Post 16: Ancillary Task 1 - Postcards

For this task we had to focus on promotion and distribution. After researching into the best effective ways of promoting films, I realised that one of the most common ways of promotion is the use of film Posters and Postcards. 

I found that some example of the principles that audiences may expect to see are:

• Name of Film
• Release Date
• Images
• Slogan/Tag Lines
• Quotes from the Film
• Unique Selling Points
• Style
• Actor’s/Actresses names
• Directors Name
• Logo
• Production Company

There are many principles that need to be taken into account as we can see above however, not all production companies will be able to afford this due to budgets that they have. Posters require a large amount of money because they are placed in many different areas for example:  

• Shop Windows
• Bus Stops 
• Buses 
• Billboards
• Train Stations 

This is an effective  way of promotion because there is a higher advantage of promoting the film to the biggest audience possible. 


From looking at this poster on the right, we can see that it automatically catches the audience’s attention due to the detailed images and interesting title.  As well as hardly  having  any writing, it  makes the audience only focus on the image as it is the dominant feature of the poster.


Harry Potter is a worldwide known million pound production that is filmed in the UK, however it is joined with Warner Brothers in America. 

As we can see from this poster on the left , we can compare it to the Harry Potter poster and see that it is a much less budgeted film due to the basic writing and straight forward images.


It also has shown less principles on the poster compared to the Harry Potter poster which also tells the audiences that it is a less budgeted film.


Trainspotting was a small budgeted British production which is addressed as an adult film to the audience due to the age limit image. 


Also the image of the man swearing and smoking a cigarette is another way of telling the audience that this is an adult film. Similar to Harry Potter, this image is the dominant feature of the poster.  

A well known way of promoting Short films is a Postcard as it is a much cheaper and effective of promoting your film. The Postcards tend to have less information on them which is a creative effect as it draws the attention of the audience to wanting to know more about the film.

The biggest difference between a poster and a postcard is that you can add extra information on the back of a postcard & this gives an extra chance of promoting your short films as you can leave some in shops for people to pick up or you can hand them out to the general public.



Below are the following principles that you should think about including on your Postcards:

• Name of Director
• Short Film Email Address
• Cast List
• Logo
• Title
• Image
• Tag Line/Slogan

Below One of Two existing Postcard designs produced for short films:

Divine is a short film produced by Becky Knapp, who came into some class lessons to help us with our scripts in our pre-production stage.