Fonts and Their Significance

Selecting a suitable font for my short film is, perhaps surprisingly, a task that's rather important. Fonts, which are used in both the title sequence and the credits, help to reinforce or establish a short film's tone. They can have the effect of being ominous or foreboding, particularly in the thriller sub-genre. Whilst filming and putting together my short film (more of which will be posted over the coming days) the selection of a font had seemed a little inconsequential. Does a title sequence's font have any lasting effect on the audience? The path to answering this question had a surprising conclusion.

Font Iconicism

The iconicism of these films and their fonts is undeniable. You see the font and instantaneously associate such a font with the film their associated with. Fonts symboliclly connote what a film may be about. For instance, the Alien Versus Predator logo has a futuristic style, as suggested by the sloping 'P' and the way in which the 'A' appears. Therefore, the logo to the film supports the branding of a film as sci-fi, conforming to the conventions of sci-fi calligraphy (the calligraphy bears resemblance to the Star Wars lettering) helping the potential audience to find their way onto cinema seats.  

Let's take a look at three film poster's, all of which follow a similar genre to my short film, and in particular how they've used fonts to give the audience a clue as to what the film may entail. First of all, Prisoners (2013):

Prisoners isn't a film I've seen, but the film's synopsis clearly suggests a film that is serious and dark in tone. Therefore, it's unsurprising that the font for Prisoners is simple, yet serious. The simplicity of the font reinforces the seriousness of Jackman and Gyllenhaal's faces in the rest of the poster. The 'O' is what makes the lettering so interesting; the film is like a maze, which supports the idea of cat-and-mouse between detective and murderer. Also, the tagline is positioned quietly in the bottom right of the title, which, in a way, makes the tagline's words all the more shocking and compelling. The idea 'less is more' comes to mind with this font and tagline, engaging the viewer in a more subtle manner.

This is a fan poster from a Tumblr dedicated to minimalistic styles of posters. Se7en, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, revolves around the seven deadly sins, and so the title on this poster follows a neat format, highlighting the films title amongst letters within the deadly sins. The way in which the films title is highlighted in red, set amongst the lack background, has dangerous connotations of death and danger. Furthermore, the blunt, statement-like manner of the font adds to a real sense of danger, the sins not being presented in a sugar-coated or glorified manner.

The final film I've decided to look at is another David Fincher thriller, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011). The font used is what I'd describe as sharp, looking almost knife-like, which has indexical connotations of danger, murder and mystery, all of which correspond with the film's genre. The 'Dragon Tattoo' part holds most prominence in terms of size, which could be interpreted in one of two ways; one, that dragon tattoo is iconic, appealing to readers of the book or viewers of the original Swedish film; secondly, uninitiated viewers of the poster question the significance of something on the surface appears to be trivial. Therefore, the lettering has been styled in such a way to market towards various target audiences.

I've found my research on font and lettering to be an interesting sphere of research. Creating the poster for my own thriller, I need to convey a sense of edginess and mystery that is seen in the text for the films above. This is of importance in making sure that I have carefully considered my target market, and therefore have been careful in constructing all facets of my poster so that it conforms to my target demographic. Consequently, looking at these previous texts has made me reflect on my own poster and titles, whilst at the same time giving me inspiration  as I now begin to create my poster.