Film poster conventions

To be effective, film posters need to contain short, concise points of information which people can understand easily and quickly.

Posters can be used for different effects, and like trailers, can be broken down into two types:

Teaser poster:

Theatrical poster:

As you can see, like the trailers, there is much more information in the theatrical poster than in the teaser poster. For example, the release date, the name of the film, and the billing block.

But what else do we typically see in a thriller poster?

If we look at either of the two posters, we can see a man in a suit, who in each poster is wielding a gun. In the theatrical poster we also see someone who looks to be a typical 'femme fatale'. 

The typical conventions we expect to see would be typical to the conventions of the sub-genre of thriller the film is categorised into. So for an action thriller poster, we could expect to see iconography such as guns, suits, attractive women, and urban environments.

This is shown in the poster of 'Shoot em up':

Another typical convention of a poster for a film is a billing block. A billing block is a block of text, usually at the bottom of the page in a plain space where some of the credits of the film are added. As well as the billing block, the main actors' names are normally on the poster, this is done so that if someone likes a particular actor, they can easily see the actor's name even if they are in costume on the poster. If the film has a tagline, this is also normally added onto the poster. For example, the tagline of 'Shoot em up' is "No name, no past, nothing to lose."