Poster research
styles of posters
Contrast in colours
I found a style in posters where it would mostly be black and white, but with a splash of the colour red. I found this extremely effective as it instantly showed the audience that this is a serious film, and the colour of red connotes that there is some sort of danger, or blood, or action. I chose this style to analyse as I am seriously considering to use this style within my poster. I have lots of different ideas, and this is one of mine. The poster on the left I find extremely effective; We see that this film has some action in it because of the props of the guns, and we also see it by the splashes of red blood. The colour scheme is brilliant; I love the black and white characters, and the red titles. I find it very effective as it really stands out over everything in the scene, making us look straight towards "The new film by Quentin Tarantino", followed by "Django Unchained", and lastly "Christmas Day". Firstly, the reason they put the name Quentin Tarantino is because it is such a big name. The big name will draw in viewers who don't know anything about the movie, but only know the famous director. Secondly, the biggest title they put is the name of the movie (that is in red), which is very obvious, as they want people to instantly see the name of the movie so that it is memorable and so that it can intrigue them.
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Double Exposure
This style of poster is visually pleasing, as it allows different images to connect together into one image in an artistic way. The double exposure within "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" allows the foreground to contrast with the background, but still having elements within the woman's face. The black and white gives the feeling of mist, and coldness; this may show the coldness of the characters. With this style of poster you are able to collaborate an important background, or an important scene within the main image, without making it look tacky, and simply placed on. With this technique it is very necessary to have great photography, seeing all the strands of hair, as it creates a beautiful look to it. With this style of poster you need the background to contrast with the foreground, so usually the background is quite plain, as there is a lot going on in the foreground .This style has been used for 'The Next Three Days', 'Macbeth', 'Martha Marcy May Marlene', 'The Iron Lady' and more. It can be used for many ways; to combine a background with a main character, to combine multiple characters, or to have an artistic look to it where it combines two characters together, like in 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'.
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Silhouette Posters
I was intrigued by this method of poster design, as it hides out a main character, showing other characters within it. I feel that this style of poster is used to hide a character which has not been fully shown in the teaser trailer, in order to build suspense towards seeing this character. I find these posters artistically beautiful, and I find the style very clever, as hiding a character can build a lot of suspense, for example Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in the new Star wars VII. I like the ones which are a simple silhouette like 'Choke' and 'Skyfall', as it adds mystery and is visually beautiful, as of the contrast in the colours. But I also like the ones from 'No country for old men', and 'Let the bullets fly' as the textures are stunning, and the the photos within the silhouette give hints towards the film, as well as making it look complete. The poster for 'Let the bullets fly' is nice as it shows hierarchy within the three characters shown; The character with the highest poser has been put at the top, to show that he is the most powerful. We know he has the most power as of his coolness in his expression and the glasses he is wearing. I would say the man in the middle still has power, but not as much as the man at the top, but the guy at the bottom looks scared and threatened, which is why he is at the bottom.
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Character posters
I really like character posters, as the individually take characters out of the overall scene and place them separately, which is actually what I like a lot in movies; character depth. I like seeing the backstories in characters, and my view towards them changing on the journey. Star Wars has many big characters, which is why they made 5 character posters, starting with 2 original characters which people already lover and know the backstories of, and three more characters which people want to find more about. All of these Star Wars posters connect, as in all, one eye is covered. All the strips that cover the eye all resemble the number "1", as this is the first movie in the new trilogy.
Star warsI chose all of these posters as they are all from the star wars movies, and they are all set out the same way. Initially, we see the main image, which each link to what the movie is about; so for episode 1 there is a droid as the Phantom Menace is about a droid war, for episode 2 there is a clone trooper as the movie is about the Attack of the Clones (and so on for the rest of the movies). This is done to give the audience a picture to focus on, while using the foreground as a background in a way, so that they can use a background image as a foreground. Inside the silhouette of these characters we see the backgrounds of the planets that the movies are set on (to give setting to the picture), so for example "The Empire Strikes Back" has a silhouette of Bounty Hunter "Boba Fett" (as he is a big character in the movie), and within the silhouette we see a city in the clouds (Cloud City) where we see the city taking the shape of a section of Fett's mask, a moon taking
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a shape of a section of the mask, and a little silhouetted ship at the bottom. All of these images relate to the movie, enabling it to tease the audience by giving little hints about what it is about. The posters are all visually beautiful, and do not have a tagline which overcomplicates things. The poster includes standard things like the name of the movie, and all the information at the bottom (including things like LucasFilm). I think that these posters were made after the prequel had came out, so they were not using these posters to get people in the cinema, but I do think that this poster was worth analysing as the style is visually amazing and is something I could do when making my poster.
The title is pretty unique compared to many other ones; The title is slanted and is on the left instead of being in the middle, which reminds me of the way a comic book presents its title, when they make a full page of something happening, but with the title included.
shutter island
posters used as inspiration for ideas
This relates to our poster as cards are a main part in our trailer, and this specific poster inspired me to have a design where I would use my cards within it.
We were thinking of using this poster as inspiration, where the actual poster takes the form of a playing card, but instead it would have the top and bottom bars of the cards that I created.
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thumbnail sketches
practice photos
The photos below are ideas which I came up with that I wanted to try out to see how they work, so I got one of my partners to take a photo of me in the positions that I wanted to do in the actual photography. This allowed me to come up with the idea of having me looking at the cards and holding them up like a puppeteer, controlling them.
proper photography
tester posters
Here I was inspired by the Double Exposure technique used in the TV series "True Detectives"; I felt that this added some mystery to the main image/character, but at the same time adding a location that links to this character, as well as a backstory. Also, it simply looks visually beautiful. For this tester, I tried the technique where I took a photo which I used from one of the shoots and added a background scene of a theatre.
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Next, I needed a photo of me wearing the suit, but we needed to do a re-shoot, so for the time being I used a picture of Justin Timberlake as I found the right type of photo I wanted, where he was wearing a bow tie. For this test I was inspired by one of the Dark Knight posters where lots of cards were laid out and resembled the form of Batman. I liked the idea of using cards, and the fact that our movie had cards within it too, I decided to mix the face of the person in the suit with the cards using layer mask. It looked better than the previous one, but I still felt it looked quite tacky and lazy.
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the real poster idea
(sketch)
(borrowed photography for test, until we take the proper photos)
When making the poster I was experimenting with loads of different ideas and techniques, which I concluded on the style that I created above. I was inspired by quite a few things, I was inspired by lots of silhouette posters like Elena, where I got the idea of showing the main character's outline, but not his face, almost like when police do not know who the killer is, and they have a black silhouette with a question mark. Additionally, I used the cards within the poster, as they are a ginormous part of the movie. I did something quite clever, where I put each letter of the title onto each one of the cards, which fell together perfectly, looking aesthetic as well as giving hints into what the movie is about. Lastly, I was inspired by the texture of the poster for 'The silence of the lambs'. I've often wondered why the poster was made to look like this, but I've always liked the grain, so I decided I would try it out on mine, so I did and I felt it looked brilliant, and looked like an old theatre poster.
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proper photography for my face
Here is the logo that I created for Dream Cuts (I have the process on my blog). In short, I made the logo like this, as it is the pattern of a dreamcatcher, which I then added blood splatters (representing dreams being cut).
For added touches, I ordered the billing block in a way that it looked visually nice; I put the date in large font and placed it in the middle of the billing block, I had the production company's name separated from the rest and put at the top, and also I added the two companies (Warner Bros, and Dream Cuts) and their logo, both on either sides to make it look even.
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(used photos for second poster)
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File Size: | 8173 kb |
File Type: | jpg |
finished poster
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File Size: | 2804 kb |
File Type: | jpg |