Post 33 - Drama Genre Posters [Specific to my Genre]

Film posters can connect to the audience which genre of film they are watching, conventions of different genres have created conventions for the posters themselves. 

For example, I have looked at a drama film poster on the right, '127 Hours', and I notice that the layout is very empty, the main image is that of a canyon which frames the figure and boulder in the middle of the poster. The title and tagline are also framed by the image, the near symmetry of the canyon almost trapping the text inside. 

The colours in this poster are something which I also noticed, the figure and the canyon are shrouded in shadow creating an atmosphere for the drama genre; whilst the sunset in the background alludes to the title. The text of the entire poster matches the sunset, the top being brighter than that bottom, except for the tagline 'Every Second Counts', which is white against a burgundy background, this contrast makes it very clear and whilst the text is small, it also is very clear and noticeable. The tagline itself is shot and straight to the point.

In comparison, I looked at the difference between the dramatic '127 Hours' poster and a 'Airplane' comedy poster.

The poster for 'Airplane' automatically sells itself as a comedy film, the tagline acts as a joke, whilst '127 Hours' acts as a tense and curious enigmatic device for the film. The image consists of a cartoon aeroplane which is tied in a knot whilst flying seemingly normally, whilst '127 Hours'' image is very subtle and whilst reveals an idea of the time, it leaves the audience curious as to why the figure and a boulder are the main images.

Comedy film posters appear to have the convention of being bold and bright and 'in your face', to capture the audience's attention.

Drama film posters appear to use a single image with a contrast somewhere in the poster to catch the eye of the audience.






I looked into some other drama film posters to look at similarities within the genre and it's sub-genres. [L-R: Becoming Jane, The Show Must Go On, Black Swan]

First off, all three posters are character and image driven, all three consist of one large photo which takes up the majority of the poster, with Becoming Jane containing two. They also have the title towards the bottom of the poster, like '127 Hours' did too. I think that this is done as it creates a framing for the image and makes the image the key focus. Also only the middle on contains a tagline, which is to the side of the image, whilst the other two are versions of the poster which do not contain a tagline. Becoming Jane uses a divide between the two images to bring importance to the title, whilst the other two use contrast of white and black to make it clear and obvious.