L2 Poster Report

Project title: "?": The clues inside the bottle... where do they lead?

 

 

The idea: The idea for the poster was to have it resemble that of a mystery / horror film poster. To capture this effect, I wanted to make the poster dark but dark enough so that it doesn't scare away the target audience, as the film is intended for everyone. Instead, it was intended to create a sense of mystery in the style of a noir-esque setting. Since the film came out as more comedic, the sinister tone to my poster can be seen as parodic in a sense.

 

Another idea was to make it more colourful. Looking back, this probably would have fit the theme of the film a lot better, but at the time there were no plans of making it primarily comedic.. The film is a blend of mystery and comedy anyway, so either design concept works just fine.

 

 

The research you undertook: I took my main inspiration from posters with mysterious tones, such as the original poster for Alien.

 

This poster features an extremely dark background with an object lit up in the middle. While these two films are two completely different projects, I still chose to try and replicate this ominous style, replacing the titular alien's egg with the bottle of clues that appears in our film.

 

 

Target Audience: Despite its outside appearance, the poster is intended to capture the attention of everyone. The poster appeals to those who are interested in mystery films.

 

 

The final selected design solution: In the end I stuck with the Alien-esque design I had as my original idea. I'm a fan of darker aesthetics which is likely where my decision to choose this design came from, and it works with the film's theme.      

 

 

Design layout: The poster was done as a Landscape piece (accidentally) with no grid structure, though I tried to keep it as professional as possible. For the darkening and lighting I used the dodge and burn tools. For the text I used the Matura M7 Script Capitals font with gradient and drop shadow effects applied.

 

Publishing: First I opened the main image of the bottle as the base.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I added the text: the title, tagline and actors. I used the Matura M7 font for this, and I added multiple effects including drop shadow and bevel and emboss to make it stand out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then came the colouring of the images. I made the background of the base picture darker with the burn tool, and the bottle was made lighter with the dodge tool.

 

 

 

 

 

Testing: As far as criticism goes, everyone who I showed the poster to agreed that they liked it, and that it captured the mysterious feeling with the tagline.

 

 

Evaluation: I think that I could have done a bit more to make the poster resemble the style I wanted to replicate. However, for my first - well, anything - created in Photoshop, I feel like I did a solid job. It isn't the prettiest or flashiest poster compared to the others in the class, but it puts across the idea of the film well, and so has served its purpose