Colour research of various posters

 Here I have decided to research the various colour schemes of posters of different genres, this will allow me to easily establish set conventions for the colour schemes of different genres.

Thriller: PRISONERS

 

The poster for the thriller film 'Prisoners' uses a muted colour pallet to establish various conventions about the film. Using light greys and dark greys creates a sombre tone, yet it adds mysterious connotations. White is used as an accent colour for the text as it stands out from the grey of the rest of the poster. Generally, thriller film posters deploy the use of monochromatic colours such as black, white and grey as various iconographic imagery needs to take pride of place to convey the films message. However, red is often used as an accent colours on important persuasive devices such as the release date, title or tagline.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sci-Fi: AVATAR

 

For the sci-fi film poster of AVATAR, the colour blue makes a frequent appearance, it is mainly used on the main image as it is the colour of the skin of the alien. The colour blue is also used in the title, however it is glowing to distinguish it from the predominantly blue background.  The colour blue is often used in sci-fi film posters as it evokes 'alien themes' or 'creatures form another world', film posters such as TRON:legacy and Star Trek use blue to emphasise the obvious 'space' themes involved with the films plotline.



 

Romantic Comedy: Bridget Jones The Edge Of Reason

 

 In this poster, the feminine colours of pink and purple are used, this is used to reassert the fact that the film is from the point of view of a female character and deals with romantic issues. The colour pink features regularly in romantic comedy posters to emphasise the 'romance' element of the film. Posters such as '27 dresses' and '13 going on 30' use pink to attract a female target audience. Often in romantic comedy posters, the background is white, this is deployed to cement the characters framing on the poster while making the colour scheme more noticeable.

 

 

Horror: CARRIE

Horror posters use a pretty obvious colour pallet, red, black and grey most always feature, red obviously evokes violence and bloodshed, whilst the black creates an aura of mystery. This may seen a similar colour scheme to thriller poster, however the colour red is used much more provocatively in horror posters, often depicting crude representations of blood and gore. In the CARRIE poster, red is used on the actors costume, this is a key iconographic image for the film as the use of blood plays a vital role in the films plotline. 



Comedy: Grown Ups

 

Comedy films tend to take a more playful approach to colour, red, yellow and blue regularly feature as they are stereotypically happy colours. I have noticed that the colour pallets on comedy films are most likely strong primary colours that put a fun spin on the poster. For the 'Grown Ups' poster all three primary colours are used, this gives a sense of colour blocking, therefore giving the poster more structure.