POSTER - Cowboy Film Poster Analysis

WHAT DO COWBOY POSTERS LOOK LIKE?


There is a video of this information at the bottom of this post, if you can't be bothered to trawl through the endless text. The posters I refer to can be seen further down also.

So: I need to make a poster. But what do spaghetti-western posters look like? And more specifically, what will 'Spaghetti Western's poster look like? The only way to find out what works and what doesn't, is to look at old spaghetti-western posters.

To start with, I will try and find the similarities between the film posters (of the films that inspired my film), so I have some solid building blocks to start the construction of my poster - I will know what things I will want to include on my poster and what I think is crap.

What is first noticeable about these 4 film posters of Ennio Morricone Western's from the 1960s is that they don't use unedited photographic images. The characters are either painted, or shown through a manipulated photographic image. Although this is obvious, it can be used effectively and non-effectively. For example, on some of these posters, it brings out vibrant colours and creates contrasts - while others become very dull and lifeless. There are many existing programs that I could use to give a photographic image an altered effect, so this is a design technique I could consider using when designing my poster.

All of the posters use reds and browns as the central colours. The browns are a typical colour seen throughout westerns - with the desert settings and the dusty clothes. The vibrant, bright red gives connotations of all sorts of things: Danger, death and blood, the harsh, relentless sun, and heated conflicts. I may want to use a similar colour scheme for my posters - a strong use of vibrant red and earthy brown.

A mood-board or colour palette I made to help in the creation of my poster...using the eyedropper tool on the posters below to steal their colours.

A third similarity is that three of the posters show a cowboy pistol. This is a prop from the film: so having it in the poster gives us an idea of what type of film it is - not just a western, but an action film also. So I will want to consider including a gun on my poster to show the action theme of my film.
Two of the posters here also use a still from the film as the background. I think this is more effective than the other two because it helps give further insight into the film. Audiences can also recognize the still when watching the film.

...ET POUR QUELQUES DOLLARS DE PLUS... For a Few Dollars More. This posters USP (unique selling point) is the main actor, Clint Eastwood, as it is a sequel to a film in which he himself was a huge factor in the films success, for being a silent but deadly, lone, gruff man, an antihero. Here, in this poster, he is depicted the same - he is unshaven and squinting, making him look a wild-west hardened man, and holds his gun up menacingly. You would be forgiven for thinking him the villain of the film, but his menacing pose his contrasted to the still from the film in the background, which shows him as nonchalantly brave in the face of danger - three confident looking Mexicans. This sets him up as an antihero - a gruff but brave lone gunslinger, who is menacing to the viewer, but more so to his enemies.

The font is also effective: it looks just as rugged and 'wild-west' worn as Clint Eastwood himself. So the poster revolves around entirely around Clint Eastwood.

Once Upon a Time in the West. I don't think this poster appeals to me very much, but I want to work out why. I think the paint effect makes the film look old and less exciting, with very dull colours. The characters wear very similar clothes, and nothing is learnt about them through the poster. The film revolves around Charles Bronson, a mysterious man who plays his harmonica sorrowfully, but nothing is seen of the harmonica. His cold hard stare is also deadened by the paint effect. The poster becomes indistinguishable.

This poster I think is also very ineffective. The white and brown dull the poster, while the effect also dulls Clint Eastwood, the USP of the film as indicated by the writing on the left hand side of the screen: 'he's going to trigger a whole new style of adventure'. It is certainly not colourful enough, and could do with the blood-red seen in the poster below.

I think, although the image is not very telling of the film, colour is used to good effect in this poster. The yellow, red and black all contrast effectively to make the characters look dangerous and rough. This is the type of colour scheme I want to use in my poster.