Poster Work for Sabina
Task 1
Analysing Film Posters Task
I was tasked to analyse the codes and conventions on film posters of different genres (horror, thriller and comedy) to help me in making my own film posters.
Task 2
Film Poster Pitch
For the pitch, I was asked to outline and justify my approach to producing a print poster marketing campaign. To begin with, I struggled to choose a target audience to promote my film towards, but after research, I found that thriller films are generally watched by 15-30 year olds, so decided to target mine towards this age group of younger adults.
Film Poster Proposal
For the proposal, I was asked to write in detail about my film idea. Whilst writing it, I bore in mind (from my research on the difference between the pitch and the proposal) that, whilst similar to the pitch, the proposal is generally a more formal document, with more formal language.
Reflective Log
What went well: I came up with my film idea quite quickly, which allowed me to focus on beginning my pitch and proposal.
What I changed to improve my work: To begin with I struggled deciding my target audience, but settled on a generalized audience of young adults.
Task 3
Photoshop Task 1: Elephant in the Street:
Editing Objects Onto Pictures
Photoshop Task 2: Swapping Heads Task
In order to prepare for making my own film posters, I was asked to practice using photoshop with these tasks.
Firstly, I took a picture of an elephant and used the Quick Selection tool to remove the background, and then placed it onto a picture of a busy street.
Secondly, I used the Quick Selection tool again to remove a man's head and place it on a picture of Ed Sheeran.
For this task, I used the magnetic lasso to isolate this image of the queen and place her in an unusual background: the forest.
For the head swapping task, I originally planned to place Spiderman's head onto this picture of Yelena (from Black Widow), however, due to the quality of the pictures i had chosen to use, and the long hair in the picture of Yelena, this proved difficult, so I improvised and swapped the pictures around, simultaneously choosing a different image of Spiderman with better quality.
The original attempt is visible on the left, and the completed product on the right.
Whilst the completed product's photos undoubtedly worked better together, the final image is not exactly what I envisioned, due to my lack of experience and skill with photoshop.
For this task, I used the magnetic lasso to isolate this image of a cartoon chicken onto a zebra crossing to represent the joke "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
I replaced Tom Holland's head with Stevie Wonder's using the magnetic lasso and quick selection tools because my sister said I should.
My Film Posters
Digital Mind Maps
Drawn Mind Map
Moodboard
I made my digital mind maps preceding the making of my film posters in order to understand the codes and conventions in film posters of different genres. This helped me to choose how to take and edit my photos, and how to go about things like fonts and font sizes.
When I had decided on my idea and genre, I created my drawn mind map in order to visualize what the finished version of my posters might look like.
During the making of my mood board, it got deleted two times, which was challenging, as I had to make extra time to ensure it was done to the best of my ability and uploaded in time to meet the deadline. I tried to pick some visual representation of what kind of locations I would potentially shoot in.
Location Recces
For the recces, I was asked to scout out the suitability of the locations that I planned to use. For my film posters, I didn't end up shooting in the kitchen, however I choose to still include the recce details for INSIDE my house.
Risk Assessment
The risk assessment was difficult, as finding numbers for services such as the chemists and vets was slightly challenging, as there were a surplus of numbers, and I wasn't sure which ones would actually get you on the line with your required service.
Release Forms
In this task, I had to get my actors to sign the release form, which was slightly challenging as they were signing it digitally, which made accuracy of the signatures difficult.
Equipment List
iPhone
Camera
Camera Bag
Knife (in sheaf)
Black/Nondescript Clothing
Organization of Files
My Photoshop Workspace
Extra Research
https://www.slideshare.net/nicoleherring/thriller-poster-conventions
I discovered this Power Point on the codes and conventions of Thriller film posters, and it helped me to use it as a checklist for the conventions I should use on my own posters.
This video was also helpful to me in using the gradient tool on my posters.
"Switched" Film Posters
During the making of my character poster, I had some issues with Photoshop as I was attempting to use the gradient tool to merge the two headshots together, so that they faded into each other side by side. Getting to grips with using the gradient tool was difficult, but after watching some tutorial videos on YouTube, and practicing using the tool, I managed to succeed in this, producing a well-edited set of images, that didn’t look like they had just been stuck on a Photoshop document together.
For my teaser poster, I decided to include a simple image of a knife in the hands of its bloody owner on its own. I used ketchup as a substitute for blood in my shoot. The image of the knife has a yellowish glow to it, which I added in post-production in order to fit the poster into the theme of the other two posters, both of which had yellowish lighting due to the lighting I used on shoot.
For my theatrical release poster, I again used the gradient tool to merge the bottom and top pictures, which proved easier, as I had already practiced using the tool when editing my character poster. I decided to use an extreme close up image of the protagonist's non-cloned daughter, to portray the fear in her eyes. I also decided to include the mid-shot, portraying the body language and actions of the characters, including the antagonist carrying a knife.
Reflective Log
What went well: I took successful pictures using a range of shot types, such as close-up, extreme close-up, head shots, and a mid-shot.
What I changed to improve my work: The location of one of my shoots was originally meant to be in a tree-covered footpath, but was moved due to poor lighting, to a churchyard.
Task 4
Self Evaluation
Self-Evaluation
For this project, which I was asked to complete by a film marketing and production company called Alpha panda, I have designed and produced three print film posters for a thriller film idea of my own design. My film is named “Switched”, as it focuses on a father-daughter duo, where the daughter has been replaced by an evil clone version of herself. On my theatrical release poster, I included a mid-shot of my protagonist and antagonist (an evil clone of the protagonist’s daughter) at the top of my poster, with an extreme close up of the non-cloned version of the daughter’s eyes at the bottom of the poster, with a bold red, shadowed title in the middle of the poster, dividing the two images. My teaser poster included an image of a “bloodied” knife, in which I used ketchup as a substitute for blood to shoot. The image has a yellowish glow to it, which I added in post-production in order to fit the poster into the theme of the other two posters, both of which had yellowish lighting due to the lighting I used on shoot at my other location, where I shot the rest of my photos. My final poster, the character poster, which I choose to make in landscape, features headshots of my two characters back to back to convey the tension and sense of moral difference between them.
For this project, I have completed a pitch and proposal for a film idea for the thriller genre (I choose this genre as a pose to the other options (comedy and horror) as I was interested in seeing how I could incorporate the codes and conventions of the genre (such as bold san serif fonts, dark and bold colour themes, such as black and red, and low-key lighting) into my own film posters). This was a task I was asked to complete by a film marketing and production company called Alpha panda. My pitch (a presentation to outline and justify my approach to producing a print poster marketing campaign) I completed as a power point presentation, as the pitch is a less formal form of marketing, more inclined to introduce, promote and sell the idea, where my proposal was a more in-detail account of what I planned for each of my posters, and how I planned to meet my goals.
I have also completed the pre-production, production and post-production of three film posters. The pre-production included scouting out locations and making recces for them, which involves information such as availability of food and parking, carrying out risk assessments for the shoots I planned to do, as well as the more creative aspect of deciding a genre and an idea for my film and visualising what I wanted my final product’s aesthetic to look like, by making mind maps of common conventions of each of the three genres and brainstorming ideas for different films for each of the genres that I could use to make my posters in order to help me choose an idea. I also used a mood board to visualize the different locations, font styles and colours I might use on my posters. An issue I had during my pre-production completion was that I had to make three different mood boards due to each of the first two being deleted and then being closed unsaved. This was challenging, as it meant I had to make extra time in my plan to re-do these. However, the making of the mind maps went well, and they were extremely helpful to me to have a clear overview of exactly what to include in my posters.
For the production, I went to two different filming locations alongside my two actors to take my pictures. When I first arrived at my original planned location in the forest footpath near to a church, I realised that lighting would be a problem, as it was evening, and any remaining light from the sky was shaded by the trees. I attempted to use my own means of lighting to help with the shoot, but the images came out blurry and/or unnaturally bright. In order to solve this issue, I moved the shoot nearer to the church, where the church ground lights provided yellowish lighting, This worked out well for my posters, as the yellowish glow acquired by the lighting went extremely well with the theme of my posters, and allowed the posters to still have the element of darkness to them, acquired by being shot late in the evening. For my photos, I used a variety of different camera angles such as an extreme close-up of the non-cloned version of the daughter’s eyes to portray the extreme terror in her fearful expression. I also used head shots of my protagonist and antagonist to use on my character poster to focus on the facial expressions of my characters. For the main photo of my theatrical release poster, I used a mid-shot, which incorporated more of the actions and body language of the characters. Using this shot allowed me to portray that the antagonist was carrying a knife.
During my post-production, I had some issues with Photoshop as I was attempting to use the gradient tool to merge two images together, so that they faded into each other side by side. Getting to grips with using the gradient tool was difficult, but after watching some tutorial videos on YouTube and practising using the tool, I managed to succeed in this, producing a well-edited set of images, that didn’t look like they had just been stuck on a Photoshop document together. I also played around with filters such as brightness and contrast to improve the quality of my photos and make them stand out better. For my titles, I think my design went extremely well, as I decided to give the title a shadow/reflection effect which made the title an even bigger part of the poster, which, paired with it being a blood red, made it bold and stand out and fit excellently into the codes and conventions of the genre. The techniques I used during the editing process included using the gradient tool, brightness and contrast and various other filters. Along with this, I used the text tool to add a title, tagline, billing block and “Coming Soon”/date to each of my posters.
All aspects of the task I completed independently and to a professional standard that met the requirements of the brief. I found the editing the most challenging aspect of the task, as my previous experience of using Photoshop was very limited. However, I managed to pick up the basics during our tutorial lessons in which we edited an elephant onto an image of a street and a bearded man’s head onto a picture of Ed Sheeran, and from there, I was able to use YouTube tutorials to further my knowledge of Photoshop editing, including learning to use the main tool which I needed to complete my posters successfully: the gradient tool.
I followed the codes and conventions of thriller posters to make my own. Some of these included colour scheme, which, according to a Power Point Presentation that I watched (https://www.slideshare.net/nicoleherring/thriller-poster-conventions), is usually black, grey, red, white, blue, yellow and orange. For my colour scheme I used black for the background of the poster, red for the title, white for surrounding text, and a yellow glow. I also used low-key lighting, which help to portray the dark undertones of the film. My text was also in all capitals, bold, sans serif, and easy to read, which is a common convention, as this attracts the audience’s attention.
An existing film poster that is similar to the character poster that I have designed and made is a poster for the 2015 thriller/horror film “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” as shown below:
Both my character poster and the poster for “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” have titles which are bold, red and in a sans serif font. This contrast with the black backgrounds and other text in white to create a suspenseful feel to the poster, as the colour red connotes violence, due to its link with blood. The black connotes to the dark theme of the film.
The professional poster has the two main actor’s names, which is because the actors are famous and well-known and may draw people who are fans of the actors and their work to watch the film. However, my poster features two unknown actors, so separating their names to draw attention to them would not be an effective use of space on my poster.
Like the professional poster, my poster, features back to back headshots. However, my headshots are of different characters portrayed by different actors, whereas the poster for Blackcoat’s Daughter features the same character duplicated.
Similarly to the “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” poster, my poster is minimalistic and focuses on the characters’ facial profiles. In the case of my poster, the protagonist’s terror is displayed alongside the callous and calculated profile of the antagonist. In “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” poster, the facial expressions displayed seem to insinuate despair and surrender.
Overall, I am happy with my posters, as I feel they appropriately reflect the codes and conventions of both thriller film posters, and film posters in general.
From this project, I have learned the effect of different camera angles and editing techniques and how they can enhance film posters. I have acquired an in depth knowledge of how to use Photoshop in general, as well as using specific tools, such as the gradient tool and the quick selection tool.