Poster Analysis: The Godfather

Below is a poster for the film ’The Godfather’ (1972) which I have analysed to help get an idea of successful thriller signifiers for the type of thriller I intend to produce; my media group and I are making a film-noir styled classic-thriller.

This poster for the film ‘The Godfather’ displays classic thriller signifiers. The poster gives the audience an impression of how the film will be before they watch it. From the thriller signifiers shown in the poster, the audience can predict whether they will like the film or not.

The poster is mostly black and white. The use of contrast between light and dark is a common and important thriller signifier. Light and dark can symbolise good and evil (light being good and dark being evil). This is especially true in film-noirs. The use of this lighting can help give the film a sinister and threatening atmosphere. Also, the colours symbolising good and evil can show to the audience that the film will involve a battle between good and evil.

The only colour in the poster is a rose that is red. This rose stands out from the rest of the poster due to its colour. The colour red can mean different things to different people; red can symbolise anger, rage, violence, blood and revenge, which gives the film the connotation of having these characteristics; the rose tells the audience that the film involves violence. The rose standing out in the poster also helps add to the sinister feel of the poster due to it giving the connotation of violence.

The man in the poster is wearing a tuxedo/suit which could be argued to be a classic thriller signifier (mainly film-noirs); it is common for characters in film-noirs to wear suits. The suit also gives the connotation of sophistication, professionalism and class to the character in the poster.
The fact that the character is male is also a thriller signifier; most old thrillers (including film-noirs) have male protagonists. There being a man in the poster suggests he may be the main character of the film. This means that the poster, and also film, may appeal more to a male audience.

The man’s face in the poster appears to be emotionless; the man’s eyes are ‘blacked-out’ and he is neither smiling nor frowning. Not being able to see his eyes and him having an emotionless face gives a cold, sinister feel to the poster which indicates the film is also ‘cold-hearted’ and sinister. This also helps add a dramatic effect to the poster and can leave the audience intrigued.

There is a quote from the film at the bottom of the poster (an anchor) which also contributes to the sinister atmosphere of the poster, and implies there is something mysterious going on in the film. Mystery in the plot of a film is a significant thriller signifier. The quote also makes the audience wonder about what the “offer” may be and why “he can’t refuse”. This can help get the film into the audiences’ head so that they then go and see it.
The poster does well in giving the audience an idea of what the film may be like and include. It is also effective in capturing attention.

Character Profiles for our thriller film

I initially made a template for each character profile (a list of information about the character that was relevant. E.g. Age, Name, Personality traits etc). After this, I wrote each character profile, and then went through them with my group. Anything else we wanted to add or delete to/from each character I then did with them.

Name: Patrick Callaghan
Role in the opening sequence: The man sitting at a desk in the building
Age in film: 55
Race/nationality: Irish, though has lived most of his life in England. White.
Accent: Irish/ English
Style of dress: Suits, dark
Educational background: Self-educated
Personality traits/ current situation: Head of the Callaghan organized-crime family (a leader), loyal to his own family, hates the "opposing" families, in particular the Glover’s. He will do anything to keep his family and reputation above the others, whatever the consequences.
Other information: Godfather and uncle of Juliet. He moved to England at a young age with his Nan and his younger brother in search of a better life. His parents are dead; his parents were already dead when he moved to England. His parents died during the conflicts in Ireland after the Second World War. His Nan moved out to England with him for safety. His brother was the father of Juliet, however he died through working for his family, and maybe he was at fault.
Additional Detail: (Although a completely different character) he may be presented in a similar way to Sydney Greenstreet's character Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon (1941) directed by John Huston, regarding the consisten use of very low- angled shots of him in order to emphasize both his power and the fact that he is overweight.

Name: Aidan Quinlan
Role in the opening sequence: He is one of the three in the car; he was the driver and is the one that lights up a cigarette.
Age in film: 28
Race/nationality: Irish – brought-up in England. White.
Accent: Irish
Style of dress: Smart with overcoats
Educational background: Average
Personality traits/ current situation: Works for the Callaghan family. He is a trusted, loyal worker for the family. He watches over the people below him and does much of the dirty work for the boss.
Other Information: His dad moved out with him to England after death of his mother. His dad was a good friend of the boss; this is why he is now one of the main men in the family.

Name: Sean McLennan.
Role in the opening sequence: Is one of the two carrying the dead body.
Age in film: 24
Race/nationality: English, with Irish roots. White.
Accent: Unspecified, a touch of Irish.
Style of dress: Smart with overcoats.
Educational background: Below Average.
Personality traits/ current situation: Works for Callaghan family. He is a loyal worker, below Quinlan. Does all dirty work first hand and most of the time supervised by Quinlan. He is not a key figure in the film and is "muscle" of the family.
Other Information: His grandparents moved to England, so he and his parents were born and brought-up in England. However he is still in touch with his Irish roots.

Name: Connor Malone
Role in the opening sequence: Is the other man carrying the dead body
Age in film: 24
Race/nationality: English, with Irish roots. White.
Accent: Unspecified, perhaps a slight Irish accent
Style of dress: Smart with overcoats
Educational background: Below Average
Personality traits: Works for Callaghan family. He is a loyal worker, below Quinlan. Does all dirty work first hand and supervised by Quinlan. He is fairly new to the family. He is not a key figure in the story and is also "muscle" of the family.
Other information/ current situation: His parents moved to England from Ireland, and he was born in England.

Name: Susie Callaghan
Age in film: 25
Race/nationality: Half Irish, half English. White.
Accent: Unspecified
Style of dress: Classy, yet obvious.
Educational background: Above average initially, but finished education after it became optional.
Personality traits: She is aware of her sexual prowess. Slightly flirty and unforgiving.
Other information: Her mother is English, but died during childbirth. Her father died young so she was brought up by her uncle and godfather. However she blames him for her father’s death. This is why she has a lover in another family, and attempts to murder her uncle (see synopsis).
Additional Detail: She is perhaps a similar character to Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944) directed by Billy Wilder.

Name: David Glover
Age in film: 26
Race/nationality: English. White
Accent: Unspecified
Style of dress: Smart
Educational background: High level of education and specialises in Law.
Personality traits: He is generally smart, although he sometimes acts on impulse rather than thinking things through and allows business matters to become personal.
Other information: He wasn’t planning on becoming the head of the family but rather hoping to finish his studies of Law and become a lawyer/ judge and help the family in that way. However, he was convinced after the murder of his father.


Name: Colin Glover
Age in film: 67
Race/nationality: English. White
Accent: Unspecified
Style of dress: Smart
Educational background: High level of education
Personality traits: He is well-educated and smart, but also street-smart and doesn’t allow himself to be careless.
Other information: He has always hated the Callaghan’s, partly because they’re Irish and also partly because they have always been a threat to his family.

Preliminary Task: Evaluation

Whilst planning to film our preliminary task. We used match on action technique, shot reverse shot technique and 180 degree rule. It was important we used these in our film so it was readable to our audience. We also tried to incorporate a variety of shot types into our film to make it more interesting and different. We used shot types such as birds-eye, close-up, long-shot and over the shoulder shots. We also used the computer to make accurate and neat shooting maps for our preliminary task.

When we were filming our preliminary task, it was the first time we had used digital cameras and the shot type techniques, so some of our shots are a little shaky, and we had to learn how to pan, and zoom keeping the camera steady. Examples of especially shaky shots in our preliminary task is the zoom out and pan away from the clock at the beginning of our film, and the birds-eye shot above the table, was also unsteady.

Whilst trying to edit our preliminary task we discovered new technologies, and new techniques that we could use in our film, such as non-linear editing software. None of us had used this before, therefore our skills on the software was slightly limited. This effected our transitions, as they could have been smoother.

I think what we could have improved was our steadiness of the camera and our shot transitions in our editing should have been smoother. And when we asked other members of our class what they thought, they generally agreed.
Despite this, I think our film went well and our class mates said that it was very readable and met the brief we were given.

Change of Thriller name

Our group had some discussions about changing our thriller's name from Bad Blood to something else. We wanted to change it because we didn't think that it fit in with our film as well as it should do. We talked about several suggestions but in the end settled with Bloody Vendetta. We chose this because we think it fits in with the theme of our thriller. And as Vendetta means revenge, it fits in with the revenge and deception in our thriller film.

Our Cast

For our thriller opening we needed four male (preferably not student) actors. They would play the parts of Patrick Callaghan, Aidan Quinlan, Sean McLennan and Connor Malone. To pick our cast we used convienience and age, as this was the quickest way to pick the four actors we wanted to use. We needed an older man to play the part of Patrick Callaghan because his part is a boss, and a crime leader in our opening. He is also threatening, but the 3 other men in the film are supposed to come accross as this too. (The character profiles have more detail about the mens characteristics).

Here are our 4 actors:

Phil Buttinger as Patrick Callaghan.

We thought that this man fit the look of the character we are asking him to play, because he looks like a man who could be threatening to others and fits the age category he needs to be in to be a boss/crime leader.

Leon Hogarth as Aidan Quinlan.

We again thought that Leon fit the character we needed him to play, as he is tall and big therefore has a threatening appearence.

Patrick Bloomfield as Sean McLennan

Ralf Kendall as Connor Malone.

For these two characters we did not think that facial features were important as the other two because they do not have a focused shot on them, so we tried to fit them into an age group rather than what they looked like.

However, after we had chosen the two actors we found to play are parts had to cancel because of certain school rules. We tried to find replacements that fit the part as well as they did, but due to lack of time we had to go with who we thought was best and not be too picky.

Here are the two actors we decided to replace them with:

Josh Rowe as Sean Mclennan

Louis Martin as Connor Malone

Preliminary Task: Film

This is our final film for the preliminary task.

Narrative of Chinatown

I studied the film Chinatown to get a feel of the narrative structure of thriller films (this may not be true to all thriller films, but is an example).


A narrative is a more detailed version of a plot which tells the story, but also tells how the story is told. A narrative commonly involves ‘twists’ in the plot and also sometimes tells the story in a particular person’s perspective or maybe even different peoples’ perspectives. This can be used to show how different characters feel throughout the film and can show how it links together. For different characters their perspective may be shown in different ways to reflect on that character’s personality.

An internal monologue can be used to tell the story of a film, this is when a character verbally commentates what is happening and what his thoughts are. The story can suddenly come to a dead end without any questions answered, which leaves the audience wondering and wanting to know what happens next. This is how a narrative can form a cliff hanger. Internal monologues and cliff hangers are typical of thrillers as they can help add a certain feel and style to the story and can also help add a mysterious and maybe dramatic effect. The use of a cliff hanger is true in Chinatown as at the end of the film Noah Cross takes away his daughter/granddaughter after his other daughter who is also the mother of his granddaughter/daughter is shot. This leaves the audience not knowing what is going to happen to the granddaughter/daughter called Catherine; her relations with her father/grandfather are bound to have a drastically bad effect on her later life (she does not know that he is her grandfather as well as father.

I would describe the narrative of Chinatown as being mysterious and tension building throughout. There are plot twists which add drama to the story a plot twist in Chinatown is when Mrs Mulwrey reveals that Catherine is her daughter as well as her sister (this is one of several twists). The story is given in the perspective of private detective Mr Gittes. Giving the story from this perspective shows what his life and work was like as a private detective at the time. It helped give us a feel of how he must have felt and seen things throughout the film. The narrative engages the audience in Chinatown as you make realisations as Mr Gittes does which makes you feel as If you yourself are uncovering the story and secrets.

The narrative of the film is very important as without it there would be no way to tell the story. The narrative is the foundation of any film and gives each film its own identity. Narrative is important in Chinatown because it creates the film to be a thriller by using the methods of how the story is told and what the story is about. Narrative is important in a thriller because you can show the narrative in many ways (e.g. an internal monologue). The narrative plays a big part in making films into thrillers.