What is the purpose of a film poster?

• The main purpose of a film poster is to advertise the film whilst portraying it in a positive representation. Filmmakers will never create film posters with a negative representation of their film that would throw off the audience. Instead film posters will often be exaggerated and will glorify the film in order to entice the audience and make them want to watch their film in cinemas.
• In order to entice the audience film posters often highlight 'stars' in the film and include positive reviews from film critics, sometimes over exaggerated and out of context to make the film seem more enjoyable. This would differ in short films as there are not likely to be star actors and rave reviews as you get in feature length films. Furthermore film posters inform the audience of the themes and genres of the film often through the use of artwork, background, tagline etc. After a glance of a film poster the audience should be able to identify the theme and genre of that movie.
• In the 'Hitch' poster we can see how they follow many of the regular conventions but if we read into the connotations of this we can depict many aspects of this film. The white background suggests a romantic comedy, while the tagline 'Expert in seduction' suggests another element of romance in the film. Another aspect of the poster which features in all others is the key production credits and distribution information. This is rarely looked at in detail by the audience however it still offers some information on the film.
• There are other examples of film posters known as 'teaser posters', made months prior to the movies release. However these posters often rely on a movies popularity and will often be used for a sequel, for example the Harry Potter series. What we may also see is a series of posters aimed for different audiences, eg the film 'Elizabeth' had a UK poster and a US poster in order to broaden its appeal to different types of audiences. In the UK it is presented as a historical thriller whereas in the US it is presented as a passionate romance.