Poster Research

           

I have decided that I shall be creating a teaser poster for my film. Teaser posters are generally simpler than theatrical posters and are used to spark an initial interest in the film. I shall be using a selection of commonly used conventions for teaser film posters, in the poster that I am creating. Such conventions are visible in the images above.

Poster Variations

Magazine Cover Feedback

After creating a version of my magazine cover that I was happy with, I decided to ask a set of people for their opinions on it. I chose to do this as I felt that it would give me an insight into what magazine’s readers would think of the cover, as well as allowing me to identify possible areas of improvement.

The first person that I decided to ask for feedback was Micah Hills, a student currently studying media. He granted me permission to film him giving a small overview of the magazine as well as giving his suggestions on how it could be improved.

The second person that I asked for feedback was Christian Turner. He opted for giving the feedback in a written format rather than being filmed. His feedback is as follows:

“I feel that this is a very strong magazine cover design. It captures the style and conventions of a Little White Lies magazine perfectly. I honestly can’t think of any way in which you could improve it.”

The third and final student that I asked for feedback was Joseph Gower. His feedback was as follows:

“You’ve designed the main image very well. I really like the splatter effects that you’ve used in the background. Altogether the design of the magazine is really good. As for improvements, I noticed that there wasn’t an issue number displayed on your cover. I don’t think this would be a major issue but I feel that it could be better if you added one. Also you may want to experiment with the colours of the main image and the background.”

In conclusion, from the feedback it was clear that I needed to add an issue number to my cover. In addition to this I shall take into account their opinions about the background colour and experiment with a few different colours and styles.

Magazine Cover Variations

Photography Session

One of the activities that we decided to do for our project was a photography session. This session was done because be required a set of different pictures for usage in our film posters and magazine covers. We had to take pictures of the models in a range of different poses so that we would have enough images to each be able to use a different one for our projects. In addition to this, taking a lot of photos would give us a greater selection of images to choose from. The more photos there were to choose from, the greater the chances of us producing a high quality product were.

In the photography session we used two separate models, Tom Nelson and Joseph Inns. These were the two main characters in the film trailer and were therefore the most appropriate people to use. We had a limited amount of resources and space to use for this photoshoot as we decided to do it at school. The area in which we did this was an empty classroom. We cleared a section of the classroom and covered a window with a white sheet. This was done so as to provide us with a blank background. A blank background would allow us to easily be able to replace it with other graphics such as picture of the locations that we filmed at. The window allowed a nice amount of natural lighting into the room, as well as this we had a large bright light that we borrowed from the school’s photography department.

Below is an image of the set up that we used and a diagram of how it was put together:

Font Selection

One of the main designing aspects of the project was deciding which font should be used for the logo of the film. The font would go on to be used in the poster, film trailer and possibly even the magazine cover. To decide what font was to be chosen I selected ten different fonts that would be appropriate. I then showed these fonts to the various group members to get their opinions on them. We after the discussion we decided to choose the font titled ‘Bank Gothic’. This font was selected primarily because it was smart and seemed as though it would fit nicely onto a range of different promotional film products. In addition to this it was similar to fonts from other successful action and crime movies such as Hot Fuzz, Django unchained, the Bourne identity and In Time. The other fonts in the list had various undesirable qualities. Font 2 seemed too tribal; fonts 6 and 7 portrait the wrong message as they didn’t seem serious enough and font 8 and 9 were too difficult to read. Fonts 3, 4, 5 and 10 were all good enough to be chosen but font 1 was the favourite of all the members of our group.

Magazine Cover Inspiration

One of the tasks of creating a promotional package for a new film was to create a front cover for a film magazine. To achieve this I had to look at a selection of different film magazines as that I would be able to use an existing magazine as the basis for my work and to make use of their codes and conventions. I decided to look at ‘Empire’, ‘Total Film’ and ‘Little White Lies’ for this. Below are a selection of different film magazine covers and my opinions on them:

This is the first magazine cover that I looked at. I liked the strong logo that ‘Empire’ used and their decision to have text both in front and behind their model (which is Wolverine). It seems as though the style would be easy to replicate due to the simplicity of the image and the masses of basic text that are present. Unfortunately I did not like their decision to have such a large amount of text present on their front cover and have therefore decided to use a different magazine for my magazine cover.

The second magazine cover that I looked at was one for ‘Total Film’. This was possibly my least favorite design due to the amount of text and images that cluttered the front page. On a positive note, it contained most of the conventions of a standard magazine cover. However I think that the style would be very difficult to replicate and would end up looking dreadful if I were to base my magazine cover on this type of design. In addition to this, it would be hard to find images for other films such as the ones that they are promoting on this issue of the magazine.

The third magazine cover that I looked at was one for ‘Little White Lies’. This magazine defies most conventions of common film magazine via its choice to use only their logo, main image, title and occasionally a small amount of additional cover lines. This results in a very simplistic style of magazine cover. This simplicity would make it very easy to replicate the style of a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine cover. However their covers are highly stylised, this would add difficulty to creating a magazine cover of this type but at the same time would give me a high level of creative freedom.

This next magazine cover is another from ‘Little White Lies’. Unlike the previous cover it has a set of cover lines. In addition to this it had a different art style to the previous magazine.

This version of ‘Little White Lies’ features a different logo to the other copies. The logo’s text takes up more space and it looks a lot stronger than the other type of logo that they use.

This copy of ‘Little White Lies’ shows yet another art style that they used.

In conclusion, I have decided that I shall be creating a magazine cover for a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine. I liked their cover design the most due to its simplicity, stylized graphics and the amount of creative freedom that I would be allowed if chose to design a cover for their magazine.

Poster Inspiration

In preparation for the creation of my film poster I decided to take a look at a range of existing film posters. This was done so as to allow me to see a range of different types of posters so as to inspire me and to give me an understanding of the general conventions of a movie poster.

1: The Dark Knight:

The first poster was for the Dark Knight. This is a very basic poster and only contains a limited amount of text due to the focus on the main image and the logo of Batman. I am unlikely to have such a small model for my main character as I do not feel that I have a background strong enough to carry the image, as is the case in this poster. One of the other interesting features of this poster was the selection of credits at the bottom. These are included because it is a theatrical poster; I shall not be including these in my poster as I intend to create a teaser poster.

2: Rise Of The Guardians:

This is a teaser poster for Rise of The Guardians. It has large bold writing and the primary focus is on the character Jack Frost. To emphasise his importance they have used a simple background so that the attention shall be drawn to the character. At the top of the poster is a simple statement which says “Jack Frost is more than a myth”, this helps with drawing attention to the film and provides a mild insight into what it is about.

3: Orphan:

This teaser poster for Orphan features a strong image of a child staring directly towards the camera. The expression of the character hints that the character is sinister. This is then supported by the line “There’s something wrong with Esther” thus telling audiences that it is indeed a horror movie. The message is supported by the dull background of the poster.

4: Drive

This theatrical poster for drive is simple yet very effective. The character’s thuggish appearance symbolizes the genre of the film and the city setting tells the audiences what sort of location it is primarily set in. There is an emphasis on the name of the primary actor ‘Ryan Gosling’ thus attracting people that are fans of the actor. The positive message at the top of the page is used to spark an interest with people as it certifies that other people consider it to be a good movie.

Final Pieces

Film Trailer:

Film Poster:

Magazine Cover:

Final Film Poster

Film Poster Initial Variations

Here are two initial variations I did of my film poster:

Version 1:

This first version looks very nice, but it has a lot of blank space. To improve this I could either add text to the top of the image or change the background of the poster.

Version 2:

This second version of the poster didn't come out very well. The main issue that I had was cropping the white background from the image. I accidentally did it poorly and therefore the character has sections of his face and body missing. I shall need to change this if I am to improve it or even have it qualify as a proper film poster.

Final Magazine Cover

This is the final version of my magazine cover. The magazine that I chose to use for my work was ‘Little White Lies’. I believe that I was able to successfully capture the nature of the magazine by following its codes and conventions. I was able to make a number of improvements to my work due to peoples feedback and my own personal research.

Magazine Cover First Draft

This is the first draft of my magazine cover. I have chosen Little White Lies as the magazine that the film is to feature on. I chose Little White Lies as their covers are generally simplistic, yet highly stylised. I felt that this would allow me far more creative freedom than other magazines such as Empire and Total Film would have. In addition to this I felt I would be able to focus far more so on the promotional image since I would not need to worry about the content of the text included on the page.

Unfortunately I felt that I did an extremely bad job on the image, even for a first draft. I feel that my main issue was attempting to simply add filters and effects to a photograph rather than drawing a picture of the main character (the standard convention of the magazine). The image of the model was poorly cut out and clashed with the background, thus giving the impression that it was done by an artist that had very little experience. I am therefore very unhappy with the design and plan on redoing it completely.

Legal and Ethical Issues

There are legal and ethical issues about being photographed or filmed on private/public property or capturing people in backgrounds without permission.

When taking film or photographs most people assume that they automatically have the right to use them (e.g. for causes such as selling them as stock photographs or videos). However that is not always the case. In order to publish photographs professionally or sell them people must first get permission to use all of the buildings and people which they have captured in their photographs. In order to achieve this they must either get verbal permission or a release form. There are three sorts of release forms which are vital in photography. These release forms are property release forms, minor (children) release forms and adult release forms. Without obtaining the proper documentation, photographers can find themselves facing a range of legal and ethical issues. If a person finds that they have been photographed without their permission then they are able to take legal action against them or request that their image is removed. For example, the photographer Philip Lorca Dicorcia took a range of photographs of unaware people for one of his projects. One man who was unaware of this occurrence and had been photographed decided to take legal action against him as he believed that the photograph portrait him in an undesirable fashion (as a stereotypical Jewish man). Although the photograph had simply been of him walking through an area being unaware that photos had been taken of him, his offence to such images caused a range of problems for the photographer as he had been using the image commercially. It is therefore always better to obtain the proper documentation before taking a photograph or afterwards if it intended to be used either professionally or commercially.

In the media sector for photography it is always important to obey the laws set by people. To obtain permission to use people or buildings in their photographs, photographers must use release form with their models (even if they are unaware that the photograph was taken) otherwise they risk facing both legal and ethical issues after publishing their work. The release forms which are available are property release forms, minor (children) release forms and adult release forms. Although people are often unaware, buildings can have copyright on them. An example of a building with copyright on it is the Bluewater shopping centre in England. The reason for this copyright is that the architect believes that the building itself is an art piece. Due to this, photography is banned within the area and any photos taken of it must have proper permission from the copyright holders before publishing their photographs. Copyright (displayed via the © symbol) is a legal form of protection for people’s intellectual property (intellectual property is a unique thing created by somebody). Copyright can be used to protect:

·         original literary and written work, like novels or content on websites

·         original dramatic, musical and artistic works

·         television, film, sound and music recordings

·         computer software

·         illustration and photography

·         typographical arrangement of published editions

However the item must physically exist in order to be copyrighted and therefore people are unable to obtain copyright for only an idea. Copyright is not meant to restrict people’s creativity but to protect people’s original work. Another important thing is trademarking. Trademarks are things which make your brand recognisable (most commonly a logo or set of words) and registering a trademark allows you to stop people from using it without your permission first. Unfortunately trademarks have been abused in some cases. For example the company ‘King’ which is responsible for developing mobile apps such as the massively popular ‘Candy Crush Saga’ trademarked the word ‘Candy’. This caused massive controversy as candy is a common word and should not have even been able to be trademarked. They have since used this trademark to bully smaller developers and stop them making anything even related to the subject. Cases such as this show flaws in the legal system and if people are able to trademark common words like this then there shall soon be no words left in the dictionary to use.