Film Poster; Font Analysis

The Shining

The title of the film is in sans serif block lettering, and appears to be mostly upper case except for the ‘i’. The title takes up approximately 1/6th of the page and stretches centrally over the entire length of the white background. The title font is in a bright, blood red.

The director and main actors are featured below in black font. This text is very basic and sans serif. The letters are all upper case and of the same size, other than the ‘by’ which is around half the size of the other text.

Halloween

This poster appears to follow similar conventions to ‘The Shining’. The title is again in sans serif block lettering in upper case. The word beginning ‘H’ and word ending ‘N’ are both slightly taller than the rest of the letters. This font is coloured white with an orange outline, which contrasts with the black background.

The rest of the text is also white. Compared to the title, the slogan’s font is quite round and curved. Each new word is on a new line, and starts with a capital letter. The third and central word is italicised and slightly larger than the rest of the text.

This poster also has production information at the bottom of the page. This again is white, but much smaller than the rest of the text on the page. The information is upper case but appears thinner and more stretched upwards. The text is again sans serif.

Dawn of the Dead

The title of this poster uses sans serif block lettering, in upper case. The ‘Dawn’ and ‘Dead’ are both the same size, as are the ‘of’ and ‘the’. The ‘of’ sits on top of the ‘the’ and the whole thing sits centrally on the page. A very similar font is used for the slogan, only much smaller than the title. The title and slogan are both black, contrasting with the oranges and yellows in the background.

The ‘coming soon’ at the bottom of the page is also the same font and also black in colour, this time standing out against the white background. The production information is a very thin and tall font, but does not stand out particularly due to its faded black/grey colour that almost blends into the white background.

Scream 4

The title text of this poster is a slight mixture of a curved yet square font. Whilst the ‘S’ ‘C’ and ‘R’ are quite curved, the ‘E’ ‘4’ and ‘M’ are all quite square with sharp edges. The font is sans serif so is very simple. However, the ‘M’ features a slight special effect of the middle of the bottom part of the letter; dropping down further than normal. This adds to the horror genre of the film as it is slightly abnormal. The colour of the title is mainly white in the ‘S’ ‘C’ ‘R’ ‘E’ and ‘M’, yet the ‘4’ that replaces the ‘A’ in ‘scream’ is blood red. This poster does not really contain any production information other than the production companies on the left and right bottom of the page. These do not appear very prominently as they are very small and the one on the right almost blends into the background due to its faded colour. The date below the title is very small but again very simple and sans serif. This is coloured the same red as the ‘4’ of the title. The slogan featured at the top of the poster is again a very basic sans serif font, slightly rounded.  This is blood red in colour.