Ancillary Task : The Popular Culture of Film Posters...

The purpose of a film poster is to publicise and market the film. The actual marketing of a film product is crucial in order to ensure profit at the box office, and one of the main and most effective ways of marketing the product is through a successful film poster, therefore within out culture today much time is spent on the design of the poster, ensuring that it entices the audience, provides an insight into the film however still creates a sense of mystery in order to draw in potential audience members. However the posters are not restricted to just paper, they are copied on to t-shirts, enlarged for bedroom walls and copied for DVD covers. Some though see the increase in the number of posters all around as a negative thing rather than positive "Film posters are pasted on every wall, flyover and underpasses, thus defacing the city".

Example of Products Based on 'Jaws' Film Poster

  

The 1975 horror/thriller American  film Jaws which was directed Spielberg and distributed by Universal Pictures had $1.8million spend on promoting it. Beyond the $700,000 that was spent on national TV spot advertising, Universal "devised and co-ordinated a highly innovative plan" for the pictures marketing. There was a logo that would appear on both the paperback version of the book and in all the adveristising for the film, this was the poster image featuring the shark approaching a lone female swimmer which was based on the paperbacks covers (overall it took six months to design the poster). Following the films release more merchandise was created, Graeme Turner in 1999 stated that film was accompanied by was was still "probably the most elaborate array of tie-ins" of any film to date "This included a sound-track album, T-shirts, plastic tumblers, beach towels, blankets, toys, costumes, posters, necklaces, sleepwear and more".

FILM T-SHIRTS BASED ON THE POSTER

This is a t-shirt which I came across on the site www.truffleshuffle.co.uk. It shows the iconic design of the poster. Although when buying and in turn wearing the t-shirt an individual is doing it as a fashion statement, they are wearing them because they like the film and feel that it shall give them a sense of style therefore although not brought purposefully to market the film, the distributing company knows that when wore it will promote their film.

LARGE POSTERS ON WALLS

Although this is not an image of the jaws poster, it is an examplar of how smaller film posters are enlarged to mass scale. They are not only another form of advertisng which is commonly placed outside cinemas in order to inform the audience of the up and coming blockbusters but also avail from music shops to buy in a mass scale in order to have on bedroom walls. They also can be placed within public places such as shopping centres.

DVD AND MUSIC ALBUM COVERS

After the release of the film in cinemas, many films are then released on DVD and the sound tracks released to CDS or as downloads from the internet. By using the poster all the way from marketing to the final release of the film on DVD, it creates an iconic picutre that is reconquisable to all.