Initially I thought that creating a Poster would an easy job to do because what does one have to do to create it? Add an image, add text and TA-DA, you're done! But no, I guess I will have to take my words back; it was NOT an easy job to do.
The picture itself said so many things that it became quite difficult for me to add appropriate effects, fonts and color tones to it. Adding the film title was the most challenging of all; Mahnoor and I had decided to go with the same font as we had used in our Short film but doing so meant challenging, in a way, the conventions of a typical poster because according to my research the film titles written on the poster are quite simple, crisp and easily readable so initially I was not so sure of using it.
However what changed my mind were the other fonts, none other seemed to make sense with it, to compliment the story of our film, to tell the story of the little boy featured on our poster and most of all make a link to everything the image itself is conveying. Using the same gave everything a sense of linking and continuity between the film and the poster.
Another major problem was the title not being clearly visible so tackle it I first used the Burn tool to burn the part of image that was underneath the title but decided to change it because the effect seemed very amateur and untidy. The next thing I tried was using a gradient on another layer and then putting it underneath the title. This seemed way better and the title was easily readable as well. However I lessened the opacity to an extent that the picture could also be seen from underneath the gradient layer.
I used the burn tool again to darken slightly the vertices and edges of the poster and dodge tool to lighten the eyes of our actor. This, i think, gave more depth and story to our poster.
The names of the actors I did not write on the top because we wanted to mention that the film has been inspired by true events and wanted to mention it separately. Thus we decided to add 'Inspired by True Events' on the top and name of the actors above the film title.
'Inspired by True Events' was written in red and embossed a little because neither black nor white font were clearly visible and plain red looked really flat so we added an effect on it too.
For our tag line I did not go with a phrase but rather three words, each that tells the story of the three phases of our character and of which the audience can only make sense once they have watched the film.
Desire tells the story of Ali Hamza when he was a child and wished to go to school, to study and be among the children of his age.
Hope links with Ali's youth where he is earning and struggling to give his exams, to ace them, to stand on his own feet and to become someone and be successful in the future.
Destiny reflects his achievement and his success. Destiny was used because if it was not for his fate, maybe his hard work and struggle would not have paid off so well; he would have landed with a job but not as good and respectable as the one that he achieved.
The 'U' on the bottom right hand side corner of the poster is for 'Universal' which represents the audience, means everybody can watch the film.
Image of the poster that was developed
(Before audience feedback)
After the final development of the poster, Mahnoor and I decided to gain some feedback about it so that we know whether audience would like the poster and as a result go to watch the film or not. We decided to show the poster class mates in Media Studies of both, AS and A level.
The image was very well appreciated but what did not appeal to them much was the gradient used underneath the title and composition of the picture was said to be not so effective and because of that the poster seemed a little off.
Another thing which they noticed, and something that I did not pay much attention to, was that our Production Logo had camouflaged with the black gradient and nothing except it's orange dot was visible. We thus, were given another reason to either remove or lighten the gradient.
 |
| And the work continues |
So for the final poster I moved the Image on the left to improve the composition of it and removed the gradient completely. The problem faced during movement of the image was that the picture was not wide enough to cover the dimension of the poster so I copied and made a duplicate layer of the wall behind the kid and used eraser tool to minimize the appearance of another image's attachment.A bit of yellow effect was added too by painting a top layer yellow and minimizing opacity to the maximum. This gave a very soft look to the poster and complimented the entire color pallet used.
Poster after Audience's feedback
Final Poster
No comments:
Post a Comment