Milk Poster Semiotic Analysis

Milk is a 2008 American film which portrays the life of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to the public office in the state of California. This film was produced by Momentum Pictures and Sean Penn's staring role in this biographical movie won him an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Harvey Milk. Though being nominated for 8 Academy awards it only won 2, the other being for Best Original Screenplay.

This poster uses 3 main colours; Grey, Blue and Brown. These colours all compliment each other for none of them are too contrasting. The colours work well for this poster as they denote Sean Penn's character to be smart, intelligent and serious. The movie is about the rise of Harvey Milk's political career as a gay activist, so the character needs to be shown to be serious and this colour scheme does that well.

The fonts used in this poster are clear to see, all of the text is written in capital letters to attract the audience's attentions. The word Milk has a faded use of blue, with small pieces of white seeping through the letters. As the case of Harery Milk was very important at the actual time this could done to show Milk being a newspaper headline. Another reason could be that it is an old case so the letters are faded because this has been a long time.

The way that Sean Penn is dressed up is very serious and on the left of his waistcoat he has a blue badge that says, 'Harvery Milk'. This badge is like the badge someone campaigning for a political position would wear so it keeps in context with the political career of Milk. The smile of his face is there to show Milk as a happy candidate and to make the audience see that he is a likeable character.