Shutter Island 1

Shutter Island was a film I studied due to the interesting aspects of noir featured within the film. When I looked over the film trailer again, I thought it would be a good idea to include one of the posters in my research.

Unlike posters for other films, this poster appears to show a great deal of the colour black. This connotes how negative the film is, showing themes of danger and the unknown. This film includes an extremely complex story line which links with the connotation of the unknown from the colour black on the poster.

The way in which the match is lit suggests that there is some sort of investigation which needs to be solved. the male actors face is lit up showing a puzzled look. This allows us to understand even more that this man is involved in sorting some sort of mystery. This allows us to see how the psychological aspects attract an audience which looks for an unsolved crime or puzzle. 

As soon as we look at this poster, we see Leonardo Dicaprio's face lit up by a match. We immediately understand that the target audience for this film is females aged between 15 and 35 (simply because the film is rated as a 15 and Leonardo Dicaprio is not a young actor, meaning older generations would also be attracted to him). He is a very well known, good looking actor who is acting in this film to draw the attention of the female audience. 

The films title appears in red / orange coloured letters across the bottom of the poster. This indicates some sort of danger involved in the film here. We know there is some sort of danger from the trailer too, due to the fact we often see many scenes which show violence or weapons. The way in which the word 'Island' is present, suggests that there is a theme of being captured or trapped away from reality. This is exactly what is seen in shutter island. To emphasize this point, a blue sea is shown around the island itself. This suggest that there is no escaping for whoever is living on the island. The target audience will find this interesting due to the fact they are encouraged to wonder why this is. The main target audience for 'Shutter Island' would be people interested in psychology. This is because of the way the film is about a psychological mental hospital, however it is also because of the way the film includes a very complex story line which takes some thought to understand.