Film Poster Draft Ideas

To begin the process of creating my very own film poster, it was essential that I began drafting ideas to decide on exactly what I wanted an figure out what sort of photographs I needed to take during my photoshoot. Here are some of the first ideas I came up with:

1) The idea behind this draft was to shoot the photos in the car a this was used within the action of the short film so I wanted to utilise this. Also in my research questionnaire I discovered that my target audience did not think it was necessary to have the film poster in the main locations used as this could give away too much of the plot so by using part of the transport it would leave an air of mystery for this. The questionnaire also told me that in a film poster, the target audience are often more drawn to one main actor as opposed to multiple. Baring this in mind I decided that it would be a good idea to use the victimised character- although the audience would not know that about him until watching the short film. To create the mysterious tone on the poster I decided that I would make his character be featured in the colour red on a black and white backdrop to emphasise the danger.

2) In terms of ideas, this was similar to my first draft with the use of one of the actors as opposed to multiple. The backdrop of a brick wall is simple yet effective as it is not too plain and boring as the texture is interesting, however it is not too distracting from the main focus of the photograph. For this film poster I thought I would differentiate the pose and change it from direct eye contact with the camera to looking away into another direction. I wanted the title to be in a specific colour i.e orange or red to create continuity with the magazine review page and fit in with the thriller genre itself. Making the title and actor in colour and the backdrop in black and white I thought this would be effective in engaging the target audience with the most important element of the poster.

3) For this draft I went for a different approach entirely. With the use of more actors I wanted to experiment with those seen on the film poster. I decided I would ensure that they were both making direct eye contact with the camera in order to welcome the audience. Also, it is significant that I have chosen one male actor and one female actor because I wanted to appeal to a wider audience. By using one actor from each gender I thought that this would most effectively appeal to everyone in the audience, rather than using a male and only appealing to one sub group or vice versa. Having them positioned in front of the car implements the idea that the car has some involvement in the film, yet this also bodes with the teenage stereotype of hanging around in cars, potentially causing trouble.

After drawing up these drafts I went out and had a photoshoot with my actors in order to see which photos would work best for a film poster. Following on from the photo shoot I looked through the shots that I had and decided that I would use the first poster draft as the base of my final film poster design.