Film Poster Design Experiment

Film Poster Design Experiment

I experimented with designs we could use for our film poster. Both of the images below are very rough drafts, using stills from clips that we shot to use in the trailer.

In the first draft I concentrated more on layout and colours. In the second draft, I used the layout of the first draft and worked more on the typography i.e. sizes and fonts.

First Draft

• I chose to use white as the main colour for the typography as it stood out well against the orange/yellow in the background image. This makes it easy for the audience to read in the short time they are looking at the poster.
• I wanted to have ‘pops’ of a bold colour, which is a common convention in film posters. I used an electric blue as this is the colour that clashes with orange in the colour wheel. I used it for the stars on the reviews and brackets around the award. This draws attention to the positive things about the film, making the audience more likely to want to see it.
• The billing’s block is in the conventional position. I used a template for this, but it will be personalised for the film in the final draft of the poster.
• I used transparent logos of production companies, this allowed me to change the colours so that they stood out against the background image. As they are at the bottom of the poster, where the background image is its darkest, it used white so that they are distinguished.
• I placed the reviews on the left hand side of the poster. I only wrote two, but we could use more in the final draft of the poster. They take up the middle half the height and about a quarter of the width of the poster. The review is larger than the critic, this is a common convention as the audience are more interested in what is being said about the film than the critic and who they are representing.
• In the image used, the character is slightly off centred, this conforms to the golden rule, as the audience’s eye falls on one of the four corners. In all of the corners there is something that draws the eye around the rest of the poster.
• The title is the largest text, in the top right corner of the poster. This draws the audience’s attention, and leads the eye to the tagline in the top left corner. The tagline is smaller than the title, a convention of all film posters.

Second Draft

• Again, I chose the main typography to be white. This is the colour that stood out most against the background image used. Although, the colour doesn’t work everywhere i.e. the left hand side of the mage is quite bright, so the white can’t be read very easily. As we are not using this image as the poster, this will not affect our final draft.
• The colour ‘pops’ compliment the background image used. I used a similar red colour to the doorway to the right of the poster for the brackets around the Sundance Award and the stars in the reviews. The light, pastel red attracts the audience’s eye around the poster. I also used the same green/grey colour in the doorway the character is sitting in for the tagline, again complimenting the image.
• The reviews are in the same place as the first draft poster. But I worked more on each review individually. There are certain words that are larger than the others, these words summarise the review and mean that the review can be read in a short amount of time, keeping the audience’s attention for longer i.e. Powerful. Moving. Masterpiece. compared to powerful and moving, an emotional masterpiece.
• The bold, blocky font is common convention for social realism film posters, which I did not use in the first draft. This font is a draft of what we will use in the final poster as I didn’t work on the colour/effect of it.
• In the final draft of the poster, we are likely to add an effect to the typography to incorporate it into the image used i.e. a spray paint effect so that it can be placed on a wall in the image.