Poster Progress

The genre and category that our film falls into was a main factor when deciding which effects would be approriate to use on our poster. Since our film falls into the genre of British Gangster we decided to experiment, applying a number of different effects and seeing which would had the greatest impact on viewers. We noted that we found inspiration from the film Reservoir Dogs (as it falls into the same category), and decided to adapt some of the ideas from this to help ensure the poster was distinctive and eye catching. We chose to use techniques such as limiting the colour palette and narrowing the colour scheme to black white and red. Photoshop was used once we had decided on the picture for our poster (below) as we wanted to take advantage of making sure the poster stood out.

Being a British Gangster film, we felt that we needed to add a feature to symbolise British Ganster culture- we decided on a shot of London in the background as this is an established feature of Britain. This decision was also based on the thought that it would compliment the theme and allow the mise-en-scene to be more noticable to the target audience or consumer. We then used some shots of famous London land marks such as London Bridge and the Millenium Bridge to experiment with and decide which to use for the final image.

We started by testing and experimenting with the photos that were shot of the Millennium Bridge in London. This is a well established and recognised London landmark and therefore was ideal for what we were attempting to achieve. However the picture was quite dark and had to be adjusted with its lighting levels which we were able to carry out using photoshop. This adjustment highlighted the finer details and made the more important aspects of the image stand out and increase the quality of the picture as a whole.

The picture of the five boys was then copied and pasted onto the background shot, and the colour scale was changed to black and white. This made the picture look a little more realistic and more of a film standard. We were happy with this outcome as a first attempt, however we knew we still had more to do in order to make it of even higher quality and to make it convincing to an audience. We then looked through all the other shots taken in London, and felt that the was one particular shot that could work better.

The final picture we decided to use for the main background was the one pictured above. This is because once produced, the picture was extremely clear, thus would be perfect when it came to editing. The photograph was fully in focus and all the smaller not so important details of the picture maintained good visibility. This was achieved by using a sharp depth of field and by reducing the lens aperture to a small diameter. From all the shots we felt that this one of the world famous London Bridge would be the most recognised by the audience (mainly the British audience). The lighting in this picture stood out to us as we thought that the effect of the clouds on the image as a whole was impacting. The picture was opened into the program Photoshop to begin editing. We started by adjusting and improving the lighting levels which was achieved by adjusting the input levels. The image of the five boys was then opened onto a separate layer and the input levels so that the lighting and the contrast appeared to be sharper. The lightning of this picture highlighted the facial expressions of the boys, and the picture quality was a lot more professional. We then needed to merge the two pictures together which meant the image of the boys had to lie on top of the background image of London Bridge. The Lasso Tool was used to achieve this to cut around the boys and the wall. We had to make sure that we zoomed in to ensure that the work being done was accurate, although this did take up a lot of time. The feather tool was then used to soften the edges of the picture and make them look like they are one. This was done by changing the pixel radius to 1. Once this was done, we used the clone tool to fill in some of the remaining colour that would blend the edges. Although all of these steps were very time consuming, a good outcome was achieved.

The next step was to experiment with the colour themes and colour scale on the picture. We chose to change the image to a black and white one as it made the picture stand out more as a professional film. It was a good draft poster, however the image being in black and white caused some concern within the group as we thought it may not stand out enough to be a successful film poster or appeal to the audience. The lack of colour was a worry for us and so we had to think carefully about things such as the billing block, the title and the tag line. One final experiment was needed to make sure that the right decision was being made regarding these factors of the poster. To make sure that we had finished all of our editing on the picture we added a traditionally fashioned frame effect on the image of the boys and London Bridge. The typical conventions of a gangster film are not old fashioned and feminine or does the traditional theme fit with the time era, and for this reason we decided that this effect was not suited for our film. It was necessary to spend time developing the picture with this effect because it allowed us to experiment and to see what effect was the best. With this as our final attempt, we were in consensus and realised that the black and white effect was best for our genre and film poster.

 

The next steps were to approach the task of the billing block, title and tag line. The billing block was already previously produced on a PowerPoint presentation and so it was not hard to initially make. However finding the correct font for the text seemed to cause difficulty within the group and it took some time deciding. Once we had copied and  pasted the billing block but we realised the billing block was too large to fit onto the poster we had to use the move tool to rescale the size of the billing block, ensuring whilst doing it we held down the shift key so that the writing didn't go blurry. We then needed to add the title to the poster; we made the title white and made the tag line red so there was a splash of colour.

This is our final draft for our film poster. I think that it was a good decision to change the title background cover to red.