Question 1 poster section

In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products

The Poster Eden

Taylor

Typical Film Poster Conventions

As i am doing the main poster for the film i did some research into the main conventions of these and found out that they are; Film title, Credit block, release date, actor names, film certificate, logo for companies involved in the film, a unique selling point, film website and some have a tagline.

Here is a few posters that I researched into made by a variety of different companies that are advertising their film and trailer. I have researched into the poster designs of the main films that had influence on much of my trailer work to see if they could also provide a good base to work upon and gather some conventions of their typical poster designs. These include that Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Mean Girls and of course JUNO!I used the idea of placing each poster into Microsoft Publisher where I was able to create a thought process and an analysis of the posters in text boxes surround the poster. Using arrows you can also see exactly what I am discussing and where exactly it is on the poster itself. I will then try to explain my thoughts and the process of creating my own poster using these ideas influenced by my research.

Research Into Existing Posters

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Posters

Mean Girls Poster

Juno Posters

Starting My Poster and the Conventions I took from my

Research

Fontshttp://www.dafont.com/This is a website produced to include thousands of font types that best suit particular categories. I felt that the Microsoft Word programme; although they hold several really good fonts that would maybe suit my particular theme in going with a Childs story book or diary styled idea, they didn’t really have any of the wow factors or that felt in place when I experimented with titles.  DaFont website made it easy for myself to navigate around and also to type in particular categories to view, I chose to look within both the handwritten and school section as you can see in my next post and you can also within this post (above) I also looked into the cartoon section which showed some really exciting ideas. Some of these ideas would work well in that they do look as if the style has been made for or actually made by a child itself. The cartoon style seems to be based around a 3D style in that they in clued shading, shadowing or even double layering their lines. My particular favourite throughout both designs cartoon and handwritten, is the 5th font type ( Green piloww)down on the cartoon design image. I felt that it really stood out from the rest in that its bold, childlike, doodles and I felt it would appeal to the younger audience.

FontsAlthough many of these fonts would perhaps fit into my design idea, I still feel that I am drawn to my previously chosen font. The font type is known as ‘Green piloww’ type. I felt that it reflected more of a childlike presence in that it its portrayed as if a Childs written the lettering all in lower case as well the 3D and shading appears to be font a sketch pad or a school book. Over all my aim is to appeal to a younger audience, I am now hoping to experiment with creating this font onto my poster and maybe also experimenting with several of these font that I have found so far.

This idea of experimentation with fonts into the idea of hand drawn and child like handwriting was influenced strongly in both the Juno and Diary of a Wimpy Kid’s posters where the main title for each is written within this particular style and for Diary of a Wimpy Kid I also found that the release date was also done in this style fitting with the theme of a school child narrating his life and days of fitting in at his new school. This idea could be either incorporated within the title or the release date at least which instantly attracts the audience’s attention.

The Name I needed a name that really stood out and sounded attracted in the model media world of films. It needed to capture the humour of the films comedy genre as well as directly telling its audience what they are going to see…. This character could be considered a nerd, geek, nerdy boy, dweeb there are so many angles to take this media joke so I tried out a few ideas in Photoshop where by I used the font tool to create my design and then added extra font on top to create shadows and different effects. I played around in Photoshop until I was fairly happy.

Here I used a simply font that appeared to look like it has been torn up a bit like paper which reflects against the thousands of note pads that school children seem to lug around everywhere nowadays. I decided on the colour blue simply for the reason that it seemed to also reflect a very stereotypical boy colour that we associate them with, a bit like when they are a young baby, their mothers would dress them up in blue, and this also plays along with the humour as his mother still dresses him for this trailer as he hasn’t yet grown up and his mother hasn’t yet let go either. The eyes were a quick brain storm where I could also use my animation in the title whereby the eyes would move inside the lettering if I choose to use this for my final composition

So this time I decided to still stick with the same font idea using the scrunched up paper effect but change the name and colour which the effect is completely different to the audience. The name dweeb has become so popular within this modern age in replace of the word geek or nerd, especially in American high school films, as well as loser and of course nerd. The name dweeb I really needed to stand out more than Geek did in the previous design idea. For this reason I decided to create a duplicate layer of my font and I was able to edit transform the font so that I could bend it away from the upright font in orders to create this shadow idea

The Name Looking at both of these design I personally preferred the Dweeb title compared the geek as it was more modern to my generation in which this trailer is aimed towards and I also felt that the title needed its own character itself so set back to work into Photoshop to design my second idea. The actual name DWEEB needed to stand out against the ‘the’ of the title. To do so I used contrasting colours such as red against black normal font and paced the dweeb in red. I also outlined dweeb in a yellow border by placing a duplicated front underneath creating the font to be slightly larger behind creating outlined effect.A ‘dweeb’ or ‘geek’ is well known for being the ‘brain box’ of the school and seem to talk in their own language governed by facts and figures and statistics. To make my title sound more factual I also decided to put in a definition of a dweeb in which the voice over of the character can  say as it is correcting the comedians voice of after announcing the name ‘the dweeb’ to the audience. This was inspired by the trailer of ‘a diary of a wimpy kid’ where by the comedian announces the name as a diary and then the character within the film corrects him telling his audience ‘it’s not a diary, it’s a journal’. This completely added a final touch to the comedy of the trailer and really sets you as an audience up to watch the film. For further adaptations I am looking into making this also animated in the way that the definition will slide upwards bumping ‘the dweeb’ which also gives the comedian a slight ‘knock’ correcting him in a comedy way.

The Photograph Photo Shoot 1: I tried to capture my character in as many different positions as possible, all standing so that I could capture the whole or upper torso of my character in which I could use for a possible magazine cover or poster idea later on in the process.I particularly fine the pose whereby Lewis is playing and extending his braces with these fantastic and childish smiley faces situated all along the front. This only emphasizes the immaturity within the making of my trailer and itself as it’s presented to the audience visually.His whole outfit just looks like a disaster waiting to happen. You feel embarrassed for him as an audience as it looks as if he has been dressed by his over controlling mother. The braces and the huge overpowering box framed glasses work well together creating the look of a stereotypical nerd. the final touch was the tape round the middle of his glasses holding them together. This also adds to the humour of the whole outfit and characters personality and flair.

The Photograph Photo Shoot 2:Here is another photo shoot that I decided to take just on the basis that there is room for me to experiment with the use of different shots using different levels. For instance my character was stood up and being in character where now I felt that he could be sat down at work actually being placed in a situation within his character.

The Photograph Animated style hand drawn?I took this hand drawn idea initially from the second Juno Poster than I analysis as I felt that it was so simply yet powerful in the way every facial features and detail is enhanced due to the shading and the idea of taking the photograph and making it into a line drawing. I also felt that using this idea of a hand drawn image would also look very animated in the idea that it would reflect and link to that of my trailers unique styling as well, showing this relation and link between the two products. To create this grey scaled drawing effect onto my main character I simply took my image into Photoshop and desaturated the entire colour from the photograph leaving a black and white dull version of the original in its place before editing the lightness and contrast to build up the scale of various light and dark multi shades through the image. This contrast really brought out many of the characters features including the different materials in his clothing and skin tones. A simple stylize filter called ‘find edges’ was able to help give my photograph one of the main importance features such as giving the photograph harder edges such as a line drawing all around the characters facial features, clothing and hair. This gives me as an audience the impression of a cartoon drawing in the making. I then again simply adjusted the lightness and contrast again to even out the contrast making the photograph really stand out bold and dramatic increasing the darkness and thickness in the main lines such as in his braces and main body and hair.  

The Background Again I took this idea from one of the Juno posters where by they included orange horizontal striped down the poster through the background. I felt this gave the background some depth to the poster and create a busier background as well as working in contrast against my grey scaled plain animated cartoon character situated in the middle. Seeing as I have now chosen my main title and the style and colour scheme (red) I decided that it would be effective to stick to this colour scheme throughout the poster itself so created my horizontal stripes to be red to fit the scheme. I then used the rectangular marquee tool to draw a small red strip across the top of my page before using the paint bucket tool to fill the shape a rich shade of red that stood out boldly. I created several layers and repeated this technique throughout, each time moving the strip further down the page create a striped red and white effect for a background.

The Background

I then revealed my top layer revealing my photograph back on top of background.From my obvious knowledge and also research I now needed to include some of the main information into my poster; this so that my audience have some understanding as to the title or the film and what to expect from the title. Previously in my design stages I tried several different styles of fonts, colour schemes and also titles for my trailers film. I came to the conclusion that ‘the dweeb or a socially inept person’ fitted my genre perfectly. This gave my audience a catchy short title to remember but with added comedy ‘a socially inept person’ as this adds to the characters personality within the film.  

Comparing the PhotographsHere I decided that my photograph appeared to not strong enough for my own taste and I felt that I could perhaps experiment with another shot from my second photo shoot and see the difference. I felt that the second design appeared much more strong in the way that he appears sat down at a desk and is in thought looking up at the main title. I chose this new design on the idea that my character was still staying in character and portraying this geeky looking young male figure in his glasses and braces and by also looking in thought holding his pencil. I also felt that this shot looked as if my character was looking towards my title above so all in all feel that this was the design to go with.

Design 1: Design 2:

The Background Colour Explorations

 When I looked back at my design stages so far I noticed that I tended to stick to one main focus, edit it and then that would be my final design for that section without really experimenting more using variations. Here are just a few variations of colour for my stripped background so far and what I think of each colour in particular: Blue:  Personally at first I felt the blue maybe too dark and overpowering but come to experimenting and using such a strong bold blue shade really seemed to work especially against the rich red within the title. I felt that the blue also brought out the texture within the photograph with all the shading and pencil strokes.  Yellow:  I firstly decided to pick a brightly coloured background to really stand out to the audience’s eye as well as show in contrast to the dark and slightly dull pencil shaded cartoon character. I also chose yellow in particular as there was a little touch of yellow present within my main title edging around the lettering. I thought that the yellow would look good in the way that it ties everything together. Overall I felt that the yellow when completed looked rather over powering and harsh to the audience eye and was perhaps a little to bright and bold for my poster where it creates such a strong impact that any information would just be hidden or discarded totally.

The Background Colour Explorations

Red:  I can help but feel that everything seems to work together in that I have created and stuck to simple and minimal colour schemes using red and white as my main feature colours, I also felt that the red of the title seems to disappear within the background also being red. I changed the intensity of this shade of red to slightly darken it compared to the rest of the colours and I felt that it helped to a certain extent but still lacked the boost and attractiveness to really stand out to my audience. Green:  Although this particular shade of green follows in the steps of the other colours in that it is a bold and bright colour that would instantly attract my audience’s eye, I couldn’t help but also feel it would attract for the wrong reasons in that it is too harsh on the eyes and distracting from the main information and overall importance of advertising my film. The colour green is also generally used to connote relaxing and calming feelings, but with the boldness and intensity of this vibrant shade, it rests more on the harsh and sickly over powering line.  Overall I really swayed towards either the blue background with the red title as they seem to not clash but contrast well against one another keeping it modern and fresh colours that would easily attract a young target audience, or keep to my red background that sticks to my chosen colour theme but maybe play around with intensity more and the titles colour.

How Many Stars?

Ok so I have decided that I should give my film trailer a star rating of 4 stars, this is because I wanted to advertise my film as a highly rating film worth my target audience going to see but I didn’t want to sound too highly rated in case some audiences that this is maybe not particularly directed towards seem to think it is not their ideal film for them.  I personally didn’t want to feel over confident when producing my trailer but just about the right confidence to peruse a good attempt at a trailer. The rating system for films also appeal to audience as this also shows that film critics have put their ‘stamp’ and rating on the film as well. A films number of stars when rated corresponds the majority overall who related and reviewed the film.

Looking back at my research I noticed that many of the posters appeared to have several ratings on them either through a star system or a quote from a film magazine company. This just exaggerates the films excitement and success only advertising themselves more in the process of placing this on their posters in direct view of the audience. This can be seen on one poster in specific which was the third Juno poster where it is placed right in the centre of the poster where it also appears to have a quote as well.

Font Take 1: This is where I have now started to include some text and information into my poster design. Ii have chosen to go with the font I had previously spoken about ‘ Green Piloww’. I chose to make my audience see the ‘august’ firstly by placing it directly in the centre at the bottom of my poster in the largest font size I could fit onto the frame. I felt that this was the most important part of information that needs to be clearly visible to my audience so that they known when to expect the film to be in their local cinemas. I then decided that my date didn’t need to show a clear direct day for example august 12th but need some kind of direction in the way that I have now added the year 2011 to my poster. This also creates a good impression for new releases within the year and this will be one film to remember throughout this year. August was officially chosen by me due to the release date being around young school children’s holiday times in which my film would make the most profit when directed towards that target audience.  I felt that maybe the font that I have chosen for the ‘coming’ and ‘2011’ may not be exactly right for this poster as of yet but in future will perhaps experiment with other alternatives. I also feel that the 2011 is more important than the coming… therefore I would in my next design perhaps make the coming even smaller than I already have it in comparison to my date as at the moment I am still not sure on the font, size and the compositional arrangement of where my text should be placed.

Poster Credits I have now decided that previously the coming and 2011 seemed to be over powering and distracting away from the main importance of the expected release date of the actually film so there fore I decided that the 2011 was unnecessary information and that the coming was rather large so I made the text smaller and placed it above and fitted in the slight gap the lettering makes in the ‘august’ which seemed to enclose it nicely. I noticed that in some of my previously discussed poster research that they also included some credits along the bottom, although you can not easily read these credits that are distinctly recognised by industries and also the audience recognise this as classic sign of a well made film in that the credits tend to state the main production crew such as the producer, some of the main stars, photographers, music producers ect. This is great importance in the success of a film for big film critics. The also show some of the companies that helped produce or sponsor some of their work into the production such as Lions Gate, Disney, Dolby Digital and new line cinemas which also adds to the excitement and the success of the film by previous reputations

Poster Credits I decided that instead of just simply copying one off an already existing poster I thought it would be a good challenge to produce my own version using some of my media class mates and other close people to me that I work along well with. I also tried my best to placed my class mates into appropriate positions such as Katie Jones is well known in school for her musical talents so therefore I felt it would be appropriate to place her in the position of music producer rather than a photographer. I have added such logos as Sony Animation as it was appropriate to my own idea of what my trailer would eventually be like in that this was to be my main feature, I also added New Line Cinema as it is definitely a new trailer and producer being made by myself as I have never produced something like this before and finally I added a copy right logo to keep it professional and to myself. Although on my poster again like the already existing posters out there my audience would not be able to see clearly every detail I felt it was a good exercise to do and fun to create my own personal one that adds this touch of detail.

I found these present on several of my research posters and thought that it look professions and authentic.

Final Touches The last final touches to my poster was the idea of adding the song that is present within my trailer by Alice Cooper ‘ Schools out for Summer’. This was used as my general slogan for my trailer as it appeals to my target audience in the sense that my trailer is based around the last term of school and the bell symbolises this end of a school day. It also appeared to double up as another release date by exaggerating the idea of releasing it in the summer period when the school children are off school and would be more willing to go to the cinema.

My Final Poster Design

Example from my research

Typical Conventions from research into layouts

Main Title

Sub-Title

Main ImageOf Main Character

Release Date Credits/ ProductionCompany Logos

Slogan/Release Date

Star Rating