1. Codes and conventions
Film posters are a powerful element which promotes a film’s themes and narrative using visual aspects. Film posters are a significant part of the film industry as they are a big part of the advertising process. Film posters are also used before the film has arrived to create excitement and get people talking so that they are more likely to go see the film. They may be produced in various sizes and displayed in different places such as on the side of a bus or on billboards all to generate interest in a film before it is released and whilst it is playing at cinemas.
The two film posters that I will be analysing are for the movies Taken and Grease. The 21st century movie taken is about a retired FBI agent whose daughter gets kidnapped in a foreign country leading him on a deadly search for his daughter. This narrative is shown in the poster through the use of the image of the man holding the gun. This shows that he is the typical protagonist character that like in many films saves the day. The use of the gun also hints at a sense of danger, bloodshed and even death. Likewise, there is a specific use of the image of a girl looking frightened on the phone. From this we can presume that this is his daughter and she is probably on the phone to him. This image represents her as a scared teenager who is vulnerable and naïve.
In addition, the main colour used throughout this poster is black with only the words in orange. The colour black has the conations of pain, death and darkness. The fact that the artist has used these specific colour shows that he is trying to portray these feeling to the audience and hints at the tone of the movie being somewhat dark. Also the blackness of the poster is representative of the genre being a thriller.
The use of the colour orange hints at the seriousness of the situation and suggests that there is a happy ending or a resolution at the end. Also the colour orange is used for the phrase “I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what you want but if you hurt my daughter I will find you and kill you” which is written in the middle of the poster . The artist has put an emphases on that phrase which highlights its importance and relevance to the film. The tag lines used in the poster are “they’ve taken his daughter now he’s taking them down”. This is particularly effective as it shows that how much his daughter means to him and shows the audience that he is a vengeful man.

2. In comparison, the film poster for the movie Greece has a much different feel than the taken poster. Initially the poster uses the image of the two main characters. They are both young and attractive and appear happy. The way that the artists has made them close together by the way they are holding each other you can tell they are in love or in a relationship. Therefore, they are represented as being love struck young people. The woman in the poster is dressed up to look attractive as she is wearing lots of make-up and has the big curls and that symbolises the time period this film was made in which was the 1970s. The two characters in the poster are wearing black clothes which may be symbolic of the struggle these characters face in the film. The writing in the poster is highlighted bold in black and includes the star’s names at the top so that it is clear who the stars are. Similarly, the word grease is highlighted in red and has a funky font which is again another example of the time era this film represents- the 70s.
The film posters for Taken and Grease are both very different because they are different genres and so they use different codes and conventions towards the audience. Also the fact that one film was made in the 20th century and the other was made in the 21st century makes them different as well. The 20th century film Grease uses a more funky font to represent the time period and uses a painted poster. The Taken poster does not have that painted effect and the font is more regular and sophisticated to fit with both the genre and the 21st century theme. However, one aspect of the poster that theses posters have in common is the use of the colour black to portray feelings of death, darkness ect.
There are many alternate posters for Grease and Taken films. One Grease film poster in particular shows only a comb with the Grease logo at the bottom. This is effective as that comb is representative of the film and what goes on in the film and it is even more effective because it was made by a fan of the film. In comparison one taken alternate fil poster is made to look zombie like with the words written in red. This is effective because the red writing looks bloody and the poster creates a death feel.
To conclude the posters Taken and Grease portray different codes and convections because they are targeting different audiences. Therefore, the alternate posters are different but they both include stuff that a fans of the movies would most likely recognise.