The poster that I have chosen to analyse is one of the many posters that were released to advertise Guardians of the Galaxy, the third highest grossing film of 2014, after Transformers: Age of Extinction and The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a Sci-fi Action Comedy that was released in the summer of 2014. The film was directed by James Gunn and was produced/distributed by Marvel, making it the 10th film in their expanding cinematic universe. The film follows the story of Peter Quill, a human kidnapped from earth in the 1980’s, who is raised as a thief by a group of mercenaries. As the story unfolds Quill teams up with four alien criminals in order to stop a ‘ferocious genocidal militarist’ from destroying the planet Xandar. The film stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel.

The title is one of the most noticeable features on the poster, as it is written in the large futuristic gold font that has become recognisable to the franchise. I feel that the use of the metallic and 3 dimensional effects that have been added make the title a more prominent feature on the poster.

The font used in this poster is relatively consistent with the other fonts used in the various promotional material for the film, the images on the right are examples of how the title font varies. The top image is the title used in the poster I’m analysing. The silver variation was used for the DVD release and the film’s release in foreign territories. The third image is from the title sequence in the film and the fourth image is the font from the original trailer. It is clear that the filmmakers had been constantly improving the signature font of the film and I feel that the font used in the poster is better suited to the background image .

The image used in the poster is extremely detailed and for that reason I am going to analyse the foreground and the background of the image separately. The foreground of the image shows all five lead characters standing inside the Milano, Quill’s spaceship, they are all standing in action poses holding various forms of weaponry. The detail is incredible when you look closely at each characters costume and weapons.

This detail can allow the viewer to guess the genre of the film , as the weapons suggest that this is an action film, but the designs of the weapons and costumes also suggest sci-fi, however this poster does not show any links to the comedy part of this film. This level of detail is something that I want to include in the posters that we create for our film trailer.

Main image BackgroundThe foreground of this poster is extremely detailed, but there is also a great amount of detail and action in the background as well . The image used in the poster depicts the penultimate action sequence of the film where Ronan, the ‘ferocious genocidal militarist’ uses his mothership and fleet of battleships to attack Xandar. The ravagers, the group of mercenaries that raised Quill, and the Nova Corps, Xandar’s police force send ships up to stop the attack resulting in a exciting aerial dogfight.

This action sequence makes the perfect backdrop for this poster as it gives the film a sense of genre, with the use of spaceships suggesting sci-fi and the various explosions suggesting action.

Again the detail is excruciatingly clear as the viewer can clearly see the dogfight taking place, but there is also so much detail in the clouds as well as in the city below. The detail of this poster is ultimately astounding and I will work extremely hard to give our posters this much detail.

TAGLINE

The tagline is essentially another way to promote the film as the tagline reads ‘From the studio that brought you ‘The Avengers’, as The Avengers was Marvel’s highest grossing film, making over 1 Billion Dollars.This tagline is an excellent idea for this film as The Avengers starred well known characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk.

However, the Guardians of the Galaxy are fairly unknown characters so a link like this could help to develop interest in the film.A tagline like this is a good idea for a brand new franchise like Guardians of the Galaxy, however in our poster we are going to use a tagline related to the films story.

Credits CopyrightandNear the bottom of the poster is the billing block, which essentially explains which company is producing the film (Marvel Studios). It also gives the names of the director and producers of the film, as well as the stars and other key staff. It is written in a small thin grey font that makes it difficult to read. The reason for the size is because there is a large amount of text to put on the poster and it wouldn’t fit if it was to big and the colour of the text makes it less visible meaning that the text will not draw any attention away from the main image.

Below the billing block is the release date which will generate more interest and excitement for the film and I like the way that it is written in the film’s signature font, which again gives the text a futuristic, three dimensional feel .

LayoutThe layout of the poster is fairly generic, but that is not necessarily a bad feature as this layout really helps to amplify the main image, giving the poster dimension and depth.

With the text at the bottom of this poster it follows most conventions, whilst the bold and individual font stands out here , it doesn’t draw any attention away from the main image. The main image is obviously in the centre of the poster as this is where it will get the most attention.

At the top of the poster there are the credits to the stars of the film. The layout of this poster is fairly simplistic, but it helps to amplify the main image and show of its detail.

ColourThis poster has a wide ranging colour palette in terms of variety. Most of the colours aren’t extremely bright or neon which stops this poster from looking tawdry.

The varying colours stand out on the page, but they don’t clash they blend together well, as the colours used are quite dark and subtle.

I want to use a dark colour palette for our film posters as we have made a sci-fi thriller film trailer and I feel that the use of darker colours gives this poster a much more serious tone.

Conclusion

Overall, this poster is an excellent example of how to advertise a film. It helps to specify the genre and promotes the characters costumes and weapons. It also has a huge amount of detail in the foreground image of the characters as well as in the background in the dog fight and in the city below. There are lot of brilliant features within this poster that I hope to replicate when I create the posters for our film trailer.