The poster uses conventions of real posters such as a bold title in a distressed font, a black and white central image with hints of color, and a small block of credits in a contrasting color. The poster developed these conventions by choosing fonts that suited the genres of social realism and thriller, using a stencil-style title, and adding painted textures and shadows around the image to suggest violence while drawing attention to key elements. Some ways the poster could further challenge conventions were experimenting more with additional text or changing the vague tagline.

1. Evaluation Question 1:
(Part 4)
How does my poster use, develop or
challenge the conventions of real posters?
By Ta ny a McDo n a ld

2. ‘Retribution’ The Poster
(and how it conforms to conventions)

3. Fonts
www.dafont.com
www.urbanfonts.com
DaFont is an archive of freely downloadable
fonts. Fonts are categorized by theme, and
can also be sorted by name, date, and
popularity.
Using these websites I found these fonts
under ‘Distorted’, ‘Destroy’, ‘Stencil/Army’
‘Trash’ and ‘Graffiti’. I felt that fonts which
looked like graffiti suited the social realism
genre while the stencil style suited the idea of
prison (and the main characters crimes) and
also suited the thriller genre.
I used the red font in my trailer, the orange in
my poster and the green in my magazine
cover.

4. Fonts
I noticed in the posters I researched that,
whether it was social realism or thriller,
the titles tended to be bold and blunt.
In the ‘Shank’ title there is a clever use of
the silhouette of a gang member (whereas
it may have been presumed that they
would use a graffiti type font to emphasize
the theme of gangs - this was my intention
in my title).
In the ‘This is England’ title they have used
a font which, while it is bold and neat, is
weathered in a way which suggests graffiti.
In the ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ title the bold
style links with my use of a stencil style in
poster.

5. The Name
When looking at existing films I noticed that many of the films seemed to
have quite blunt titles which were often only one word.
I decided to use ‘revenge’ in some form in the title so I used
www.thesaurus.com and looked at the other possible words for revenge.
These were:
animus, attack, avenging, avengment, counterblow, counterinsurgency,
counterplay, eye for an eye, fight, getting even, ill will, implacability,
malevolence, measure for measure, rancor, repayment, reprisal, requital,
retribution, return, ruthlessness, satisfaction, sortie, spitefulness, tit for
tat, vengeance, vengefulness, vindictiveness
I decided that ‘Retribution’ sounded and looked the best and also fitted
the idea of my ‘film’ the best.

6. The Original Plan
+ =
My original plan was to have a poster where the main
character is looking up and in his shadow is photos of the
other characters. I started by having separate photos of a brick
wall and then the main character looking up into a lamp,
however, when cut together it didn’t come out in a very good
quality, so, I then took a photo of Will in front of the wall and
decided I would edit in the shading. This didn’t work well in
editing as the shadows didn’t look real.

7. The Possible Photos
These are the photos I considered using after the failure of my first plan. The first idea was to use the
knife as a replacement for the black bar they use to hide identity on TV (with the title going most likely
into the knife). The second and third had pretty much the same idea (The difference being the hood up
or down) as I wanted it to resemble the position of ‘hands on your head’ when caught by the Police.

8. Poster - The Progress
The above photos show the three main changes which I made to my poster - these involved
changing the background (the paint splatters and shading), the title (the size and font) and the
credits (which I changed the size and shape of).

9. Tagline: I decided to use a
sentence relevant to the Title: I decided to use a
film rather than a quote or stencil font which is still
a rating or award (even splattered and corrupted,
though in the trailer I used allowing it to link with the
awards in the credits). As a titles in the trailer and the
last decision I used drop title in the magazine cover.
shadows on the tagline and By using a stencil font I
title to make them stand also hoped to further
out and also to emphasize emphasize the idea that the
the light being shone on position of the figure
the character. suggests he is being
arrested.
Photo: I decided to use a
black and white photo with
If I did this poster again,
only a hint of colour in the
rather than completely
handle of the knife -
re-doing it I would instead
making the colour scheme
use this template and
of red, black and white
instead maybe experiment
clear. By using bright red
a bit with adding awards or
attention is drawn to the
actor names or quotes or
knife and the title. I used
ratings - but some of the
paint splatters to suggest at
charm of this poster came
the violence in the film
from how much space it
(which also works with the
had (especially as the
knife) and I used shading
magazine cover had next to
around the edges to not
no space left). I would also
only draw attention to the
consider changing the
figure but to also echo the
tagline as I’m sure there
titles in my trailer.
are many other
Credit Block: I aimed to possibilities for what it
make it small (like it was in could be (whereas, unless
all the examples I looked you’ve seen he trailer, this
at) but to also make it red could be considered quite
to stand out. vague).