Black Swan - Film Posters

When browsing the net for posters to analyse I came across these four black swan posters which really caught my eye. I really love these four posters and the artistic feel they all portray. They are all really symbolic and very different to the typical drama film posters, which is what I think makes them stand out. I love the way all the posters have somehow combined both elements of the film together, the dancer and the swan, hinting at the merge that happens between both 'characters' during the film. My favourite poster is probably the top right one because of the simplicity of it, I like how the image of the dancer is inside the swan, suggesting that the swan is controlling them. I also love how the 'black swan' contrasts with the pure white silhouette of the dancer, making the dancer stand out and depicting the 'black swan' as something dangerous. All of the posters use colour very well, simply using red black and white to make certain elements of the poster stand out.

Tumblr Feedback

I also wanted to do some extra research myself so I asked people from the social networking site, Tumblr, their opinions. I used Tumblr to gather feedback from a wider audience as we were only able to collect student opinions at school.

Below are the responses which I received.

Audience Interviews

We wanted to gather some feedback from our target audience about what they expected from our film so we took to the corridors of Sandwich Technology School and found some students within our target audience to interview about their expectations of our short film.

We asked the following questions:

What kind of events do you expect to unfold in a short film which involved narcotics?

Do you expect to see the consequences of the drug taking?

Do you think the film should have a realistic or more surreal element to it?

What kind of character (gender, age) would you expect the main character to be?

What locations do you expect to see within the film?

Would you expect the ending to be ambiguous?

- Miranda Amess, 17

- Edward Stow, 18

Precious - Film Poster Analysis

For my second analysis i decided to pick a film poster which was a lot different from the typical 'main character staring' posters. Although this poster isn't a 'stereotypical' drama genre film poster I feel that it is really interesting and quite hard-hitting. The image is a cartoon silhouette of a large woman who seems to be shattered by a hand, the black of the image stands out against the red background. The film name, 'PRECIOUS', also stands out in white which makes it clear that this is the film name, the name precious creates questions in the audiences mind such as 'what is precious?', 'is this woman precious?', 'why is she precious?'. The image itself is very powerful and quite emotional as the woman is anonymous, making the audience wonder about the character and her story. From the way the image is shattered by a hand it makes the audience think about who has hurt her and what the characters story is, from the placement of the hand we wonder if the woman has been sexually abused. The black and red colouring of the poster also connotes anger, pain, suffering and mystery. On the poster also is all the awards which it has won, this will interest audiences and influence them to watch this award-winning film. The film poster is quite simple but I feel that it doesn't need a lot going on as the main image is powerful enough. Overall this poster is different and unique by the use of the cartoon style drawing and not a photograph of the main character, it certainly stands out against others.

The Social Network - Film Poster Analysis

The social network film poster is relativity simple, but it does draw in audience attention. The film is about the social networking site Facebook and cleverly the poster has the same layout as the Facebook browser. This gives the audience a good indicator about the what the film narrative is about without directly telling them, also this layout may be appealing to audiences, especially those who use Facebook, as they will be familiar with the layout and may be influence to go and watch the film. The main character is glaring at the audience behind the text (this is a typical drama genre poster convention), the character looks like he is staring at a computer, again hinting at the narrative of the film and adds a sense of social realism to the poster. One major issue I have with this poster is that the film name isn't very obvious at all, its at the top right hand side of the poster in small font, sideways, which isn't very clear at all. The tag line 'You Don't Get To 500 Million Friends Without A Few Enemies' is bigger than the film title and takes up most of poster, it does stand out in white especially with the different fonts and writing styles, the fact the tagline is over the top of the characters face suggests that Facebook is a very important factor in his life. The tagline makes the audience wonder even more about the film narrative. Overall I do like this poster and the Facebook browser style background although the film title does need to be bigger and more obvious to audiences as at a first glance it will not be noticed.