Heuristic #1 Words on movie posters

Introduce Your Genre

1. Identify your tentative “underappreciated” genre (or subgenre)

The genre I want to introduce is the words on the movie poster.

1. What is interesting to you about this genre? Or, why might it be significant or otherwise worth paying attention to?

The plot of a movie is very long, and the movie poster must have a few short words to summarize the whole movie. So the words on the movie poster is very important.

1. Tentatively, define/describe your corpus (collection of texts/examples)

Most of the words on the movie poster use the simplest words, homonyms or numbers. But the producer can achieve the purpose of summarizing the movie through the change of the font.

1. Provide links (and/or titles) of five samples. (Try to gather samples from more than one “place” [or type] in order to obtain a diverse and accurate representation of the genre. For now, choose samples without significant deviations).

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Superman-Returns-POSTER-Movie-C-27×40/128411782

http://www.impawards.com/2006/mission_impossible_iii_ver3_xlg.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183505/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362227/

Describe the Context

1. Setting: Where (in what context or medium) does the genre appear? How and when is it used? With what other genres does this genre interact? How?

This genre must have appeared on the movie poster. It is a sentence composed of very simple words, or only words. This kind of genre needs to consider the feelings of the audience. The audience did not usually see the promo before they saw the poster, so they didn’t know the plot of the movie. However, the information used to display the posters is very limited. Only the contrast between the pictures and the text can give the audience some hints about the plot.

1. Subject: What topics, issues, ideas, etc. are common to this genre? When people use this genre, what are they communicating about?

When producers write the words of a movie poster, they most want to show the central idea of ​​the film to the audience, and at the same time let the audience have an interest in the film. Due to space limitations, the audience did not have the patience to read large sections of text, so many viewers understand that these sentences require savvy. The viewer may be interested in an exaggerated picture on the poster, but a picture cannot summarize the story or control the rhythm of the movie. However, sentences that are too difficult to understand will only confuse the audience, so being simple and easy to understand is the most critical.

1. Writers: Who writes the texts in this genre? Are multiple writers possible? What roles do they perform? What characteristics must writers of this genre possess? Under what circumstances do writers write the genre (e.g., in teams, on a computer, in a rush, for their profession? for fun?)?

The authors of these words can be many people, a team and even people who do different jobs in film production. The director or screenwriter is most likely the author of these words. Sometimes they just have an idea, and the real implementation requires the cooperation of the designer. The authors of these words must first understand the theme of the film and the emotions of the entire film. He needs to understand the character of the protagonist and the direction of the story. A few simple words are the key to the film’s profit and loss, so this is a very difficult job.

1. Readers: Who reads the texts in this genre? Is there more than one type of reader for this genre? What roles do they perform? What characteristics must readers of this genre possess? Under what circumstances do readers read the genre (e.g., at their leisure, on the run, in waiting rooms)?

Anyone can read these texts. They may be the weekends when they want to watch a movie but have no goals, or the advertisements they use when browsing the web at work, or even the inadvertent glimpse of their driving through the cinema. First of all, readers of this text are interested in movies. A person who doesn’t like to watch movies is never a poster that needs to be attracted.

1. Exigency/Purpose(s): Why do writers write this genre, and why do readers read it? What purposes does the genre fulfill for the people who use it?

A good text can attract viewers who are not interested in the movie to buy movie tickets. I think the most concise and powerful text is Superman Returns. There is only Superman’s “S” logo in the poster. The text is even cooler. There is only one “Returns”, so that everyone will wait for the Superman to come again in the summer. The text of such super commercial movies is usually the simplest, mostly the release date. For example, “The Mission’s Impossible III” will directly write “The mission begins 05 05 06”. The last three rows of numbers originally meant to be released on May 5, 2006, but the three rows of digital writing and arrangement seem to be like a bomb. The set explosion time also implies the rhythm of the movie, which makes the audience more immersive. This explosion scene is absolutely amazing. Looking at the trailer, Tom Cruise was blown up and hit by a car and knew that the film must look good. The previous works of Jim Carrey have extremely precise skills in the text. The poster in “The World of Truman” is a picture of Jim Carrey sleeping on a big TV wall with a pillow. This time the copy is quite playful. On the TV wall, “On the air, unaware” is written, not only in the meaning of the message, but also ingeniously telling that the film is a film that steals the privacy of other people, and the effect of homophobic sounds is more impressive. The text of the other “Dumb and Dumber” is also very good. Just on the left side of the picture divided into half, there is a “FROM GENTLE TO MENTLE”, which is a good sentence with both meaning and sound.The text of The Terminal is “Life is waiting”. Indeed, people who have been to the airport will know that waiting in the airport has become a necessity, waiting for registration, waiting for take-off, waiting for landing, countless waiting is the epitome of life, but also the voice of the film’s leading actor Tom Hank. He was trapped in the airport waiting to return to the country, or to enter the United States, his life seems to exist only to wait.