The first thing that clearly jumps out to me is that the majority of them feature the same or similar composition, everything is central and then the surrounding area is either empty or filled with other aspects of the film, so Star Wars for example features a large central Luke Skywalker and surrounding him is the smaller characters who are physically smaller, then outside of their space is the emptiness of the white and red (which in this case is symbolic of the lightsaber that Kylo Ren uses). If we take a less busy example such as the fight club poster or the Moonlight one we see this much more clearly, the protagonists (or what we assume is the protagonists) are central and the only image and they're surrounded by a void of one colour. This I feel is because if a poster is too busy then it becomes hard to look at and the information isn't conveyed effectively. Another thing of mention with regards to a poster is that it does not have to particularly have a sense of scale, it is very common to feature people over the top of a much bigger image, so in this case we look at Titanic it features the three aspects that are important and central, but the two people are on top of and much more commanding in the image than the ship, the point I am trying to make is that they can look like a collage of images rather than being one image that 'makes sense'.
Another type of poster you commonly see for film is that which is illustrated, unfortunately my talents do not lie in illustration, as a result I will not be illustrating a poster because I simply cannot draw, however, this is something I could definitely outsource to someone else. The other issue with this in terms of me creating it (and the other posters as well) is that without footage and imagery from the finished film it would be hard to create a poster which encapsulates the imagery of the film. There is a way around this which I will get to, but for now with regards to illustrated posters, it is of note that generally speaking they follow similar composition rules to the other posters, though they can be a little more liberal as they are more to do with the artist's interpretation of the imagery and their personal style.
The potential answer to being able to make the poster without the film being finished and without knowing how it will look is to go minimal. Admittedly these are often fan made and not usually a style that films use for publicity, however, I do feel that some of these are much better than their equivalents that are produced for the cinema releases, because of this I feel that these are a valuable option to me in terms of poster creation. In terms of what they look like it can take just as much preparation and planning or inspiration to make an effective piece. This is due to their basic nature, you have to think basic and use basic shapes and colours as much as possible. The other side of these posters is that they are usually made after the fact by fans, however, this could be flipped on its head and used to create intrigue, for example, the usual suspects poster with the footsteps would make little to no sense to someone who hasn't seen the film, however, this would make people intrigued to see if they hadn't seen the film, especially once people who had seen the film start to talk about it and how subtle the poster is. To briefly summarise this entry, I feel that there are a few options available to me, I will attempt a professional looking poster like the first set and will certainly create some minimalist posters like the last set as I feel these are extremely effective.
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