After researching into various film posters, talking with the director of the short film and reading into the synopsis etc. I had a clear visual idea for how I wanted the film poster to look. My main visual that I wanted to focus on was cassettes, I think this is the most obvious but could also be the most interesting aesthetic as they now look very dated. Initially I was going to work with this photograph that I had taken whilst on set, shooting the film:
on set: This is a clip of the main character, Morgan travelling on the train. I was quite happy with the photography, however I didn't feel it was exactly right for the type of poster I wanted the film to communicate.
I collected tapes, and tried to get as wider range as possible to allow the visual to be more interesting. I also needed to be aware of the types of tapes/music I was using, as the labels would be visible and the music needed to fit the era of the film. So predominately music from before the 90's, and based on the music the main character likes, quite broad. I used photoshop for this area of the poster, which is something I have used a lot more this year, and something that throughout the time on the course I've wanted to improve.
As the title of the film is mixed tape I thought it would be more fitting to have a variety of tapes on the poster as opposed to one. In terms of layout, I had planned to repeat the pattern several times, as I thought this could work, especially as I had quite a varied selection of tapes. In terms of typefaces, I think it should be sans serif as this allows the poster to keep a simple design and not take anything much away from the visuals.
I thought Futura would be perfect for the type of style I was trying to create, it seems to be something that I feel I've seen on film posters before, so I think this allowed for the design to look more realistic for a film poster. After looking at various film posters I'd noticed a lot of the text was centrally aligned, which is not something I usually do, however this hugely improved the overall aesthetic of the poster. Looking at film posters helped me to understand the heir-achy of text and importance of information on the film poster. I thought having the directors name above the film title made it look more realistic. The log line originally was 'follow the music' but after reading through the synopsis and being on location filming, I suggested having press play at the start, which was an idea that was incorporated into the design.
I thought for professional reasons, even though this is only a short film, that I designed it in a similar way to a full length, with the information about casting, producers, editors etc. I looked for a type face that was stereotypically used in film posters, at the footer of the poster. I also included a further passage on the narrative and the website to the official films site.
Once I had got all the information that was important and I felt like I needed, I started the layout. At first I had finished laying out the information and visuals and decided I wasn't happy with it at all, it felt too plain and looked unfinished. I tried a variety of block colour backgrounds and eventually was happy with the yellow. I think the yellow makes the whole thing look a lot more professional, more eye catching and generally suits the film style a lot more.
Because I was happy with the general design I looked into how I could improve it or sightly alter it in order to get the best out of it. I thought something that might benefit it would be adding in a sample of the main characters hand writing, as he is portrayed as a loner and is always with his cassette player and notebook. I thought this could add a bit of the main characters personality to it, as the film is very much focused all on him, with most scenes only shot with him in it.
scanned handwriting:
In terms of positioning I didn't know where would be best to place his name, initially I liked it at the side as though it had just been written there in a rush, however because there is quite a lot of space at the top of the poster it might look more even in terms of composition.
This was another layout that I played around with, I don't think its one Im going to end up using as I think the positioning of the previous designs work better. I scanned in all the tapes I had collected and positioned them in a 3 by 5 sequence as this was the highest amount of tapes I could include without using the same tape as a visual again. If I were to go with the multiple tapes in the end I would need to think about spreading the the text throughout the poster as it could look too busy.
final layouts:
These are the three final layouts that I need to choose from, at the moment I think my preference is the multiple tape poster as it looks slightly more interesting. However I will check with the director and see what needs working on and which layout/design he prefers.
No comments:
Post a Comment