This research aims to find out how the visual and verbal elements of movie posters are constructed to build a compositional meaning and what are the differences of the compositional meanings in each poster.
It employed qualitative descriptive approach. The data are the posters of the movies of survival genre, including The Martian (2015), The Revenant (2015), Life of Pi (2012), Everest (2015), and Deliverance (1972). The posters were analysed using compositional meaning of Visual Grammar theory (Kress and Leeuwen: 2006) to analyse their images and thematic structure of Halliday‘s SFL theory (1994).
These findings shows that in the information value, the centered or top element is the main actor and the tagline, the most salient visual elements are the main actors and the setting as well as the use of framing to connect or separate elements in the poster. The principles of compositional meaning serve to build a hierarchy of information, direct the audience's attention, and reinforce the main message that the poster is trying to convey. Color is also used to create an atmosphere that supports the narrative of the story. In terms of verbal elements, the use of thematic structure types show variations in the way posters communicate meaning. Movie titles generally use unmarked thematic structures to introduce characters, themes, narratives, or movie settings. On the other hand, taglines use a variation between marked and unmarked thematic structures to give special emphasis to the movie's mission, narrative, theme, or setting.