Film Poster Production Process

Poster Production Process from alltimejas

Here is the production process of my film poster that I created on Adobe Photoshop CS4. It includes the various stages I went through to create the film poster, the websites I used for fonts and how I edited my main image.

Ancillary Product 1: When In Darkness Poster

My first ancillary product is the film's official poster. I selected for Veronica to be the main image because she is the main character and I believe to be the face of When In Darkness. I edited the image on the poster to make it appear distorted and futuristic through the use of a holga effect. I found this to be less conventional and much more interesting than a simple edited picture on my film poster. The identity of the model may appear slightly distorted to audiences, allowing for them to question the film itself, hence allowing for me to receive an audience.

I would like to keep this holga effect as a theme that will run throughout the poster and the magazine. This will allow for me to create an identity and an aspect of individuality to my film's advertising. I believe the main image makes the poster eye-catching, allows for it to stand out and against competing films.

Computer Mock-Up of Film Poster

This is the computerised mock up of the poster for my film. This will act as an outline for my poster, giving me clear instruction of the layout aspect for my poster. The mock up suggests that the poster is very simplistic, but believe that simplicity isn't used very much in film posters but I feel will convey the idea that characters are important and keeping it looking simple so to give clear indications to the genre as the colour scheme will be dark reds or blues and blacks.

Additionally using a close-up of a character will be very personal to audiences, the eyes will be a key part to my poster as they are considered to be portals to the soul, will also convey the characters emotions of fear or vulnerability. I feel that using characters for my posters will be a strong selling point for my film.

Hand Drawn Film Poster with Annotations

Here is my hand drawn film poster design that I will creating for my ancillary product. I have made note of the different taglines that I have considered using on my final poster. This hand drawn is simply a draft and will be up for development when I am in the process of creating it on Photoshop and the final poster may turn out to be slightly different to this copy, but here gives the basic outline for my poster.

Above I have annotated my hand drawn film poster, explaining and justifying why I have chosen to use these certain features and follow particular codes and convention. My drawn hand draft is very simplistic and lacks colour, I will be including blacks, greys and whites and also the institution banner will be placed across the bottom half of my poster. These colours convey the films genre and will serve to be a strong iconography for my film in general.

Poster Inspiration

Poster Inspiration

Inspiration for my poster comes from existing thriller films, including The Butterfly Effect, Black Swan, Regression, Salt, Dorian Gray, Red Lights, The Purge: Anarchy and Shutter Island. All of these selected posters focus on the aspects of their main characters. For my poster I wanted to also focus on characters, which is why I will be using mostly characters posters in order to showcase my different characters though this will be time consuming I believe that this will be a strong action to take as my characters are very important to my film and this will also be very effective in promoting my film for audiences to watch as these posters will act as an overt means to advertise When In Darkness.

The Different Types of Posters

For my poster I decided to firstly look into the different types of posters that film industries release their audiences.

Character Posters

Many films choose to showcase their character through a series of character poster, which contains an individual from said film. It may include the characters name (though for these Harry Potter posters, the characters are so well-known that names are not even needed). This is one of the ideas which I had for my own ancillary products, to make a poster for each of my characters in order to create a series of posters so to introduce my characters to my audience as characters are such a strong aspect to my film.

Teaser Poster

Teaser posters (sometimes known as an advance poster) is an early promotional poster for a film. It contains a very basic image or design which enables for hype and excitement to be built around the film without revealing much information, so to keep a mysterious element to the film. Teaser posters include a date at the bottom, a tagline which all tie in together to showcase elements of iconography. These posters often contain an iconography symbol associated to the film, for instance The Dark Knight teaser poster includes the Batman logo. This logo or symbol will also be included on any further posters, trailers and even once the film is distributed through to DVD.







Theatrical Poster

These types of posters are released near the the date of a films release and are showcased outside of cinemas. Theatrical posters are generally the main posters and give key aspects of the plot, characters, location and actors away. These are crucial posters to a films success for the films marketing companies.











Based on this research for the different types of posters, I will be focusing on creating each type of poster for my film. Though this will prove to be time consuming, it is so I will be able to create a certain hype and inform as many of my target audience as I can. These posters will be distributed throughout various social media sites as this is what my target audience uses on a day to day basis. Through using each of these poster types my media product will be have the opportunity to have as much marketing strategies as possible.

Analysis of 3 Ancillary Products (Film Posters)

Analysis Of 3 Ancillary Products from alltimejas

Based upon this analysis, I will be sure to follow the general conventions of a film's poster including the film's title, main image, actors names and also a release date. Depending on which genre I choose I will be aware of the lighting I use in the image and in addition the colour scheme that I include in features such as the text and title on my poster. I will also manipulate my images to make them more realistic to provoke the consumer to feel empathy and also enable my poster to stand out from any other competing ones.