"How can genre be used in movie posters to show a clearer narrative?"I read this to myself over and over about a hundred times, and then 10 more because it's still a difficult question to answer. I then went back through my posted research material and evaluated the posters from movies that have all become successful, but at the time they were released, were considered to be failures. What I have found is that while a poster can be beautiful, and convey some of the most intimate or iconic situations from a movie, it can still fail to convey what the movie is actually about.
I previously evaluated a few posters from The Shawshank Redemption declaring some of the more basic ones to be superior for conveying the genre. Unfortunately, I had this completely backwards. The simple images do convey powerful scenes from the movie, and the designs are beautiful, but neither of the ones I listed as a suitable replacement for the original actually are. Anyone who has never seen the movie would have no clue what the movie is TRULY about. They would see it's about a prison break, sure. But, the deeper message, the message of redemption from ones own demons, from finding friendship and honor in the strangest of places, is completely lost in these posters. That said, I am going to reevaluate the posters for The Shawshank Redemption, and will also show the posters of Evil Dead.
I will start with Evil Dead, which is obviously a horror based on the title. However, when Evil Dead was originally released, it was marketed more as a comedy. Granted, there are some funny parts in the original movie, the main genre, even according to the director, Sam Raimi, is horror. Here are a few of the posters that ultimately failed to convey what the movie was really about:
The first poster even says, "The most ferociously original horror film of the year." And the image is a hand coming up from underneath the ground to strangle a helpless woman. First, one problem is that the white text, combined with the blue background doesn't really convey fear. Most successful horror posters have much darker colors and text. But, this is not the main issue. The biggest flaw in this poster is that it doesn't express what really happens in the film. It looks like a movie about basic dead people coming back from the grave with no mention of the dark magic, soul swallowing, or the main character, all of which made the movie the indie success it is.
The second poster is from the remake. It is very similar to the first poster except that this time you see the cast. The problem? It still doesn't show at all what the movie is about, this could be any old Friday The 13th slasher flick from what this image shows. This movie already has a history with its indie fans from the original, but in order to attract the new, younger crowd that requires much more action, fear, and gore, they need to see it.
Both of these posters are good, but only to people who really know what the movie is about. To illustrate my point, here is my first interpretation of an Evil Dead poster, which is good and will be enjoyed by those who have seen the movie already, but fails to capture what the movie is actually about:
The second poster shows much more about what to expect in the movie. Gore, a house in the woods, a creepy demon/possessed girl creeping up from under a cellar door. It also still has a memento from the original movie that old fans will love, the chainsaw:
Next, I will go back to the original movie I posted about, The Shawshank Redemption, which when it released, bombed at the box office, however IMDB and several other major movie sites now list it as one of the best, most influential films of our time. Being that it's a drama, I thought it would be easy to create a poster worthy of its narrative. This poster turned out to be much harder than anticipated as picking out exactly what type of "redemption" the main character actually finds.
First off, here are a few of the original posters from the movie:
Both are fantastic posters, yet neither successfully show what's happening through genre. The first comes very close, it shows the characters, and arguably the most iconic scene in the film. But the entire poster is thrown off by the lightning and the expressions on the characters faces. This looks like it could be a sic-fi film such as Star Wars. The lightning alone really throws this off, almost insinuating that at some point a character is going to be hit by lightning. The second is one of my favorite posters, it has the poster that covers his escape hole as well as the chess piece that he carves with the same hammer that sets him free, but the poster fails to say what the movie is about at all. This poster is actually extremely confusing if you have never seen the movie or no nothing of what it's about.
For my first attempt, I created a poster that is equally iconic, but still fails to show the plot. It's a famous scene, but it's lost on anyone unaware of the narrative:
The whole idea behind this poster is to show Andy escaping to freedom through the tunnel with the prison looming in the background. I got the idea from a similar fan image I saw a long time ago and loved it, meaning that too a fan, the poster does exactly what it's intended to do. The problem is that it doesn't say what the movie is truly about. Most people would just be confused by this image, and at best take away that it's some type of escape story.
My final poster for The Shawshank Redemption comes the closest to expressing what the true narrative is about, and expresses it through the dramatic, and yet comedic genre of the film:
This poster was extremely difficult to create. However, I feel this successfully shows the redemption, the friendship, and the conflict. It highlights many of the iconic characters, but specifically Andy, and shows his change from beginning to end.
When all is said and done, I hope this is close to what you are looking for. This has definitely been an interesting project, and one that has pushed me to explore more than I ever would have before in plot, narrative, and storytelling in a movie poster design.
