Feature Hierarchy

This is a movie poster for Walt Disney Pictures’ “The Little Mermaid,” which debuted in theaters in 1998.  At first, my eyes are drawn to the bright yellow color of the movie title on the bottom of the poster.  Color is the first level of the preattentive feature hierarchy that my eyes are drawn to.  My eyes are also drawn to the center of the poster.  Ariel, the main character of the movie, is placed in the center of the poster, right above the title of the movie.  She is almost in a silhouette form, though I can see shades of red in her hair and green in her mermaid tail.  My eyes are constantly going back and forth between the mermaid figure and the movie title because those are the features of the poster that stand out when my eyes first see this poster.  Spatial grouping is also an important preattentive feature.  I like how this poster is simple and only shows the main character in an almost silhouette portrayal.  I have seen other movie posters for this specific movie and most of them are to busy-looking:  many include all of the characters in the movie packed onto the poster that it looks to clumped and clustered.  This poster is simple to look at and helps your eyes to only focus on the important things, like the character and the movie title.

Picture Works Cited:

http://disneyanimation.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=131310243