ages will understand that kissing in the rain is very stereotypical when it comes to romantic films and narratives, allowing for a wide target audience however we can see from the poster that this film has been created after a novel as the text on the poster reads’ from the best selling novel’ therefore the book itself may already have a target audience, leaving the film to create an entirely new target audience. However I think the target audience for this type of film would be mostly aimed at young adults and then adults up to the age of elderly as it is a love story anybody can relate to it as the narrative is quite easily understood. This in comparison to a romantic drama is very different in terms of the way in which the image is portrayed. The film ‘The last song’ is a romantic drama and the poster for that is very mellow yet sad with contrast in colours of yellow and black, this in comparison to The notebook is very different as The notebook has quite bright colours and shows two people interacting with each other displaying affection and love the colours have been chosen quite carefully for this poster. The colours used for the images are very neutral and aren’t over the top giving away the obvious storyline of two people falling in love, so in this aspect the colours for this poster aren’t as stereotypical as many other romantic films.
We can tell with every detail in the image that the two characters shown in the poster are in love as the woman has a ring on her finger entitling her to be married, all of these types of iconography add up to audience members wanting to watch a film and see the poster as it lets them know what they are going to watch.
We are able to see who the main actors and actresses are in the film with the list of names included on the poster for reference and for audience members to know who’s actually in the film, along with the producers name along the bottom. This is important in a poster as it allows information to be given to the audience so they can pick and choose if they want to see that particular film with that particular producer or director involved in the film.
Everything involved in a poster is important in order to sell the film to the audience, the director and producer must think carefully about what they want the poster to have on it, the colour scheme and the image this all adds come in to the way that the poster in conveyed by the certain target audience.
The main image of the two characters, is a mid close up enough to show the expression of the characters face, but also allows the long shot of the body language and shows that two characters are in love, linking it to the genre romantic.
Most posters generally involve a small amount of information about the film, in this case it’s been made into a film after being a best selling novel and that information is conveyed into the poster so that the audience know this particular information.
The poster focal point is very aligned with the actual title, this means that everything is in viewing point, this is a good advantage to the poster as it then makes the poster seem simple but allows the different information and the image itself to be taken in by the audience. Having an equal alignment with the title and the image is a common convention of a film poster.

Generally as an overall point this poster follows the general conventions of a film poster, it uses the right contrast in colours to express the genre of the film, light colours, not to dark or intense. It uses the right size font to show the needed information about the film on the poster, also showing a release time period, ‘summer’. It also uses the image of the characters very well in suggesting the characters are in love by the way they are shot, kissing with the mid close up shot and the iconography of the rain, this shows a normal convention of a romantic love story with a kiss in the rain scene. The poster itself is simple yet gives the right information for the set target audience.