The Movie Poster

 The “Star”  Cover Shot/graphic  Tagline  Title  Acting & production credits  Release Date

 The Star  Every film needs a star.  Genre films aimed at a certain audience nearly always feature at least one big name star, usually in some kind of ‘heroic’ pose.

 The cover shot  Cover shots nearly always feature the star in a pose that “echoes” some aspect of the film’s theme or storyline.  Use the maximum resolution possible for your cover shot.  Cover shots are heavily photoshopped/edited and designed to get the viewer’s attention

 Colours  Colours used in a movie poster are carefully chosen to communicate the mood of the film.

 Composition  The arrangement of elements in the cover shot communicates the relationship of the main characters in the film.

 Tagline  The ‘tagline’ is a memorable short phrase that sums up the tone or premise of the film.

 Title, credits and release date  The film’s title can be any font style, as long as it’s clear and easy to read.  Taglines, film credits and release date are ALWAYS a sans serif font such as Arial Narrow.  use all lowercase for titles and uppercase for names. For example: ‘directed by JOHN DOE’ or ‘starring ALICE and BOB’

 The Layout  Most movie posters follow the same general format:  The lower fifth is reserved for production and acting credits. This is called the “billing block”  The title generally takes up about a fifth of the total page height  The cover shot/graphic forms the background of the poster. All other elements are overlaid onto the cover shot. This gives the composition DEPTH.