This slideshow will detail the conventions to short film posters of both content and form.

James Perfect

As evident as this may be all short film posters I have come across are portrait based. This may be because it is found that the eye is more suited to portrait based documents as they are often more eye grabbing. This is a convention we will abide by.

Linking in with the convention of portrait is shot type, the typical shots used range from LS’s to CU’s and are suited to a portrait poster as opposed to WS’s in which would possibly be suited more to a landscape orientation.

Shot types in this region are useful at establishing the main character as the viewer can get an adequate detail of the main characters displayed on the poster.

Short film posters will conventionally feature an image of the main characters as opposed to feature length films that will often feature a prop or setting.

This may be because short films are often central to their characters, in which they feature (1, 2 or 3 conventionally). The audience is able to recognise the image of the character on the poster and relate it to the film, this makes the two media products cohesive.

As seen below I have compared a short film poster to a feature length.

From first glance both posters feature only one image, however the difference here being the short film poster is at CU whilst the other is at an XLS. The short film poster introduces the main character, the feature length does not.

One of the clearer conventions that can be affiliated with any poster is a bold readable title, being able to the read the title of the short film is very important so the viewer can recognise it.

The font size and type is conventionally bigger and in a different style to all other text. In order to grab the readers attention and alert them of our short films title, we must follow this form convention.

The credits from the producers and directors to the actors, costume designers and companies involved are a conventional factor of short film posters. A smaller font is used to display their names and this was common across all short film posters I looked at, below I have highlighted the credits on a few examples.