Movie Branding Research
Before I start researching the conventions of the posters I first want to see what things they have included to give the audience an idea of what there will be in the film and if they were both side by side how they relate to one another. To do this I have chosen to look at Dark Knight Rises and have found two poster created which are very similar but one has the villain on 'The Joker' and the other has the hero on 'Batman'.
There is very clear branding shown clearly in both posters. Firstly, although Batman is the goos guy, the poster is just as washed as the one with the joker in as both show destruction in the background with high-rise buildings and fire/sparks so all the colours in both are quite monochrome with hints of orange/yellow coming through keeping the setting very consistency in both.
The framing of the pictures are very similar but the angles are different in the one on the left The Joker is centre of the frame but the camera is level with his slouched posture whereas the batman one is shot from a low angle but the composition of the shot is the same as they are both positioned in the centre.
I would assume that the poster with Batman in focus is the main poster as it has the 'Steel Tongs' font at the bottom and the tag line at the top but the font used for both the actors names and release dates are exactly the same staying consistent throughout both and the title is the exact same with the block capital, white font with the Batman logo behind.
From these two posters alone we can see that they have kept the styles of both posters very consistent with both showcasing the same colours, focus points, settings, backgrounds and fonts/style even if some of the things are placed in different parts of the poster.
What this would hint at its audiences is that it is going to be set in a major city as there are a lot of high rises, there is also a lot of destruction which shows that this film is most likely an action so we can guess the genre and also we can see who the bad guy is and who the good guy is through the posture of the characters and the angles.
The style of the posters are shown in the film style as well as the film generally has this washed, grey tone in the shots so they have matched these also.
From around 1:35 onwards in the trailer, during the climatic scenes in the trailer, it follows same style of both posters in terms of framing of the joker as there is a shot in particular of him walking down the middle of the road which looks very similar to the poster. The colours are all the same with the grey tones with orange glows from the blazes around them so the poster is a perfect representation of the style of the film also.
Movie Poster Research
From creating this and looking through other posters it has sparker a few ideas and enabled me to know an artillery of what to include to keep the poster within the general convention and make it look and authentic and professional as possible. Therefore I shall include -
- A bold Title
- Steel Tongs font including all the names of the directors, etc.
- A Tagline which gives a bit of insight into the film
- Our two protagonists with the names of them.
- A release date showing when the film will be coming out or just simply, coming soon.
- Idents near the Steel Tongs
Stages of making the film poster (Photoshop development)
I have made a start on the poster and to create it I have been using photoshop. I already had a good knowledge of photoshop and was able to edit the poster without facing many, if not any, problems. To show some of the things I have done to the poster I created a small screen-cast showing first all the layers I had created to enhance the photographs and insert the different texts, then the next part is a small clip of me actually editing the poster and making small alterations.Rough Cut of Film Poster
When exhibiting the rough cut I received some feedback from my other peers. Overall everyone seemed rather impressed with what I had created so far but there were a few questions asked which I shall cover now but first here is an image of the rough cut.
The majority of the feedback I received was mostly positive about the style, colours of fonts, composition of pictures and text,etc. I adapted this design idea from an existing poster which I found on google images as I thought it was very appropriate for our film. This is the poster which I got my idea for the poster from.
The main thing I had adapted from this poster is the composition. As you can see in this poster it is split into three sections with the man and woman in the sections either side and them both together in the centre. This shows the audience that it is instantly a romance without the need to meet the title as the audience instantly thinks that it is a film about the two people on the poster meeting. On tis poster the sections going down vertical whereas on mine I have change it so that it is going across horizontal I tough this would be a nice twist on the existing poster and I think that it has worked really well.
One of the confusions which cropped up in my feedback was that they weren't sure weather the reviews were necessary as they don't follow the conventions. I strongly disagree with this as I have seen many posters which have quotes on from reviewers and even the star ratings therefore I have found several examples to put my point across.
Another thing which was mentions was the shadows in the pictures which shouldn't be there. Therefore I am going to be reediting this so that the shadows are no longer in the picture so that there is just the two focuses in the poster, the protagonist and the love interest.
A final thing was to do with the tagline, they all said they like the font used and the position of it but they said that the font was way too small. To resolve this problem I am either going to increase the size of the font and make it bold or find a font which stands out more and is already more bold but still matches the romance genre with the curved lettering as I don't want it to be in block capitals like the title as I want that to stand out most in the poster.
Final Cut & Re-edits
Since the rough cut I have made adapted the poster in terms of the improvements I received from the rest of the media group. Although these were small altercations they have made a big change to the appearance of the poster. I am now going to post the final cut and explain in more detail what re-edits I have done.
The first thing which I changed was the shadows of the pictures, the group said that they were too noticeable and don't tend to be in film posters unless it is part of the mise-en-scene of the film. To do this I simply used the 'eyedroper' tool in Photoshop to select the same colour of the background and then filled in the shadows and blended them into the background colour. this took around 30 minutes to do correctly. I think this change isn't the most noticeable but it does help the film to follow the conventions and also neatens it up.
The second thing i had changed was the tagline. Although the font fitted in with the theme of the poster it wasn't bold enough and therefore didn't stand out and wasn't readable from a distance. Therefore I have changed the font to a much clearer one which still has the simular style. This is now more clear and readable from a distance and has a nice contrast with the bold block capitals in the main title.
A final thing I did, which I noticed when I zoomed into the poster, while getting rid of the shadows, was that the idents weren't masked properly and were a few pixels out so I drew boxes which are the same colour as the background over the unmasked parts to cover it up.
I kept everything else the same as there didn't seem to be any problems with the images composition dn the positioning of the different fonts and texts.
In conclusion I think the poster was a success and the images clearly illustrate the characters and genre of the film. The colours are calm, cool and subtle so it doesn't steal the focus from the images and the top colour and bottom colour make the colour in the centre. The white coloured fonts stand out on the coloured backgrounds and reflect the bright colours used.
