Major Project: Thinking about Poster

Creating a poster

Importance of understanding new film/branding
If you don't understand what your film is about, how can you know who to target and how to fully establish your film on a poster ? That's why I felt like it was important for me to have a consistent branding throughout, even from preproduction with the book, I wanted to keep elements from that and push it forward within this poster and film. One of the key themes through out my entire branding is the theme of art and everything seeming to be hand drawn. 


What I understand about my film
I know that my film follows the mental health of a young black boy who loves art and who also loves backspace to internalise his emotions so I thought what ways could I establish this? Below is an example of a mood board I created that shows my thought process of what images can relate to some of the themes that my film has with them. As you can see the theme of art plays a big part of this film and the idea of hidden emotions so I took to the Internet to see how I can incorporate art within a poster I already had a few ideas of What I wanted so I have compiled some images to help me brainstorm and really visualise the best ways I can get the message of the film across. 

Industry required poster elements and tips
To gain a greater insight and to make sure I start off on the right track when creating my poster I decided to research some of the basic requirements to include when creating a poster. I think its important that I know what things I should be looking for to make my poster industry standard.

I found a really helpful website (https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/02/7-elements-of-a-great-movie-poster-design/) Which carefully outlines some of the things to think about when creating a poster.

I will use those four points (Attention, Interest, desire and action) to really target my audience with a hard hitting poster. Moving on through the article it takes us through some more things to think about. I have selected the ones that relate to my poster.

I think this is one of the most important ones because in my opinion, symbolism can be such a great thing once you get it right. Being able to have a deeper or hidden meaning behind an image is art in my opinion. I will be thinking about how I can "show" and no "tell" 

When looking at these two posters; 

both these posters show what its about as well as the style due to the centred image of what seems to be a woman, there is an element of "sexiness" due to the red lipstick and tongue gesture. The style is clearly shown without saying "a show which includes vampires and attractive women". You get that from this image alone. I think it is incredibly clever and I would like to incorporate imagery that tells more about the story without actually saying it.

A good example of this would be Inception's poster. Here you see a snapshot of a scene within the film, it is a very interesting because the actor is centred with a gun, onlooking a very bizarre world. 

The fact he is centred also puts the viewer in the middle with him. The short sentence directed to the viewer with "your mind" it further immerses the viewer and makes them think.  I think this poster is great especially because inception's story is not something you can necessary express with symbolism alone due to it's intricacy so its interesting to see how you'd need to understand the best way you can express the film to the best you can. Thats why when thinking about my film, the idea of things hidden is something I can symbolically express. I don't think I would be doing the film justice if I just chose a screen shot of the film, all you'd see is a boy who's alone. I think my story is a little bit more than just that so I want to play with this theme a little bit.

The poster mood board

First initial ideas

My first idea was to see how I can show the different sides to a person? then I thought about double exposure and the different effects you can create.

Double exposure with different sides and emotions.

I loved how you could get a sense of two sides of the same character, however, I did not like the almost sci fi vibe I was getting. I don't think this style would be the best way to market my film. Especially since mine has a lot of elements of art, I don't see how I could incorporate this into a poster in this style.

Sketchy styles of artwork

This one was a personal favourite of mine and stood as a basis of my actual poster. What I loves was the fact it was drawn, there is a real art element here and it has been used to show two sides of a person, you get the idea there is more to this person that meets the eye. The colours are eye catching and vibrant. I would like to experiment with this type of style.

Having these in mind, I went ahead and had a little practice on photo shop . I thought, what better way to incorporate the theme of art by having an actual canvas as the background for the poster, so I took some pictures of the some of the canvas props my mum made for the film and my initial idea was to have an outline of Isaiah's face and see what subtle imagery I can indicate that he is not happy. Below is an example of my tester idea 

As you can see, this post is very vibrant and features are very plain foreground, I really like the contrast but there's something missing. I feel like I could do more with this poster but it was a good starter. 

And below are some more images of things I found online which really inspired my next up processes. Watercolours.

What I loved about these ideas is the fluidity of the images, I loved the use of running paint being used as tears and I loved the minimalist sketching approach. So, to incorporate art, I thought it would be a good idea to have a more minimalistic approach and have Isaiah's face drawn. I didnt't have a set idea at first but, I just knew that I'll start off with one thing and it will develop into something else as I went along here are some pictures of the process. I knew that I needed a few headshots of Isaiah to start with so thats what I captured on my second re shoot day. 

Below is after I sketched it on the iPad. I then added the title and I felt as though it was a little boring and basic. I then went on to search for some stills that I could use. 

other preferable stills;

Sketching them 

In the end I went onto photoshop and experimented with the placement of things. I wanted to mess around with the colours so it took me a little while but I worked closely to the reference images above because I really liked the deep and dark colour schemes in them. I wanted the bright colourful colours on the outside but as we move in closer to Isaiah's face we see that it becomes dark, cloudy and the symbolic blue tears that are running down his face really gets to the point of my story. So many different faces and expressions yet deep down he isn't okay. Here is how my poster turned out:

I think this process was actually one of the most enjoyable parts of this whole unit. I learnt a new skill and realised I'm actually not so bad at designing things. I want to continue creating stuff like this in the future. But most importantly I think I really conveyed the brand of this film and my idea is quite clear from the poster.