Republic of the Philippines

CAMARINES SUR POLYTECHNIC COLLEGES

Nabua, Camarines Sur

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Paper 5 - Analyzing MCDA of Movie Posters

I chose to analyze this movie poster entitled FUEGO. It is the Spanish term for fire. This
time I will analyze this movie poster using the theory of Halliday which is the social semiotics
theory, I will define first what the theory is all about. Halliday’s social semiotic theory
emphasizes that the language cannot be separated from society. He views language as a 'social
semiotic' in which language, the means by which people interact, must be considered in a social
context. Language and society is a unified concept and need to be investigated as a whole. The
theory has three types of semiotics, namely Representational, interactive meaning and
compositional.

This movie is A story of a girl trying to pursue her passion however, because life is
sometimes draining she's on the verge of giving up. The movie poster has an image of a candle.
There are lots of meanings of having a candle. It means romantic or a death of someone and it is
a sign of being Christians to represent the illumination of Christ at the beginning of each mass.
The fire symbolizes illumination and purification and destruction and pain. The visual design of
the poster is catchy since it is a poster and we don’t know the story behind that poster. In terms
of the text it is in line and placed orderly and it’s not occupying a lot of space in the poster.
 Republic of the Philippines
CAMARINES SUR POLYTECHNIC COLLEGES
Nabua, Camarines Sur

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Interactive meaning the poster already caught the attention of a viewer because of the candle
with flame design because of the interaction between the poster and the viewer or participants. In
the last metafunction which is the compositional it is refers to the meaning of composition, being
related to the way in which representations and communicative acts cohere into the kind of
meaningful whole we call text, the poster contain a very limited information since it has only the
image and the text fuego so it creates in viewers mind if what is the poster all about or what are
the things that this poster want to convey.

We all know that a poster plays an important role to become more famous whether it is
an advertising or a product or service or to persuade somebody about something. Movie posters
serve as promotional tools and advertise a film primarily to persuade paying customers into
theaters to see it, it also serves as complimentary art form to the film medium and it aims to
capture the visual aesthetic and mood of the movie itself. 

Name: JHON PAUL M. VERANO

Course & section: ABELS 3A
Course: ELS 322