Film Posters

A film poster is essential to the marketing package! It's difficult to define what makes a 'good' film poster. Is it what's most visual appealing? What marketed the film best? Idealy, a good film poster should intriuge it's target audience, reveal the genre, and sell itself.

A number of films release a series of what are called Teaser Posters. I find them quite effective, as they create this immense built up just to see the OFFICIAL poster.

Here's the first look at the creepy teaser poster for "Saw V", latest installment of a popular horror franchise. Released by Lionsgate, here is where the hype begins! If you haven't seen Saw IV, you will not understand the concept of the image.

This is why the Saw series are appealing, because they continue to push the boundaries of accepted filmmaking and marketing in Hollywood, and of course if you love gore, crime and horror.

I think to some extent they are predictable, but with the Saw movies (espically number 2), they are predictable with a twist. Year after year, they continue to shock the nation. This is their unique selling point.

A second teaser poster was the "banned poster". All over buses, they was an advertisement for a poster, but had a huge sticker on it telling them to visit the website to view the poster. I find it amazing and slightly funny how many people that were fooled by this! This was obviously a successful publicity stunt. This also reminded me of the marketing for Blair Witch , the fake missing posters. This was a very smart move, leaving the audience dying of curiousity. This image could increase
1) the number of hits the official website has
2) the number of people going to see it upon cinematic release
and this would generate more money!

Here is the official poster for Saw V, the out of focus head is a nice touch. BUT I think it is the WEAKEST poster they have released. It is really different compared the last four. Although in its defence, us humans dont really have five of anything to show cut off. Considering they have already used fingers and teeth. I think people would complain if they repeated hands.

Another unique selling point is releasing the film (in the UK anyway) in October! HALLOWEEN - this was bound to attract an audience of all ages.

Saw - 1st October 2004
Saw II - 28th October 2005
Saw III - 27th October 2006
Saw IV - 26th October 2007
Saw V - 24th October 2008

If you noticed, the first film released was at the beginning of the month - I think the director/producers learnt this was a good, successful idea and thought next time round they would release it closer to halloween. I love how they decided to incorporate the Halloween theme with number three, the tagline being: " This Halloween He's Pulling Out All The Stops".