Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Blog #1 Now You See Me movie poster



"Now You See Me" 






The movie Now You See Me is by itself, a mystery movie, and the poster accomplishes that as well by not giving the viewer that many clues that would hint as to what exactly the movie is about. The title, “Now You See Me”, is the first part of the phrase, “Now you see me, now you don’t,” which is often associated with magic. So right off the bat, the poster uses pathos to appeal to those viewers who are fans of magic, illusions, mystery, and things like that. The poster also establishes pathos with the tagline, “The closer you look, the less you’ll see,” which adds even more to the mystery effect. It is designed to make you wonder what kind of tricks these magicians are going to do that haven’t been done already. The tagline is certainly what gained my interest. Since I am a fan of mystery movies that often have a twist at the end, I was immediately pulled in to give this movie a try. In addition, the visual aspects achieve pathos by showing dark colors. All of the characters are dressed in black and the background is primarily gray. These colors signify that this movie will be serious and maybe even a little dark.

Ethos plays a significant role in this poster and it is established by putting all of the major characters on the poster. It is pretty hard to find a bad movie that Morgan Freeman is in, so the producers made sure to put him on the poster. Immediately, all of his millions of fans will be intrigued to see it. Other main characters include Woody Haralson, Dave Franco, who starred in “21 Jump Street,” and Jesse Eisneberg who starred in “The Social Network,” both of whom achieved great fame from those movies. So most likely, those who enjoyed them will also enjoy this one. Just about every character was known before this movie, so to have many of these big budget stars conveys to the audience that a lot of money went into this movie and it will most likely be pretty good. Lastly, If you look closely, you can see the character that is played by Mark Ruffalo to be in possession of a badge and gun. This can be interpreted as both Pathos and Logos. It can be Pathos because it appeals to the crowd that likes crime and thriller movies and logos because it shows the fact that this movie will include law enforcement.

The Logos in this poster is in my opinion the least significant out of ethos, logos, and pathos. I say this because of three main things. One, you can’t even read the information at the bottom unless you physically have the poster in front of you. Two, the name of the director or producer is not mentioned. This doesn’t mean they are bad at what they do, but had this movie been directed by a big name like Quentin Tarantino, then his name would be one of the highlights in the poster. And three, there is no setting. The background is blank. This doesn’t give us any information other than that there is not one central place that this movie is based out of.


Overall, this poster accomplished what it was designed to do. It gave the general overview of the two parties that are involved, but nothing more. I think the movie crew was successful in enticing people to go see the movie and I believe the movie itself was a success.

2 comments:

  1. I like how you jump right into analyzing this poster. I think you did a good job of evaluating several aspects of this poster, especially the title and the tagline. I also like how you addressed what was lacking from the poster (i.e.: it doesn't mention the director or producer, there is no background, etc). I think you did well getting at the main ideas that this poster is trying to convey; good job!

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  2. I liked what you did by being honest with the logos not being all that important. I agree with the fact that some movie posters do not need to have all three in order to be effective. I personally enjoyed this movie very much and I also liked your analysis of the poster.

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