I have arrived at a subject which excites me greatly. The prospect of creating a professional film poster for my upcoming film ‘Echoes of Silence’. Over time I have come to appreciate film posters as an art form of their own. They are something which can catch your attention and pull you in if done well, or at worst push you away if done poorly. Therefore a film poster must play to the films strengths. If a film has an A-list Hollywood star, it will likely use them as a centrepiece. If a film is thematically driven, it might place far less emphasis on human subjects. The same goes with an ensemble cast film or a film with greater production design, a film poster will often sell the most redeemable aspect of that film. Film posters are also a great way to use eye catching visuals and compositions to promote a film. There are current trends within social media which see illustrators and graphic designers recreating iconic film posters or adding 80s style filters to them to great effect. These have become very popular and sought after on websites like RedBubble. One of the main trends is the minimalist poster design. Designers can take popular films and create a minimalist design based around a central aspect of the film. That can be a character, environment or prop. This also creates a very slick aesthetic as it gives the audience very little to look at, although its often enough to know what film it is or know what the film is about. I’m going to design a few conceptual ideas of what I’d like the minimalist poster of Echoes of Silence to look like, with the intention of getting it made by an illustrator.
In todays modern climate the internet plays a crucial role in the creation of digital illustrations and it is very easy to get hold of a talented artist and commission them to create for you. The other week I was introduced to ‘fiverr’ - a website that offers all kinds of commissioned services from artists and creators all over the world. This was a step in the right direction of me finding someone who could create a professional and effective film poster. From the off I knew that I would struggle to create my own. I am not a very technically minded person and in the past I have struggled with photoshop, and that struggle is a time consuming one that at present I cannot afford. At the same time I would be designing the poster myself and this will be a good experience for me to see what I can create with the help of someone I can have no physical contact with. I’m aware that these kinds of situations may present themselves in the industry today, with the prominence of freelance editors and concept artists. It will be interesting to see how I can work with someone on the internet from concept to creation. The prices on fiverr for the services of creating a poster are very reasonable. A basic payment of around £7-£10 will get you a minimalist design with no revisions in generic quality. Paying a bit more at around £25 will get you more detail and an average of 3 revisions. The premium is usually around £40 which gets you unlimited revisions and a high quality detailed image. For now the middle option seems the most reasonable and I think it will be a greater exercise for myself to work within 3 revisions to get a final product ready through communication, rather than relying on unlimited revisions.
Here are a few examples of minimalist poster design;
I decided to do my own design for a minimalist poster. Based on the above examples its clear that they use recognisable aspects of the film. For my own poster I had a few ideas in mind regarding the cinematic set pieces within the film. For example the bonfire scene, the beach scene with the casket, and the neon-lit set. I had an idea to make a few concept designs that would be very brief (as I'm not very good at drawing) to potentially send off to an illustrator who could improve my designs into a digital format.
The next conceptual design idea I had in regards to the film poster was a combination of character placement/double exposure. I'm a big fan of posters that establish a hierarchy amongst characters or explore some sort of inner life of those characters through facial expression and composition. With Echoes of Silence, Julian and Grace are two of the main physical characters of the film. Julian is in mourning and reaches out to Grace who seems to have moved on from the life changing event that both of them met. Through the poster I wanted to explore this relationship by capturing a solemn nature in the eyes and the face of each of the characters. This can also be enhanced greatly through composition and double exposure. For example Grace can be placed above Julian to imply that she is above him physically and emotionally.
Below are some examples of compositionally influential film posters. These posters closely relate to the way I want the characters to be placed above/around each other, but also in the way the eyelines extend out into the distance dramatically. I also really like the way the characters fade into one another.
I'd ideally like to use double exposure to bring in the production design elements of the film which are orientated around the presence of nature. In combination with careful attention to the composition of the characters, I think this will be a very aesthetically pleasing and thematically effective image to use as part of the film poster. Below are some examples of double exposure within film posters, from 'Enemy' and 'Nocturnal Animals'. The first example is particularly interesting because it relates to what I aim to achieve in merging the themes and imagery together with the character through double exposure. In this case its the cityscape and giant spider merging with Jake Gyllenhaal's character.
I looked at the services that were on offer on fiverr for what I was hoping to achieve. As I previously stated the prices are broken down into categories, basic, standard and premium. This is an example of an artists work below, which is very similar to what I'm looking for. Fiverr allows you to see reviews left by users which evaluate the artists work, which is very helpful. This enables you to separate the professional high-standard artists who are trusted from the amateurs. The standard seems like a safe bet, as I previously discussed it would be nice to see what I could achieve with a deadline and a strict amount of revisions.
No comments:
Post a Comment