Narrative image

The narrative image of a film can be set up in a number of different ways, for example DVD covers and film posters. A film's narrative image helps to set up audience expectations as to what a film will be about and what the themes might be.

Occasionally, a film's narrative image created will not be entirely accurate. A recent example of this is Tim Burton's 'Sweeney Todd'.

This 'Sweeney Todd' poster sets up the genre and themes of the film quite well. The tagline ('Never Forget. Never Forgive') suggests that revenge will be a very important theme in the film. The razor in Johnny Depp's hand appears to be Sweeney Todd's weapon of choice. The title of the film gives information about the main character and the location of the film. The blood splatter across the title also suggests that blood will also be a main feature of the film.

However, there is nothing prominent on the poster to indicate that the film is a musical. In the small writing at the bottom of the poster it does say that the film is based on the musical by Stephen Sondheim, but admittedly most people won't actually pay all that much attention to the small writing. This was quite misleading for Tim Burton/thriller fans who were considering going to see the film. Many people expected it to be your normal thriller film, and were quite surprised to find that it is in fact a musical. Although Sweeney Todd really is a lot darker than most musicals, many people who watched it were quite disappointed that there were songs during the course of the film.



Our DVD cover is one way in which the narrative image of our film would be created.
The main image on the cover is a polaroid which links to a main element of film. The back cover also has a polaroid on it, so the audience would probably expect polaroids to appear a lot in the film. The male's face on the polaroid is half in darkness, which shows that maybe the villain leads some kind of double life. The film has an 18 certificate, which would make the audience expect that the film would be more violent than a film with a lower certificate. The actors' names are quite small on the front cover, which shows that they are not being used to sell the film. The colours used are quite conventional for a thriller cover. The black and white could link to the idea of some sort of battle between evil ('The Anaesthetist') and good (Naomi). The title of the film sets up the expectation that the film will mainly be focused on the villain. 'The Anaesthetist' suggests that the killer has a medical knowledge and this would probably be an important element of his killing style.