Film poster - drafts, planning and production

Hand-drawn poster drafts

Originally, we were planning for the poster to look like so; the vampire's face displayed large and blended in on a black background, with the three characters shown in silhouette form whilst walking the streets, as a smaller image blended just beneath the vampire's face, and have the titles underneath it all going diagonally. Additionally, we thought of constructing three separate posters - the three individual posters. These would display each individual character separately, standing alone against the background which is filled with Spike, the vampire. In one poster consisting of the character played by Sakib - Yunus - he is holding a significant object which is used during the film - a broken broom used as a wooden stake, (that is the second draft down).












Collectively, we switched our aim to straightening the titles beneath, concentrated on adding the reviews and ratings whilst maintaining that silhouette effect about the three characters in walking motion. It became a better idea to print the title of the film across the middle of the poster, ultimately separating Spike in top from the three characters below. We also came up with the tag line for the film and placed it just underneath the title. The production company name followed and that would be placed just above the title. Using red for the titles was an easy decision because we wanted to appropriately represent the generic identity of the film as a vampire horror/ thriller.












Digital poster drafts

The exciting stage of designing the poster was designing them digitally onto the computers. We carried on our black background approach with the vampire on top and the characters below the title. The first several drafts below consist of Floyd's face posing as the vampire villain - these are experimental designs, because of course these were not going to be used as potential final posters. These experimental posters were constructed to be able to observe how the poster could look, prior to the fact we hadn't yet gone through the cinematography stage for the poster. The image which represents the three main characters in the film consists of Floyd, and two other individuals, who are not involved what-so-ever in the production of this film - this was an old picture Floyd decided to use. The photos of Floyd as the vampire were purposely posed for. We even experimented with an all white background but of course such an idea wouldn't be put forward as a permanent design.












We finally came to the conclusion that we would have a photograph looking directly along a road. The image would be edited to have a gritty black and white outlook and to consider synergistic purposes, images of all the characters in the film present in the poster would have the exact same effect applied to them. The draft just below was one more digital design displaying Floyd's face as the vampire - his face was edited to look completely black which blended in with the dark surface surrounding it, to make sure his red eyes stood out of the darkness, creating a spooky effect. We tweaked and moved things on the poster a great deal as well, just so we were sure to have experimented every possible way of designing the poster and pick which way was the best fitting, considering professional posters of the same genre as guidance. We picked different words that would be used as quotes from different professional film magazines and newspaper reviews and used red stars specifically (for obvious reasons).





Once the time came for us to do our photography shoot, these are the best few of the many different photos we took to come to a satisfactory selection The cinematography was kindly provided by Mizgin. Yani Hadjissavas kindly accepted to be involved in the production of our film and as his first act playing Spike he posed in front of the camera with his wonderfully convincing vampire fangs, provided for him by the production crew. The image below we concluded was best fitting to be involved in the poster. By using the services of Microsoft Paint and Picnik.com, we were able to edit his face to a number of different ways until we constructed what we were looking for.
















 







The image below was our final edited image of Yani.



The character photos were to follow. Admittedly, we weren’t all dressed in our costumes for the film but it was close enough to what we actually wore in the film. There was a particular way in which we had to pose to provide the seriousness the film carries with – through our facial expressions and body language we were able to portray this vibe. Kudos to the photographer and of course we can give ourselves a pat on the back for our posing.










We took all three images and merge them together in one frame to provide the image base for the poster. By using Picnik we were able to add the gritty black and effect which would familiarise with the above edited image of Yani.







The image of the road was an old photograph we decided to use. This was photo taken by Floyd located in Leyton (the location we were originally planning to film at). Again, the same process occurred once we got editing with it.  










Final few digital poster drafts


It became our decision to ditch the whole silhouette effect of the three characters and use gritty black and white effects on us instead - we realised this would look more attractive on the poster.












We found that the poster looked a bit two dimensional, in terms of the characters standing on the road - they looked quite small on the poster and seemed to be just stuck on the black ground without any vivid sense of height of presence in the actual picture - so we decided to separate the three individual figures, and make them seem more as though they were actually standing on the road, by making them overlap some of the background.
















Final poster design
After some deliberation on the poster design, we came to the conclusion that we would have; the film reviews and ratings acros the top, Spike - played by Yani Hadjissavas - in between at the top of the poster with a fade below which blends in with the white background/ sky - our production company name written as an introducer for the film title just below his chin, the three characters standing in the middle of the road, the starring actors names jus below them, a referencen to a previous successful film, the film title underneath, the tag line right underneath the film title, the title credits below that, the certificate on the bottom left hand side of the poster, the release date under the title credits, the blog address which helps create the publicity for our film underneath, the miramax logo next to the certifcate and our official production company logo on the bottom right hand corner of the poster.




Final Poster Analysis




Written form:
We used the film magazines Empire, and Total Film as our reviewers for our film because they are the two main magazines we have decided to focus on in our analysis of each review page. We believed a four star rating is the minimum rating of any exciting new production which helps to sell our film a lot more. As expected we used appropriate words from the reviews that sum up our movie and help communicate to the target audience our general themes.
The main antagonist is positioned at the top of the poster communicating to the audience that he is the dominant force and overpowering character in this movie – a real force of nature. Due to the effect we chose on the overall image, he has a dark looking exterior which conveys his dark soul, with the typical pale skinned face of a vampire and with red eyes, which portray the obvious fact that he is indeed a dangerous individual, with evil intensions – red indicates danger – and this works perfectly with everything else as it is synergetic.
The characters are standing in a location where the events occur in – the streets. Their serious facial expressions and body language says a lot about the type of situation they’re in during the film. It portrays the feeling that they are vulnerable and in trouble of what lurks behind them – Spike. The entire image of this poster is of gritty black and white colours to suggest the split from life and death – themes portrayed during the film.
We have displayed our production company which simultaneously indicates the debut of the company itself and its film. We want to make sure our audience is aware of the company this movie came from – we want to make a name for ourselves as Red Mist productions.
We chose an age 15 certificate to target our teenaged audience from the ages of 15 – 21 (mainly). Reason being that this film features a youthful cast, who speak and dress in a certain way and all of this would appeal more to a younger audience.
We followed one of the professional methods of displaying actors’ names; we also added a reference to a previously successful production that would help build recognition and attraction to our franchise. The title itself is very typical of its genre because of the use of colour and font – the V is the longest letter which emphasises vampires, sharpness, evilness etc. It is very effective and it is something repeatedly used in vampire film posters.
We’ve also displayed our blog address to help along with the publicity of our film - so that our audience can enjoy our advertising franchise in depth. It adds a bit more professionalism – it would aid us gain some vast recognition.
Our tag line insinuates the notion that evil things don’t just happen in your imagination, but that it also happens in reality as well – that you could go through such events beyond belief. The tag line is our unique selling point. It’s witty and spooky simultaneously and the reason why it’s our U.S.P. is because it would intrigue our audience even more to discover what exactly is so true about that phrase. The cleverness of the tag line would definitely be one of the features that would trigger the attraction to our movie.
We decided that the most appropriate release date would be a period leading up to Halloween. It makes perfect sense to release a horror film during the celebration of Halloween because of all the spookiness created by it - ghosts, zombies.... vampires – it pieces together perfectly. Just like other horror franchises such as Paranormal Activity, the makers of this film released the franchise during the same period.