Black Panther Poster Analysis

hello rob vane here and in this video

going to be texture analyzing the poster

for

marvel studios black panther

so the first thing we have to consider

is what is the purpose of a film poster

film posters are promotional material

they exist to promote the film to the

target audience to persuade the target

audience to go and watch the film

they're there to advertise the film

to make audiences a way that the film

exists in the first place but also to

use

various elements to entice the audience

to come and see the film

now someone like david hesmergelch would

talk about the idea that

film producers are going to want to

minimize risk and maximize

profit

and one of the ways they're going to do

that is through

using

things like stars

and genres and

franchises

to appeal to the audience

it's basically using a set of

recognizable and

standard

elements that will entice the audience

it's like saying you know these other

films you've seen before you don't like

those well this one's going to have all

that stuff in it as well

now traditionally one of the biggest

things that's been used to sell films is

the film style

this goes all the way back to the 1920s

before then they didn't tend to film

students didn't tend to advertise the

name of the film stars because they

thought if they got too big they'd be

too big for their boots and expect too

much money

but they found out that film stars were

actually an attractive thing for

audiences audiences got to like them

so

throughout the golden age of hollywood

and even into the 1990s and early 2000s

stars were a big deal

this is less true today now that's not

to say the stars aren't important for a

film they are

but what's become more important

nowadays is the franchise the franchise

is a bigger selling point for audiences

i mean no one really cares who's playing

spider-man really

spider-man is the draw not andrew

garfield or

whoever else happens to be playing at

the time tom holland or whatever it's

spider-man that's the draw

so film stars have become less important

but that's not to say they're not

important

the second thing is genre

genre has also been traditionally very

important steve neal is the person we're

going to be talking about as our main

genre theorist

and we talk about the fact that

genres

are defined by their common ingredients

their generic conventions their generic

characteristics or tropes

there's another word we can use for it

these tropes are repeated

they become codified

and they become

easily recognizable to the audience

they've been making batman films since

the 1940s a batman film today is not

radically different from a backfire film

in the 1940s in many ways in other ways

they are radically different

but still recognizably batman

in the case of

the superhero genre the superhero genre

has become very codified

in a relatively short amount of time

um they first started to become popular

with like

superman in the late 70s early 80s

christopher reeve once

and you know in the 1990s we got the tim

burton batman's and it was but it was

with this new cycle of marvel ones in

the early 2000s that they become the

cultural juggernaut that they are today

so the marvel

franchise in particular is the one

that's taken over so whilst genre is

important today franchises are more

important

franchises is not a new thing

obviously the ultimate franchise

is probably james bond

which has been making money since the

late 1950s

star wars came along and reinvented the

film industry in the 1970s

since then we've had loads of them

whether it be hunger games or harry

potter or

anything frankly but marvel do it better

than most

in terms of their success and appealing

to their target audience

so

let's

first of all consider the stars

now what's interesting about black

panther is that whilst

many of the people who are in black

panther have gone on to become

massive stars whether it be

uh chadwick boseman or michael b jordan

or the p nyong'o or

um any of those characters they weren't

especially famous when they were in this

film although they have become massively

famous since

the more famous and well-known actors in

this film were more the secondary

characters

people like

martin freeman

was well known for being in things like

the hobbit movies

but he was probably better known for

you know the work he did on british

television in things like

um

you know

the sherlock holmes tv series right

sherlock

you've got people like

um

andy serkis who of course was again well

known from the lord of the rings playing

gollum and was better known for his

motion capture work on things like the

plan of the apes films of being an

expert on that kind of thing and

being godzilla and all this kind of

stuff i'm not called sorry king kong and

all this kind of stuff

but the other big actors in it were

actors who were famous in the 80s and

90s so you've got angela bassett here

and we've got

um forest whitaker

frost whitaker burst off the scene in i

think it was 1988 with platoon a vietnam

war movie

um became one of the most respected

black actors of his generation again

angela bassett oscar winner

well-respected actors

yet they're not the ones that dominate

the posters

they're actually

relatively small in fact they're some of

the smallest figures on the poster

obviously the poster is dominated by

chadwick boseman

who wasn't especially famous at the time

he'd been in other stuff but he wasn't

the mega star the black panther turned

him into

michael b jordan

also came massive having been in this

film but

wasn't the big story he is today

so

yes as you would expect from

a film the main star is going to be the

biggest element of the poster

and yet

compared with other superhero posters

he's not quite as large in the frame or

essential or as important in the frame

as we might expect from

other characters

from you know the earlier in the

franchise whether it be captain america

or

iron man or four or any of those

characters he seems relatively small

compared with some of them

he also looks relatively

passive

he's not in a wide legged action pose he

doesn't look like he's ready for the

fight

he is staring at us with this direct

gaze looking right at us he looks very

strong he looks

proud

but he's a bit

blank

for someone who's supposed to be the

hero

if anything michael b jordan looks more

heroic and he's supposed to be the

villain

so

that strikes me as a little bit unusual

obviously when it comes to the cast the

first thing that immediately jumps to

mind in this one

is the fact that

of the 10 characters that are on this

poster seven of them are people of color

they are black actors

this is exceptionally unusual obviously

in a mainstream hollywood blockbuster

unless it's a film that is specifically

aimed at black audiences you don't

necessarily get that very often

so that is unusual but of course this is

a film that was

consciously and specifically designed

to

speak to

the

kind of what was perceived as being the

non-traditional audience for superhero

movies which was stereotypically seen as

being white

men

16 to

25

or roughly around that anyway

in terms of franchises the one that's

always done best with people of color

traditionally has been the fast and

furious franchise because that film has

a very diverse

cast

of all sorts of death different

ethnicities and genders

it's appeal to a much wider audience

than the marvel franchise usually had

and that's important it's important in

terms of being seen

when

you know

whether it be people of color or women

ironically considering

50 of the population

they're not used to see themselves being

represented as the hero

and that's why films like black panther

and um you know dc's wonder woman and

captain marvel and all these kind of

films for marvel and like black widow

and stuff like now that's why they've

become so important

it's important for people to be seen in

ways that historically they haven't been

so this one was a major

big deal culturally

for

black audiences because they've never

really seen themselves being represented

as a hero and quite this way before

so that's obviously the first thing that

jumps out at us

the other thing is the sheer number of

characters that are on this

poster like i said there are 10 of them

it's actually quite difficult to

distinguish which ones are meant to be

the heroes and which ones are meant to

be the villains

um

possibly andy serkis down here is

looking a little bit more villainous

but other than that there's nothing much

to distinguish between the heroes and

the villains in this poster which is

quite unusual

in terms of

the generic conventions

of

the poster

it is less obviously a

superhero

film than many others in the marvel

franchise

possibly because black panther is a

relatively minor or at least was

relatively minor marvel property

certainly nowhere near as famous as his

big hitters

to be fair though the disney marvel

films

didn't really deal with their biggest

characters which of course the

uh the x-men and the fantastic four

and spider-man

so they've always had to deal with

lesser-known characters whether it be

thor or the hulk or captain america

all of which were still pretty big to be

fitted but not in the same kind of

league of spider-man

now all of this has been brought back

under the control of

disney again but you know

they've had they've really got to be fit

they've been scraping the bottom of the

barrel when it came to characters

you know especially when you're like

kind of starting with something like

black panther and guardians of the

galaxy these were very

minor characters

only really known to the most

hardcore comic book nerds

so

the fact that black panther became such

a massive hit

is a testimony to the power of the

marvel brand

so in terms of generic conventions this

looks

much more like a science fiction movie

than it does a superhero movie

and i think this comes

very much from its

futuristic looking

cityscapes that we've got down here

these

are like panther

statues i assume they are but they kind

of look kind of like robots

um

all this steel and metal

kind of effect makes it look much more

futuristic

and

you know all this metal which i suppose

is supposed to represent the vibranium

which is a key plot point of the film

gives it that science fiction look the

other thing is the colors

blue

is generally used to suggest science

fiction it's

reminiscent of

you know

planets seen from space or

um it's reminiscent of metal it's shiny

it's cold it's futuristic feeling

and that ties in with the

sort of

science fiction genre the black panther

fits into which is afrofuturism

uh which is a genre that

extrapolates what would happen if africa

had become the dominant

social cultural force on the planet

rather than europe

so

this is the genre which is very much

been

pushed to the fore by black panther

because it was very much

a lesser known sci-fi genre until then

so

that's a brief overview of that but

let's have a look at some of the more

specific

stuff there are certain things you need

in a film poster

the first and possibly the most

important is the title of the film

you've got to know what the film is

called if you're going to go and watch

it

so you have the movie's title pretty

large

on the page

surprisingly i'd say the black panther

logo here is actually quite small i'd

expect it to be

rather larger to attract people's

attention

also at the top of the page

you've got the

names of the key actors

there are all sorts of contractual

things that are used to

show the importance of the actors i mean

there are famous things like

you know the main star tends to have

their name on the left

and higher up

why because we read left or right it's

the first one we see

same way as his picture has to be really

big and large and at the top of the page

because he is there to draw your eye he

is the big star he has to be at the top

usually then the actors are listed in

order of importance in the story

and

they will have these little things like

with angela bassett with frost whitaker

and andy serkis

these whiz and ands

it's

used when the character may not be that

important to the story but the actor

playing them is pretty big and famous

so

they have these

with an and

credits because it shows that they're

important but they're not as important

as the main star

so obviously

turtle boson or michael b jordan another

pro protagonist and the antagonist did

the two most important characters they

get their names first

as i said since some of these actors was

especially famous when the film came out

none of them was particularly bigger

than the other one in or

in sort of like order of

size or precedent and placement except

that you know the more important

characters are in the film the earlier

they are on the list

so

we don't have any

the title credits

we do have a possessory credit though

as i said black panther might not have

been not particularly important or

famous or well known as a character

no one was clamoring for a black panther

movie

that's not the draw

the draw for the audience was the marvel

brand

the name marvel was seen and is seen as

a badge of quality

you know what you're gonna get

you've seen one of these marvel

superhero films you've seen them all

and they want you to see them all that's

what the sort of like the

end of credit sequence little stingers

at the end are used to do they're there

to attract you to go see the other ones

that's why they have all the crossovers

where different characters will appear

in each other's films and you've got the

big team-up ones like avengers assemble

all the other ones that have come

since so

you have all these

super hairy elements being used to

bind the poster together right and sell

it to the audience but it's the marvel

bit that really sells it not the name of

the character

then you've got a tagline that's

supposed to tell you a little bit about

the film long live the king in this case

i mean

yeah it tells you that black panther is

supposed to be a king would you have a

sidebar can we talk about the fact that

for a country that's supposed to be that

you know that came into existence by

defeating the british empire and kicking

it out because they didn't want to be

ruled by a king

how many american mainstream

media entertainment products are about

people who were only good at what they

do because they were born into it

whether it be

luke skywalker or

neo from the matrix or whether it be

bruce wayne or you know don't matter

they're all born into it they don't like

learn these

through hard work and skill usually

i digress though

right

so

the other things we've got to have

are a credit block

the credit block is a legal requirement

and it is

used to list the key personality actors

the writers the directors the producers

etc of the film again there are all

sorts of complicated rules about who

gets their name first where it goes how

big it is

one of the things they will use and they

nearly always not always been nearly

always in a sans serif font

it'll be a very condensed narrow font

and it will be very much stretched

vertically

by 125 to 135 percent maybe of its usual

size so very narrow very tall and very

thin

this allows you to

condense

more information into a smaller space

and make it bigger

and therefore more easy to read

not that most people care about the

credit block

then the other things we'll have is

we'll have you know the logos of the

company that made the film

you will have the date of when the film

is going to get released

and in this case the different formats

it's in so in

3d

realty 3d and imax 3d

following the financial crash of 2008

and the rise of

dvd

piracy and uh file sharing and torrents

and stuff on the internet where people

were pirating and sharing movies

this took a major

hit to the

profit margins of hollywood studios

people were no longer renting and buying

movies they were pirating them online

to combat this

remember this is days before netflix and

amazon prime and other streaming

services

to combat this

the hollywood studios wanted people

getting back into the cinemas

and to get people back in the cinemas

they relied on spectacle

big

brash

loud

lots of stunts lots of cgi lots of

special effects and for a while

they thought 3d was going to be the big

killer application

of

the cinema blockbuster the thing that

everyone wanted to go and see because 3d

television sets aren't that common in

fact i don't think anybody makes 3d tvs

anymore

and

they thought 3d was going to be the

thing but

3d sucks it gives people headaches it

makes them feel sick

you know and it's

darkens the picture by 20 no one i don't

think anyone like 3d

instead imax has become the thing

massive gigantic screens

uh anyone's been to the south bank bfi

south bank imac screen nothing's the

height of eight double decker buses it's

humongous

right so it gives you that sense of

spectacle and scale you can't get what

you can film on your phone

that's what they don't want you doing

they don't want you watching it on your

laptop or on your tablet or on your

phone they want you to pay good money

and pay more to go and see an imax so

spectacle and scale

are the main selling points

3d still around but it's petering out

nobody cares imac's the thing now

but then comes the decision in 2016.

so we've got the title of the film

that's important we've got the tagline

or

strap lines it's sometimes called

we've got possessory credit marvel

studios black panther because that's a

selling point we've got our credit block

we've got our release date we've got

these kind of like selling points with

the formats we've got the styles up here

which are not as big a selling point for

black panther as they might be for some

other films

so those are the basics

of the poster design

let's have a look at some of the

design choices

so obviously

the

design of the

sci-fi and

to a lesser extent superhero poster owes

a lot to

not just comic book art and comic book

covers

but also to

science fiction

novel

artwork from the

50s 60s 70s but also

a lot of heavy metal album covers so

you've got artists like

frank frazetta and boris vallejo and all

these kinds of um artists who were many

people actually did film posters

were

creating these sort of like science

fiction and fantasy images that would go

on the front covers of comic books and

um science fiction magazines and

you know album covers and there's a

that's filtered into film posters and

it's become the sort of de facto design

element

so

all of these characters that are the

main characters of our film

and

they're kind of like arranged in size of

how important they are to the narrative

the more important they are the bigger

they are and they get smaller as they go

into less and less importance or they

become less and less famous so as i said

ironically some of the more famous

characters are some of the smaller ones

so

what's also interesting here is the

prominence of the female characters

nearly half the characters on this

poster so forty percent of them

generally are women and they are some of

the biggest ones in the frame as well

and the women of color no less who are

generally underrepresented in all films

let's face it let alone superhero action

films

most of the

characters here are in very

strong powerful poses

all of whom seem to be looking over

their shoulder for some reason

not all of them most of them not

entirely sure what that's about it's

almost like they turned back to look at

you in an angry way

but notice how other than the direct

gaze we're getting off

um

chadwick boseman here into a lesser

instead of danny kahlua and um

uh martin freeman here they all seem to

be looking off in different directions

she's looking off over there somewhere

she's looking up here he's looking over

there

you know he's kind of looking down here

he's always there she's looking out

there she's gonna it's all over the shop

what are they looking at

perhaps they're looking towards the

future

perhaps they are

being watchful for threats

the point is it creates an enigma a

question what are they looking at

that entices us it makes us think

what else do they got

weapons

he's got this whacking great sword here

she's got her spear

she's got her high-tech

kind of

energy glove things

that's another classic of superhero

movies and sci-fi the combination of the

new and the old because

a lot of science fiction films and a lot

of this is due to star wars to be honest

are taking

the conventions of

the arthurian legends of king arthur

um

mixing it with a bit of western and a

bit of sci-fi and some religious

allegories like a christ metaphor or a

messiah metaphor

mashing them all up together to create

these superhero stories

a lot of superheroes are basically

almost like religious characters

um if we look at joseph campbell as

universal hero monomyth story when we

look at a lot of religions

not to mention legends like king arthur

you will have characters who start off

as lowly humble characters

christ the son of a carpenter

uh

you know disciples of fishermen etc

they're lowly ordinary people king

arthur starts off with a lowly squire

um

you know

harry potter is an orphan and living and

covered in the stairs luke skywalker is

just a farm boy they start off

lowly

and slowly learn that they're the chosen

one and become this messianic figure who

rise to become the saviors

so that's a classic narrative

so they're mixing the old and the new

the science fiction and the medieval

so he's got his sword she's got her

spear

interesting in of course these long

pointy weapons are essentially phallic

symbols so this is kind of like

taking a few more characters and trying

to masculinize her

swords have always been

and never actually been that important

as weapons usually pole arms like spears

have always traditionally been the most

important weapons

swords however are expensive and we're

therefore symbols of

power and authority more than they were

actual practical fighting weapons

his armor obviously both looks leathery

and futuristic but at the same time

reminds us of medieval knights

it's

again everyone's got these power poses

legs apart arms pointed shoulders back

heads up

makes them look strong makes them look

powerful makes them look authoritative

slightly low angle so we're looking up

at them it makes them look big and

strong heroic or intimidating

but again like i said it's difficult to

tell which ones are the heroes and which

ones the villains little to distinguish

them none of them are looking

particularly villainous except perhaps

any

circus they could interchangeably be

heroes or villains

also a point i might point out very

unusual to see heroes with beards

um

do i guess be it so fashionable nowadays

at the moment but

it skews people's faces and

traditionally people have often seen

beards as being

a you know you've got a beagle or

something to hide you're hiding

something

but on the other hand masculine as well

so what other kinds of things have we

got going on here well

we've got

one of the classic stereotypes of

um poster designs is the head in the

cloud design now these aren't literally

heads in the clouds

in the way that some posters have but

this blue and white background is

reminiscent of a sky with clouds in it

and there are lots of big giant floating

heads so maybe not literally in the way

some posters are but still a bit of a

classic heads in the clouds

design

color wise we've got

complementary colors now

most films nowadays are

color coded in post-production

and you use complementary colors that

are opposite on the color wheel

and since most skin

especially caucasian skin is in the

orange color spectrum

the opposite of that is teal

teal is kind of blue green color

so teal and orange are the two standard

colors we see being used a lot and that

is replicated here quite a lot

because

the color of the skin

whilst brown is still going towards the

more orange hue

again the red of her top is in that

color sort of like this is as close to

gold as it is yellow gold is it's kind

of orangey and tint to it so

gold and blue really stand out the gold

pops against that blue background it

really gives that contrast

it's the contrast between the warm and

the cold

the

futuristic and natural

and gold is very symbolic of wealth and

power and authority

gold gives it that futuristic techno

look

so we've got the

complementary colors again everything

superhero films do this but also science

fiction films the ting of light is a big

deal whether it be the glow of her

energy weapons or the fact that these

kind of like the kind of

glow that's coming off these

statues of the black panthers the kind

of glow that's coming off the metal

little tings here for example

classic superhero trope

but also classic trope of science

fiction films

as i said the size of the characters

denotes their importance

the size of the marvel studios logo

shows us the power of the brand

the sight lines like i said create a

sense of enigma but one of the key

things i think here is this

very geometric looking

pattern

this

triangle

will sort of like resembles a kind of

like some kind of pyramid

this visually draws the eye

up through the middle from the title

which is possibly the first thing that

attracts us and it points the way to

look up towards

chadwick boseman here equally the cross

shape

again draws our eye to the center

of the image and to

chadwick boseman's face

the circular shape behind him and these

these kind of branch out almost like

wings

and that circular shape is kind of

reminiscent of a halo so it kind of has

a religious element there and it kind of

makes him look like some kind of

angel i suppose with these wings and

this sort of like

halo effect going on behind him

the diagonals are also a very strong

shape again even the characters here are

arranged in kind of an x

it's very strong it's powerful

it's

diagonals tend to make things look fast

as if they're leaning forward

looking towards the future going forward

to a very strong

shape again the way these lines here go

up and then in

up and in it draws our attention all the

time back to childhood clothes as this

necklace look the shape of this the

teeth on this necklace kind of like

almost like arrows pointing to his face

so

to a certain extent this is a poster

that is selling the character

not the star

again chadwick boseman may become hugely

famous after this but he wasn't at the

time

so very few people knew who he was

so black panther was the selling point

not chadwick boseman

all of this has got a traditional he's

gonna remind me like the ghost of things

from ghostbusters

but

again it's got a typical science

fictiony feel

it does remind me a little bit of films

like

um dark city actually the sort of like

alex pryas is sort of like science

fiction detective story

um i really like the sort of like the

patterns on here as well i suppose

they're meant to be african i guess or

asian because some of it's sort of like

set in

south korea but i think this is sort of

like the

wakandan language they've invented these

pictograms a little less it's got kind

of like an art deco feel to it they're

sort of like but that was a thing with

art deco art deco as a design in the

1920s had a very

post-colonialist attitude it was very

much

influenced by the discoveries that were

being made in egypt by howard carter as

he was in and covering the tune of

carmen

so

artec was very much influenced by

this

postcolonialism and the others edward

syad would talk about

so

there's that crossover there

but the unless it's supposed to be

these african designs

but

this doesn't lean that heavily into the

africanness

of

black panther not as much as some of the

other posters did

um angela bassett's

outfit here especially this head dress

has got

a kind of

african uh

element to it

for us so

is a rogue ship and the rest of it is

kind of like toning down the

afrofuturist element of it in comparison

to many of the other posters

so that i think

covers many of the basics of that poster

see if you can come up with any more

the more you can think about the better

but

this is very different obviously to the

i daniel black poster which has a very

very very different way of selling the

film

one of the things this clearly doesn't

have on it

it's not got any quotes

it's not gonna be quotes from critics or

newspapers or magazines or anything like

that because you don't need that kind of

stuff to sell or marvel movie it sells

itself almost

it's not got any awards on it black

panther didn't win that much in the way

of awards certainly didn't win anything

major it's not going to win a palm door

you know a silver bear or something like

that is it

and well it was nominated for oscars

don't think he'd won much of any if any

so

whilst the film may have had a lot of

cultural impact it wasn't that very well

received critically

relatively speaking because it's a

mainstream studio movie and they're

never really well received critically

they don't get much in the way of

acclaim

genre films never have whether it be

sci-fi or horror or superhero movies or

whatever

with the odd exception

so

very different to the

positive right daniel blake which we'll

look at later

right okay that'll do for now

if you've got any questions you know

where to find me

and i'll see you in the next one