We are analysing film posters with a view to creating our own for the pre-production element of the coursework.
In this lesson we used resources from the film education web-site which has a lot of great resources for media and film students which can help to extend your knowledge.
We compared the book cover with the film poster and de-coded visual symbols and clues. The discussion ranged from differing audiences for the two different mediums and how this was reflecting in the layout, design and even the font to discussion of the symbolism of the birds flying out of the tree or the house on the lucky charm.
The minimalism of the book cover and the suggestion of drowning through the pastel blue colours showed that the audience for the book was more literate and sophisticated and perhaps did not want to know too much detail, hence the enigmatic cover. We tried to work out what the lucky charm might mean in the context of the story.
THe film poster has a lot more information and we felt that it targeted a wider audience particularly when we looked at the appeal of the actirs and the director Peter Jackson. We felt that the image was a powerful one and hinted at threat and running away, perhaps with the cloud and the birds hinting at some aspect of heaven or an afterlife.
We then watched the trailer and saw that the subtleties of the print productions were not matched by the film. The trailer left little to the imagination !
