Film Poster

Written and made by Emma Taylor

'Fallen Grace' film poster

Written by Emma Taylor
The Poster - Ancillary Task 1

With the image I had taken at the shoot with Grace at the cellar shoot we designed the Fallen Grace poster. I then replicated this design on Photoshop CS5. I made a new project within Photoshop and made it transparent so that I could could use the 'gradient tool' to add to the bottom of the poster image when I imported it into the new project.    

making a new project in photoshop

The width and height had to be larger than the original, so that when I duplicated the layers, that the gradient would be seen underneath. The first transparent layer would have the black gradient on, and the second layer would hold the image, so that it looks like the image fades into black.

Duplicating a layer so that the gradient can be seen

 

The first transparent layer

The gradient tool icon.

This is the first transparent layer which will have the gradient put onto it, and will be faded to black underneath. I did this so that the principle information of the film eg. the Director, the production companies and social networking sites could be seen. This is seen in professional feature film posters such as 'Shutter Island'.

The gradient tool used in the promotional poster of 'Shutter Island'

The gradient tool added onto the poster

Here you can see the gradient tool has been used on the principal layer which fades to black so that the crucial institutional information can be seen clearly and is effective in displaying this.

adding the image

Here I have imported my image into the second transparent layer and have altered the gradient tool so the fit is clean, and I have enough room for the institutional information. I have then 'locked' off this background layer (as seen in the image below) so that it cannot be altered or moved. I have then added to further layers to alter the colour (selective colour layer) and another layer for contrast (brightness and contrast layer). This then means that I can alter the colours within the poster to make them more 'thriller like'. I increased the blue hue saturation to intensify the coldness of the image to give a thriller like tint, I also contrasted the image to give a more intensified image. 

Making new layers

After this, I started to add text to the poster.

The icon used to add text

The large array of fonts to use

I used an array of fonts, colours and pts in my text. The title of 'Fallen Grace' evidently had to stand out and be the largest and boldest text on the poster, so I made it black and pt 60 to help this stand out. Black was an apropiate colour as its connotations are of death and destruction; definitely something to be expected in our film, this also contrasts nicely against the eerie blue grade. I added the actress' name of our main character on the top of our poster, and as she has won awards for acting before, this could potentially help sell the film. The style of this was inspired by the font of the 'SALT' poster which I liked due to it's contrast, and also displayed the character to be 'pure' due to the connotations of the colour white.  

adding the title pt

Name of the actress style inspired by the SALT poster

Adding the names of the actors

Our main actress is Clare, so her name had to be a focal attention, with our two other supporting actors being Samuel Newsham and Sophie Wooding whos names also make an appearance on the poster underneath the name of the film in the same font, so it looked neat for continuity. The monochrome contrast follows the theory of binary oppositions, creating conflict and tension which replicates what is seen in the film. It also makes the poster stand out, which is needed in order to raise attention of the film, to sell the product and make money for the production companies. 

adding the key principal film makers

In all film posters, the names of the film makers, actors and production companies are placed on the poster, usually at the bottom of the poster. This was time consuming to replicate, as there are no templates for it, so I had to do the best I could with text fonts and pts. Each individual section is made individually so that words can be placed over each other, such as 'production designer'. I did this so that the film poster could be as close to a professional one as I could make it. In film posters, the role of the film maker is designed to be on two levels in a smaller pt, and the name of the film maker is in a larger font, filling more space. Eg. 

PRODUCTION     SAQIB YOUNIS
      DESIGNER 

The problem with making this all in one text is that the name is only on one level, so I had to use separate text boxes in order to make it look professional. 

Adding images into my poster

Too add images that are not my own into the poster (such as production company logos, film certificate, Twitter and Facebook logos) I saved the picture onto my desktop and then used FILE: PLACE in Photoshop to add the image. It was difficult to find images that were transparent to add onto my poster, so the rating certificate has a black background and is placed at the bottom on the black background so nobody can tell.

adding the film rating certificate of 15

adding more logos

Here I've added more logos, the production company logos and the Facebook and Twitter promotion logos so that fans of the film can find more details about the film.

Above is the finished poster for 'Fallen Grace'.