Ill Manors print: Branding

1. What are the key conventions that help you identify the print text (e.g. title, central image, review quotes etc.)? - This poster features several key conventions of print texts. Firstly, the title of the film is positioned in the centre of the poster, sitting on top of the smallest pair of orange lines which could potentially be seen as an arrow, pointing to the title, drawing the audience's attention straight to it. The colour scheme of this poster, particularly the orange, has probably been used deliberately to create contrast between itself and the grey - this helps make the poster more eye catching for the audience. In terms of a central image, it's not entirely clear what the central image is so this could be to tell the audience that all the images on the poster are equally important and they all play crucial parts in the narrative. At the top of the poster there are two review quotes and star ratings, most likely used to encourage audiences to go and see it. Below the reviews, the names of the cast are listed and this is an important key convention as it gives the audience an opportunity to form initial opinions on the film based on who's in it and therefore potentially convincing them to go and see it. 
2. What design features help identify the Ill Manors brand? - Similarly to the previous answer, the colour scheme and the shapes that feature could be clear indications of the branding. The harsh contrast between the main colours and the sharpness of the triangular shapes could be representative of the brutality and intensity of the narrative. This could be further reinforced by the typeface used for all the text on the poster.

1. On this DVD sleeve, the same typeface has been used for the title, which has been made bigger and is positioned in front of the central image which, in this case, is the protagonist (Aaron) who appears in all three of these print examples, possibly indicating his superiority and significance as a character. The layout of the title and central image together is successful in conveying the genre of the film due to the image of the gun that appears in front of the title which is highly suggestive of a dark and violent narrative. Furthermore, it could be argued that the way Aaron's arm has been positioned around the title could be implying the idea of young people protecting what is important to them and as we are already aware, 'Ill Manors' could be referring to the area the young people in the film live in so this image could be subtly telling the audience that that could be something the film is going to revolve heavily around. One convention of this DVD cover that doesn't appear on the last print example is the age rating. It appears a total of six times and this is essentially just to stress to the audience how brutal the film is going to be. Something else quite significant on this print example is the fact that when crediting the director, they have used both 'Ben Drew' and 'Plan B' and this could potentially be to attract more people because the film's target audience are more likely to know Ben Drew by his professional name - Plan B - so using both of them gives the film an opportunity to attract a wider audience. One other thing this cover has done is at the top, it's made reference to the lead actor's previous work and this is a key convention because it tells the audience that if you enjoyed The Sweeney, then you'll probably enjoy Ill Manors.

2. The use of the background images on this DVD cover e.g. the urban, London buildings, the dark clouds, the shadows at the end of the road behind Aaron are all successful in advertising Ill Manors' brand. They all reinforce the idea that the film is going to be gritty, dark and intense and not in the slightest bit happy.

The most obvious example of synergy present on this text is Plan B's name because this links to the music video that was released alongside the film.

1 & 2 . On this billboard poster, the central image is again, the protagonist Aaron positioned behind the title. However, it could be argued that the tower blocks could also be included as the central image, especially since for this poster, the title has been cleverly manipulated to look like the tower blocks. Another convention we see on this poster is the release date at the bottom, which lies between the age rating, appearing only once this time, and the social media links. The colour scheme of this poster is mainly yellow and grey. Interestingly, yellow is a colour usually associated with happiness which could cause some confusion because there are very few happy incidences in Ill Manors so it makes us wonder why yellow has been used. Something else that features on this poster that doesn't feature on the other two texts is the film's tagline that also appears in the trailer. The second line of the tagline could possibly link to what is actually happening on the poster (Aaron is essentially vomiting on the 'tower blocks') so when it says 'some environments are just harder to survive in', the central image could be symbolic of that - that having to survive in this environment is literally sickening so this could give some subtle hints at the genre of the film and potentially its narrative.

The synergy that this poster has is definitely the social media links because this then allows the audience to go onto Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. and talk about the film, increasing its popularity, advertising it more.