Film Poster Editing Process

After looking through the photoshoot I did for my ancillary tasks and the ideas I had drawn up for my film poster drafts, I decided that this was going to be my main image for my first ancillary task. This is the image I began with in the creation of my film poster. One of the first ideas I had was to colour the actor in red because this would make him stand out as the main focus of the poster and the colour red is significant to this genre, connoting danger, blood and violence. I looked up what programme was best for altering colours in photographs and found myself on Adobe Lightroom. 

Having a play around with the settings and functions on the programme I soon discovered how to discolour different parts of the photograph and recolour it the colour you wanted. The first step was making the entire image black and white as this took all of the colour out of the main photograph. I wanted the rest of the image to be black and white so that there were no distractions from the main focus of the poster which was going to be in colour. Bit by bit I coloured each part of the character with the colour red zooming in to make sure I reached every detail. This process left me with a black and white background with the focus of the poster as the red coloured actor. I then saved this image and transferred it over to Adobe Photoshop which I am already familiar with from my other media coursework.

After this I decided that the space in front of the steering wheel would be the ideal place for the title and the slogan for the film poster. Despite red being an effective colour for part of the film poster, I decided this would be too overpowering if this was the colour of the writing too. I decided to use a different colour for all of the writing on the poster. This would ensure there was consistency in the production of the film poster as having too many colours would be a distraction and make the poster less effective. The new colour I chose to add was yellow as this is still fitting with my short film genre and it was popular in my target audience research tasks. 

This was what my film poster looked like after I added the title:

I wanted this to take up a large proportion of the poster so that it was one of the more memorable elements for the target audience. As it is in a bright colour and takes up a lot of poster space I thought that this looked effective. I chose this particular font because it looks similar to how spray paint does when it comes out of a can. This links to the deviant youth stereotype of performing antisocial behaviour such as spray painting (vandalism) or in this short film's case- drinking alcohol. I liked the way it looked in yellow because it has connotations of danger or warnings and it is effective in catching the audience's eye. 

Below the title I decided to add in a slogan for the film:

To decide upon the slogan I thought about how long I wanted it to be and what it should reveal to the target audience. I wanted it to be short so it fit nicely below the title and by having a rhetorical question it would leave the audience wondering what the answer should be. By asking "Do you have an alibi?" it is suggesting that you should have an alibi. Alibis are associated with crimes and the police. I think this hints enough to the audience that this short film links to crime and potential police involvement but it also does not reveal too much, leaving the audience curious and ready to watch the film. I used the same colour and font as the title so that there was continuity on the poster. I made sure that this writing was aligned in a straight line below the slightly askew title. Next I decided to add the names of the cast as this creates an immediate following for the film if the names are well known.

  ↓

   ↓

   ↓

I stayed with the same font and colour as I liked the effect this had on the film poster. I liked that all of their names could fit along the top of the poster and still fit inside the car; this gave a more inclusive feel. The last thing that I thought my poster needed was credits and there was space at the bottom of the poster for this.

I thought this worked well as they made the film poster look more professional and they were not distracting from the main focus of the image as a whole. Some film posters have more details but I wanted to go for something more simple as I thought this was more effective, particularly for this genre. I experimented with the use of more photographs of film footage down the sides but this looked too cluttered and the film poster already had enough going on. I am happy with this as my finished product because it is memorable and clearly linked to the thriller genre through its style and use of colour. Through verbal feedback from my target audience I was told that it was effective and engaging so I did not need to make any alterations.