How much information do posters give away?...

Film posters are designed to attract the audience for the film's target audience without giving the story away. Most posters will follow the typical design of having the main character with perhaps a hint of the story or an element of the story line. This could be on object or a quote. An example of a film poster that effectively does this is Jack Nicholsen in 'One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest'.

In this poster, the only image is of McMurphy (Jack Nicholsen, the main character) looking up. This doesn't seem to give much, if anything away about the story or the ending. This could intrigue audiences as they don't know much about the film at all. However, the creators of the film have placed a couple of clues in there to indicate elements of the story. The character is standing in front of a wire fence, typically used in institutuins where you're not allowed out. He is also staring up at a broken padlock, which could imply an escape. Of course, anyone who has seen the film knows its about Nicholsen's character being sent to a mental institution for sexual abuse, and he plans an escape. The film poster doesn't give any of this away to begin with, but once you know the story it becomes fairly obvious. This is the type of effect I'd like to create with my poster.



Some film posters can give a little too much away however. The famous poster 'Jaws' is a very good film poster as far as contruction goes, but the image chosen may give the story away to some extent. The image is of a large skark about to catch a swimming girl in a bikini. It may not give away the ending, but it does however pretty much say what happens. The writing is also in blood red, which could itself be a hint to the story. The poster does still leave the audience guessing as they do not know the circumstances to the shark attack, they do not know any of the characters (other than the shark) and they are unaware of the ending. So it is quite clever the way they have done it.



-KW