Author: Ronald Soon
Media & Journalism student at University of the West of England
Proposal
Proposal
1 sentence, 1 paragraph, 1 page
1 sentence
A movie poster is a form of advertising made to capture audience’s attention into watching the film and in my project I will be creating 3 movie posters each of which will have its own story and in a similar genre of an action film.
1 paragraph
A movie poster is a form of advertising made to capture ones attention into watching the movie. In this project, I challenge myself to create 3 movie posters without the help of celebrities to be in my poster but friends of mine. All 3 movies will have the same genre of an action film, therefore, the person for the job will have to fit the character of the movie and be charismatic enough to pull it off.
1 page
In this project I will be focusing on producing 3 movie posters from scratch. To break it down, In each poster:
- I will find my own models to pose as the main actors
- The background picture would be captured by me
- There will be a summary and a title
- I will be printing all 3 movie posters in A1 size
- Posters will be virtually put up on outdoor advertising spaces (hard to explain)
- Have a similar genre of an action film
In movie poster #1, it will feature only the main actor along with text (title, credits, actors name, etc) and a background picture which I imagine it to be an ally by the Bearpit in Bristol. The genre of the movie will be based on action, thriller and crime. In my sketches, I show the layout of how I imagine the end product would look like.
In movie poster #2, It features two main actors, a male and female. The female represents the light to the male in a way of, hope, faith and trust. The background picture shows Clifton Suspension bridge and the bridge represents a crossing to another country that plays an important part in this film. The genre of this movie will be based on action, crime and adventure.
In movie poster #3, there will be two main actors, a male and female as well representing as husband and wife. The background picture will be a background of living room house, however, if there is no suiting background for it, I will make one. The genre will be based on action and crime.
In order to carry out this project, I would need to rent out a DSLR camera to take pictures of the background intended to be used and to book out a photography studio room for my actors to be featured in the poster.
Treatment
Treatment
Working title: 3 movie posters from scratch
Type of production: Photography/Post production (Photoshop)
Target audience: Young adults (15-29) and adults (30-60)
Visual structures
Images below were drawn by me really badly.
As you can see, my non completed sketches are really bad but it tells abit on how I imagine the layout to be.
Studio shoot plan
I booked out the photography studio to hold a shoot with my models for the movie posters. I have a total of 4 actors that will help me in making 3 different movie posters. All actors are students from UWE.
Main actors for all 3 movies:
- Cedrick Cruzada (Posing for movie #1 & #2
- Ellesya Ilyas (Posing for movie #2)
- Peter Banard (Posing for movie #3)
- Amy Glover (Posing for movie #3)
We will be dealing with clothings that my actors already own. I will describe to them the type of clothing I want them to wear and bring it along on shoot day.
Lighting plan
For the movie #1 I want Cedrick to be the center of attraction. The lighting on his face would show half dark and half brighter like the picture above shows Gerard Butler. Setting the scene for that would be pretty easy.
For movie #2 we will be using the same lighting concept as the #1 but only making it much brighter for both and not too focus on just half of each faces.
For movie #3 both actors faces would be fully lit getting most details on your faces.
Post production (filters, effects)
In my weekly diary posts, I mentioned about movie posters having a slight tint of blue, red, grey and green filter overlaying each posters and also a slight glow to allow the actors to stand out more. To me that is the cream of the top of a movie poster. Without those filters and glow the movie poster looks really flat. More is elaborated in the research done for these topics in my blog posts.
My challenge during post production would be able to replicate that feel and effect it gives to movie posters.
FINAL PIECES OF MOVIE POSTERS
In this blog post I will be presenting my final pieces along with summary of each movie posters and show casing the poster I have printed out to be handed in. Also, using outdoor advertising space to place my pictures in advertising spaces to see how it looks hanging outdoors!
Summary: An ex FBI agent who runs a local bar, changed his life when he found out his wife got murdered by a group of criminals he once put away. He believed one day his past would come back and haunt him but after moving thousand of miles away from home he knew one day something would eventually come for him.
Title: Thirst
Genre: Action, Thriller, Crime
Main actor: Cedrick Cruzada – Acting as Ray. Short for Reyes
Summary: A undercover cop on his last mission before retiring and starting a peaceful life with his wife happened to be in a scene where it looked like he murdered 4 other cops. He ran out of radar and plan his mission to prove himself not guilty by stopping the man involved before the FBI gets to him first.
Title: Shattered
Genre: Action, Crime, Adventure
Main Actors: Cedrick Cruzada – acting as Jerick
Ellesya Ilyas – acting as Jen
Summary: In a peaceful neighborhood there was a young couple who one day suspected that their neighbor have kidnapped someone. Before calling the cops the 2 adventurous couple thought it would be a better idea to find solid proof first.
Title: Try Hards
Genre: Action, Comedy
Main Actors: Peter Barnard – acting as Bert
Amy Glover – acting as Lyla
IMAGE OF POSTERS IN REAL LIFE
NOTE: ALL BACKGROUND PICTURES WERE FOUND ON GOOGLE AND I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THEM EXCEPT POSTERS IMPLEMENTED INTO THE PICTURE.
I must say, I am happy with my work and seeing it like I’d imagine to see it outdoors, I would definitely watch my own movie if there was actually a movie about it.
I must say I’m quite pleased with the way it was printed, in terms of quality. However, I’ve noticed on the movie Try Hards, that the hand holding the gun, its color it’s really bad when looked closely as the original image of it was black and white and I had to use clone stamps to get the color right. It thought it looked alright on screen but when printed every detail could be seen which left me regretting. I would have done a reprint but it cost me 15 pounds per paper and I thought I would leave is as that.
Movie poster #2 – UPDATE
Above picture shows my sketch for movie poster #2, I used the background of clifton suspension bridge with just people I found on the internet. It turned out alright but I was forced to put a plane in there to make it more like an action film.
I thought I could do the same after taking pictures of my own models but I failed to do so. everytime I look at it, I just don’t see it being an action film.
Heres the one with my own models. It is uncompleted because I couldn’t bring myself to be happy with the layout. I would say its nice but it would be better of as a romance film than an action one.
Because of that I will not be using the background picture and frame of my models. I found a way after sometime of brainstorming and this is what I came up with to be my final piece.
The story for both remains the same and the title “The Sacrifice” was simply applied just so I had a title for the time being and was never going to be the title.
And here it is, my final piece. I must say, I much prefer this than the one I made previously and in my opinion, the best out of all 3 I produced. It only makes sense that is better because of the time used to come up with this.
Printing my movie posters
I have decided that I will print my posters into A1 size papers to make it more professional and of course, a movie poster is a poster in the end.
To do so, my picture I take will have to be shot at RAW for more space to work on as I will be printing it on a big piece of paper. Setting my resolution up to 240-300 resolution is needed to be done for high quality printing. Avoiding grainy picture as 1 print for A1 cost up to 15 pounds in my university and I will be printing a total of 3 poster. Getting it on the first try will be very important for my wallet.
Due to late blog posts, today I have printed out my final pieces and have submitted it to Marcus. I will also be posting a digital forms into the word document needed to be submitted. Here are pictures ive got to take before submitting it.
pictures pictures pictures
Why are my movie posters portrait not landscape anymore?
Early years in the movie industry, landscape posters were produced more than now. All 3 of my movie posters will be made portrait instead of landscape because If we all notice most movie posters are in portrait now.
Reason being, from my understand, landscape is to show a larger picture focusing on location more instead of people. I mean, obviously you still can focus on people but because in landscape there is more to look for and not all eyes will be on the people. However, when in portrait you are limited to such space and what better way to use the space then to show the lead actors of the show and a better advertising scheme I believe. The whole point of creating a movie poster is to let the world know when, who and what will be in the movie and at the same time eye catching to targeted audiences.
Again, those are just my opinion.
With no luck, I found nothing relating portrait and landscape movie posters but there are people who wonder still. In a question post on quora.com, a user said “Because posters heavily feature the stars of the show, not images from the show. People are best displayed in portrait format (which is why the vertical format is called “portrait”.)
There are hundreds of years of history depicting people in vertical format. That’s why posters are in this format.”
It is as simple as it sounds and so I do produce my posters in portrait and focus more on the people in it.
Why do ALL movies have a love story?
Yes, I said all and not only for action films. It is in every movie and not just hollywood ones but all. Speaking in reality, obviously is not every single film ever made has a love story (who knows, i havent seen every movie made in the world) but at least 99% of movies would most definitely have a love interest.
The reason why i’m doing a research about this is because I have to implement some sort of love story in my action films. Cant have one without it right?
There are not alot of journal reading I could find on it but here is an article I truly agree from. Its claims to be a free-online-film-school and it was a good read.
Witney Seibold says,
(all information below is not by me)
You see, when you look at just about any film, you’ll find it’s a love story. Or at least has a love story in it. Yes, just about every film. Seriously. Think about it. Think about your favorite action film. Let’s look at Die Hard. Die Hard is about a New York cop who finds himself locked in an Los Angeles office building with a bunch of terrorists. Shootouts and explosions ensue. But why is he in Los Angeles? Why, to reunite with his estranged wife. And what happens at the film’s end? They reunite. The plot may be about the terrorists, but the prominent subplot is about John McClane getting back together with Holly. Love is what drives Die Hard.
Now here’s the real test: Look over your video collection (or your online queue, if you prefer) and tell me which of the dramas (documentaries don’t count) have romantic subplots. Look over all of them. The action films. The horror films. The comedies. The heist films. The musicals. The westerns. The war films. The kitchen sink realist dramas. The children’s films. The surrealist films. I’m willing to bet that a good, solid 90% of the films you’re looking at have a romance as the central conceit, or, at the very least, have a love story in it. Most of the film’s you’re looking at likely spend a good deal of dramatic time dealing with the romantic relationship between a man and a woman. The Godfather might be a Shakspearean tragedy about how Michael sells out to become a powerful king in the mob world, but the final shot of the film is about how he rejects his wife. Dracula may be about a vampire menace that intends to kill hundreds with murder and a plague, but its drama is about the romantic leanings of Mina toward Jonathan. One could even say that Dorothy was in love with the Scarecrow
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/site/183089-free-film-school-35-every-damned-movie-is-a-romance#Wvm50cs0oWWq7BKb.99
Now, after reading that I cant argue that hes wrong but the real question is; Why is a a continuous trend in the film industry?
Witney’s wise word says,
If films are any gauge, though, we cannot. Every story must have a romantic subplot. It’s harder to think of exceptions. Our preoccupation with love and sex is so great, that we must include it in everything, sometimes to the point of damage. Consider any children’s movie. Let’s look at one a lot of people saw, and look at Shrek. Yeah, Shrek is about how two ogres eventually come to overcome their misanthropy in their need to do good, and eventually come to fall in love with one another. Fiona and Shrek. It sends up old fairy tales about romances by making the characters who are traditionally monsters into the romantic leads. We can all see that. But what happens with the comic relief sidekick Donkey in the film? Why, he also gets to fall in love. There is a wiggy romance between the donkey and a female dragon in the film.
These romantic conventions were old when Shakespeare did them, and probably stem from medieval tales of knight errantry and traditions of Commedia dell’Arte. A good comedy, convention argues, must end with a marriage. Or at least a “pairing up.” Ask your Shakespeare teacher, and they’ll tell you that the main delineation between a comedy and a tragedy is the number of marriages at the end. Tragedies end with death. Comedies end with marriage, which is a reaffirmation of life. Joy vs. sadness. Hope vs. despair. There’s a reason the theater is represented by masks of comedy and tragedy.
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/site/183089-free-film-school-35-every-damned-movie-is-a-romance#Wvm50cs0oWWq7BKb.99
I feel his explanation is as simple as it sounds. Loving is part of any human and without love we have nothing. I’m relating it to unconditional love we receive from our parents and without their love and support we will be on the streets or a matter of fact, dead. Love is strong, love will always be around and no one can deny that.
In relation to my project, love will definitely not be the only thing that drives the movie but I will complete the film with a touch of a love story.
On a another note, I feel adding a love story is also a marketing scheme to target an audience too. For an example, not trying to be stereotypical but I’d imagine females are less likely to watch a full on gory action film and with no love story than a movie that have action and love. So already having the action aspect of a film males will most likely watch it but if theres a love story too they target both male and female interest into watching a film.
Well, these are my opinion on it and I maybe completely wrong but that me analysis the possible reasons why movies are made that way.
Noticing slight glow on posters
After noticing how movies and posters have blue/orange filters, I have started to realize majority of movie posters have a slight glow behind the main actors featured on the poster. I realized this because when I was looking at my posters I felt as if something was missing and that my image looks rather flat. I looked through a bunch of movie posters and realized besides it having a blue/orange filter, it has a slight glow as well, either in blue, orange or white in color. Most of them come from a light source, for an example sun or a lamp post or just natural source of lights.
here are some examples
If you noticed behind all the main actors there is a glow of fog or light that brings out the poster and focuses on the main actors of the film.
I have been trying to implement it into my movie poster #1 and hopefully it will work out.
Noticing movie/movie posters looks blue and orange? NEEDS PICTURES
While editing my posters, I felt as if the colors on my posters were rather dull compared to movie posters I’ve seen. I put up a bunch of movie posters to look at and I saw a consistent color of blue and orange on majority of the posters. It got me thinking, why do movie posters have some sort of blue and orange filter going on.
I researched online and I was surprise there were posts about movies and movie posters having a blue or orange filter going on. Apparently, according to Rosie Cima in the past 20-years-or-so hollywood movies have a consistent trend to have blue or orange filters in their movies.
Rosie Cima said, the trend was already in full force a few years ago, when a blogger sampled the colors in a bunch of film trailers. Heres what he came up with.
We are not talking about 2 or 3 movies, we are talking hundreds of them have the same theme of blur or orange. In another post by Peter Sciretta in 2009, mentioned that as Gravity 13 points out: orange/blue just so happens to be the most common set of complementary colors because blue is “cool” and orange is “enthusiastic” and “energetic.”
https://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/
Picture below can be found on: http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/
These are just a few movie posters to show an example of what I meant. Besides it just being a common color to be used, I too believe that the orange and blue lights shows a certain glow on the main actors to focus on them. Also, too exaggerate a more dramatic feel into the movie/posters.
Once you have realized it you will start noticing it on every movie and movie posters you see. Well, at least most.
I will be trying to implement it in my movie posters and hoping it to turn out alright.
In my movie poster sketch #2, I tried implementing it but it doesnt at looks close to it.
picture below
Assignment 1 - Intensive Production 