Evaluation Q1

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Images from our key influences, presented in the style of artofthetitle.com

Images taken from our trailer

Location

'Skyfall' utilised London as a location throughout, and
represents a larger trend of using the city in all sorts of genres

In terms of general setting, London was the obvious choice due to our proximity to the city centre and its recognition around the world, especially following recent world blockbuster films such as ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows’. Thriller films have a long history of utilising London as a setting, with Hitchcock films such as ‘The 39 Steps’, and ‘Frenzy’, leading onto classic spy films including ‘The IPCRESS File’ and ‘The Deadly Affair’, which in turn ushered in the numerous Bond films that feature London, and countless gritty crime films, such as ‘Easter Promises’ and two thirds of Mike Leigh’s filmography.

'Zodiac' uses its San Francisco location as
a key selling point.

The use of an urban setting conforms absolutely to the crime thriller genre in which we have worked, with films like ‘Zodiac’  and ‘Leon’ utilising recognisable cities in both the construction of the film and its marketing. ‘Se7en’ and ‘Only God Forgives’ both adapt this for effect, with the former contrasting the urban feel of most of the film, to the rural in the final scene, and the latter utilising Bangkok to provide a simultaneously urban and alien environment, which alters the dynamic of the film. We wanted to achieve a similar effect, and thus chose to use both the dark alleyways and flashy neon of ‘Hummingbird’, in conjunction with the higher class glossy-feeling city locations featured in ‘Welcome to the Punch’, thus creating a dichotomy of tone that engages the audience, and utilises the conventions of the genre to our benefit.

In terms of interior locations, we were fortunate to gain access to very apt spaces for scenes such as the boardroom and the interrogation room. We based the appearance of these ‘police department’ locations on those featured in TV crime dramas and thrillers such as ‘How to Get Away with Murder’, ‘New Tricks’, and ‘Life on Mars’, as well as our key influence in terms of the police side of the narrative – ‘Welcome to the Punch’. The use of these locations certainly conforms to the crime aspect of our genre, and helps the narrative of the trailer in addition, as we move from the brightly lit boardroom, where Aaron is in control, to the dark and sinister interrogation as his own institution turns against him. This is a stylistic feature inspired by the work of directors such as Nicolas Winding Refn, and one that is similarly used in teaser and trailers of the thriller genre, such as for ‘Drive’ and ‘V For Vendetta’.

The scenes in the briefing room represented a conscious effort
to ensure the audience knew Aaron's profession, and took
inspiration from many police station sets in real media products.

Graphics

In terms of both narrative and title graphics, we took ideas that complied with the darker forms of crime thriller trailers, and even some horror trailers. The trailer for ‘Hummingbird’ utilises a similar colour scheme and tone to our trailer, although we have selected a bolder type than it does, something more in the ‘Eastern Promises’ vein. The slow zoom and spark effects are reminiscent of some horror and action movies, which does not necessarily conform to our genre, but might be effective in marketing to a wider audience, and thus conforms to the advertising function of the trailer form.

The graphics for our title and slogan tie together our genre and our USP of
colour and tone.

For our ident, we created a look that went well with our trailer as a whole, maintaining the necessary pace and drama of the thriller trailer, but also could be for a production company that produces other genres of film. This required a fairly nondescript colour scheme (hence the monochrome used) paired with a bold image and name, which I feel ‘Gamechanger Productions’ achieves.

Our studio ident was simple but bold, able to make an impression without
detracting from or disrupting the overall feel of the trailer.

Narrative

Our narrative follows both the conventions of Todorov’s narrative theory, and that of the crime thriller genre. We use a classic ‘Redemption’ storyline, as our police officer protagonist is falsely accused of a murder and must prove his innocence by finding the real killer. The narrative of the film is not the USP, as it could never be accused of non-conformity or being ground-breaking. The story bears strong resemblances to that of ‘Welcome to the Punch’, and many other crime thriller films, and the trailers for these films tend to include one or two fairly major plot points or twists, whilst balancing narrative vagueness and clarity – creating a concise and enigmatic depiction of the film’s storyline. We tried to emulate this in our trailer, and the narrative that we presented, and as such we reveal the initial plot twist at the end of Act 1, as part of the films premise. This is followed by the elaboration and continuation of the plot in Act 2, and the montage in Act 3, both of which hint at the nature of the criminal enemy, and depict scenes of unforeseen conflict. In this way, I would suggest that our narrative, and its presentation in the trailer, conform to the conventions of our genre and form, utilising classic story types, adapting them, and depicting them in the appropriate manner.

Characters and actors

Our protagonist, Detective Aaron Mays, is very much the archetypal crime thriller protagonist; embodying the anti-institution, justice driven, good looking, flawed, European, masculine figure that is well known to cinema and television audiences. He was dutifully portrayed by Gabriel Zedda-James, who we felt had the right look for the character, which we had based initially on leading men such as James McCavoy, Ryan Gosling, and Jake Gyllenhaal. We got the initial idea for our female character from ‘Hummingbird’, and the caring ‘voice of reason’ figure played by Agata Buzek. This is a character that regularly appears in male-led mainstream cinema, and it is safe to assume that a continuation of the narrative would see a romantic involvement between our female character and Aaron. In the development process of our narrative, we took the decision that for the purposes of representation, conformity to the genre, and fleshing out of the narrative, this female character was required to be featured in the trailer. A similar process took place with the inclusion of the friend character, as we needed someone for Aaron to go to that he could trust, facilitating some narrative exposition on the subject of the major villain. Thus our characters tend to perform a narrative function, which is appropriate for a trailer, seeing as there is a necessarily minimal level of character development in such a short production, especially one that intends to introduce the audience to the film’s premise and characters

Gabriel Zedda-James as Aaron Mays, as he appears on our chosen poster.

Our initial antagonist, Damien Rowe, has more screen time dead than alive, due to slight changes to our shot list and our use of an overlaid image of the character rather than a separate close up, and as such, the actor was not required to perform in a huge capacity. This meant that his characterisation as a murderous, high profile criminal needed to rely on costuming and casting. The dressing of dangerous criminals in suits features in films from ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Scarface’ to ‘Die Hard’ and the ‘X-Men’ series, and as such this was the obvious choice for both of our antagonists, with the more mysterious, more malevolent, second antagonist donning a long, dark coat. This is also a conventional costuming decision for an ‘arch-villain’ character, with examples both outside the crime thriller genre (Crowley in ‘Supernatural’ or Bane in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’) and within (John Rooney in ‘Road to Perdition’ or Hannibal Lecter in the ‘Hannibal’ TV series). The casting of this character required an older figure in order that the character might carry some gravitas and be believable as the sort of villain we wanted – someone in the Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, vein of intimidating older men.

Mads Mikkelsen dons the longcoat on TV as the eponymous Hannibal. This
is one example of the use of the long coat in costuming deadly villains.

Aesthetics

One of our key aims in our trailer, from concept to construction, has been to create something visually strong. The intent was to utilise lighting, editing, and location in order to form a vibrant and eye-catching piece of marketing. In many senses, the colour and tone of the trailer has been our USP, something that we drew from key influencing trailers such as ‘Welcome to the Punch’, ‘Only God Forgives’, ‘Hummingbird’, and ‘Drive’ – all of which use neon or fluorescent lighting in order to create a powerful visual that differentiates them from greyer trailers and films such as ‘Gone Girl’, ‘Inception’, or ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’. Since making this decision, it has become more evident that this is not a feature of just crime thriller films, but many 2014/15 mainstream releases, such as ‘Birdman’, ‘The Guest’, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, and ‘Inherent Vice’. This places our trailer at the cutting edge of mainstream cinema in terms of colouring and style, whilst remaining accessible through its broad narrative appeal and genre.

The work of Nicolas Winding Refn and similarly styled pieces has influenced us greatly. Throughout the process we have considered colouring and style to be of paramount importance

'Inherent Vice' is just one example of the
numerous recent films that have used neon
imagery as a major selling point.

The aesthetics of London were particularly important to us, hence our use of Chinatown and the Southbank to utilise the lighting therein. The vibrancy of locations such as these have been used in many similar films to ours, as cited above in the Location analysis.

This shot from outside London Aquarium is an example of our utilization of
the aesthetics and colours of London. It also demonstrates part of our endeavour
 to include well composed shots, in line with our cinematographical aims

Cinematography has also been a key focus of ours throughout the construction, doing our utmost to ensure a well framed and powerful shot. We attempted to use symmetry in some shots, though this may have not come across in the final cut, and used camera angles and movement to try and create the slick and professional looking imagery that the modern audience has come to expect from any half-decent trailer. The use of striking cinematography has long been a marketing device and an effective filmmaking tool, practically the hallmark of directors and producers like Wes Anderson (‘Moonrise Kingdom’, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’) and Bryan Fuller (‘Pushing Daisies’, ‘Hannibal’). In terms of our specific genre, ‘Welcome to the Punch’ employs symmetry and a wide range of shots, though remains less stylised than the aforementioned directors’ works, as does our trailer.

This shot, taken from Wes Anderson's 'The Grand Budapest Hotel', is an
example of the sort of strong, sometimes symmetrical cinematography that
we strived for in our filming.



Iconography

'Sin City' is a great example of iconography in the crime thriller genre, due to
its comic book, over-exaggerated style.

In terms of iconography, crime thriller is one of the more relevant genres (second perhaps only to Film Noir, westerns, fantasy, and sci-fi), due to its relative niche-ness in terms of narrative possibilities. As such, we had a few key images to include in our trailer that helped us to connote genre. The most obvious example of this is the gun, which makes an appearance in many scenes of the trailer, as it does in countless action and crime based thrillers. The more differentiating iconography that designates our film as a police oriented one comes in scenes such as the boardroom, where the mindmap/moodboard/planning board is a feature of police offices and meeting rooms in films, TV, and of course, reality, that is well known and clearly depicts the characters we are watching as detectives. The boss’ costume is also an example of iconography, serving more to connote character than genre, as he is dressed in the recognisable 1980s YUPPIE style that has come to be associated with undesirable figures such as Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in ‘American Psycho’, and Jordan Belfort (Leonardo di Caprio) in ‘The Wolf of Wall St’.

Patrick Bateman in 'American Psycho', exemplifying the sort of costuming
that we wanted to put our malevolent boss figure in.

Editing

Our editing was designed to create the fast paced and dramatic tone that is a key feature of the genre and form of thriller trailers. We organised the music and cuts in conjunction, creating a rhythm that runs through the entire trailer. This allows us to employ a range of transitions – quick cuts, cross fades, et cetera – that keep the trailer engaging and at the correct pace. This means of creating a sense pace comes specifically from ‘Welcome To The Punch’, but on further research is a distinct feature of the more high-key crime thriller (as opposed to the somewhat more sedate ‘Zodiac’ and ‘Se7en’).

Visually similar shots were colour matched in Final Cut, in order to give us
the colouring consistency that we aspired to.

Our editing process also gave us the opportunity to apply our Aesthetic vision to certain shots, mostly by using the Final Cut Pro ‘colour match’ function. In this way we were able to keep the colours vibrant but consistent, as in the trailers for ‘Only God Forgives’ and 'Welcome To The Punch'.

'Welcome To The Punch', a key visual influence, uses many shots that are
similar in colouring, in order to give the film a unique and distinctive look
and feel, something that we absolutely wished to emulate.

Music

The music featured in our trailer was provided by an outside source, but tailored to our trailer and thus its genre. In conjunction with Editing, the pace, and thus overall effectiveness of the trailer as whole, comes largely from the music. A feature of many recent trailers, specifically in the horror and psychological thriller genres, but also more generally (for instance in the trailer for ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, and the teaser for video game 'Just Cause 3'), has been to contrapuntally slow down and fade out at the end of the trailer, something that we have emulated with our piano-based ending. This leaves the atmosphere of the trailer lingering in the air following its close - a very effective technique for making the audience remember the trailer.

The trailer for the upcoming 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' uses a cover of 'No
Strings On Me' (a poignant choice for a film about a servile AI turned
murderous robot) which, in the last seconds of trailer fades to a chilling finish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1968HY4DKc





The trailer for 'Just Cause 3' uses a contrapuntally calm cover of The Prodigy's
 'Firestarter',which has a similar effect to the above, and our trailer.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFmBmRmHHeE&safe=active

Aside from this, our music, in terms of genre, could have gone either of two ways in order to conform to our trailer’s genre – orchestral and epic, or electric and intense. We chose the latter, and the result is a more intense and equally dramatic trailer, and in this our music matches our choices for vibrancy of colour and imagery.

Conclusion

The trailer form and crime thriller genre of our production have given us a fairly particular framework for its formulation and construction. We have utilised the conventions of our form and genre in such a way as to connote the nature of the film and appeal to its standing audience, but have employed our own creativity and originality in relevant areas, in order to provide our film with personality and a USP.

We try to differentiate our film from others of the genre through colour and tone, though in all fairness this is a convention in itself, especially on the part of particular directors and their aesthetic styles. Aspects such as music, editing, and narrative are however, far more typical of the genre, and thus are not any USP (though they are, of course, very important to the success of the trailer as a whole). The key was for us to strike a balance between keeping enough features and conventions  to make the genre clear, and producing something that we could be individually proud of as an original and different piece of media, and I feel that we have achieved this balance well.

Some of the key influences:




Before making the final decision on which ancillary tasks to put forward, I produced these Prezis in order to consider how my proposed designs use, develop, and challenge forms and conventions:

Below are the equivalent Prezis for the ancillary tasks that we selected as the final products:

Evaluation Q2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?



To answer this question, we chose to create a multimedia split screen video, as we felt that this would allow us to assess the coherence of our marketing campaign, both with reference to our own products and real media products. We filmed the video before we made our final product decisions for the ancillary tasks, and as such we all assess our own creations as part of the marketing package. However this allows us to compare the products and and analyse the different aspects and directions of marketing, and the different ways that each of our ancillary products would have played into the marketing campaign of 'Two Evils'.

Evaluation Q3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience screening

We have taken a couple pictures of our questionnaire (back and front) showing the one side, which brought us quantitative data and the other side, which brought us qualitative data. This survey/questionnaire allowed us to collectively understand our target audience in more detail due to the fact that the results were as we expected. It suggested strongly that our target age range was between the 15-24 mark. It also informed us that the audience were particularly fond of many of the tropes of most crime/thriller trailers, such as the city shots and chase scenes, which suggests that we have conformed well to the conventions of most crime/thriller trailers. However, a bonus for us was that the majority of our audience commented on the fact that they liked the specific colour/tone/aesthetic of our trailer, which was something we worked hard on to make our trailer original and different from the others that have been released. Due to people's comments on the style, tone and other important tropes of the genre, we were confident that we had created a strong narrative driven crime/thriller trailer that conformed to the conventions of most, whilst adding our own but effective twist.   

Audience Survey - Audience replies to the question, 'What was your favourite part of the trailer and why?'

1. 'Shots of London and strong, clear narrative'.
2. 'High shots of Gabriel running and sliding down banister; the shorter snapshots of film with music near the end'. (montage)
3. 'The interrogation scene, high intensity'. 
4. 'Tense Music, cuts from action to romance'. 
5. 'News shot'.
6. 'Gabriel running through London, news flash, vibrant colours'. 
7. 'Montage sequence, news flash, city shots'.
8. 'Shots of buildings with clear narrative'.
9. 'shots of the city & colouring of overall trailer - nice clear aesthetic'.
10. 'Good use of colour'.
11. 'Use of London settings e.g London eye and the use of blue colour as it established tone'.

Audience Survey - Graphs and analysis

The initial piece of feedback that we took from analysing the questionnaires that were answered at our audience screening came in the form of this rather encouraging pie chart. It appears that everyone present at the screening was taken enough with the trailer that they would 'want to watch the film'. This would suggest that regardless of how well we portrayed genre, narrative, or anything else, we have produced a trailer that is an effective marketing tool.

The results of this question would suggest that our selected audience for the screening is a fairly average film audience, all watching at least one film a week. Though no one appears to be a 'film fanatic' necessarily, and this is part of our target audience, the generic film audience is a useful group to identify and analyse in terms of marketing and general appeal.

This question gives us a little more content for analysis and consideration.  It appears that our audience considers trailer-watching a valuable usage of time, with everyone disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that it is a 'waste of time'. This leads us to consider the audience that we surveyed as 'valid', as they do not disregard our medium from the very beginning, which is something of a prerequisite for a survey answerer. This is tempered slightly by the fact that a minority of those surveyed did admit to not watching a trailer before seeing the film, and so they cannot be said to be wholly on board with the principle of the trailer as a premiere means of film promotion.

Most suggested that not too much is given away by most trailers, which bodes similarly well for their reception of our trailer, which is less heavily narrative driven than some of its real media 'contemporaries'. In fact, the general consensus that watching a trailer before the film 'is helpful' is extremely encouraging for our prospects and does depict the trailer as a media that is considered an effective form of film marketing. This information has helped us a little more to pin down the trailer-viewing habits of our audience, and thus of the general population.

This information has also been very useful to us in considering audience feedback from the screening surveys.  The audience that we had had seen the most mainstream and popular of the films, perhaps predictably, and hadn't seen as many of the less popular or less exposed films. Though on its face this may seem to bode badly for our film, given that many of our influences fall into the latter category, the information is encouraging when one considers that the three most popular films are the most high-budget, set-piece, productions on the list. When this information is incorporated into our thinking, the fact that the less upscale 'Drive', one of our most important influences, is biting at the heels of the major Hollywood mainstream productions bodes very well. Regardless of our analysis of this question, as can be seen below, the trailer was a definite success with our screening audience.

Social Media

We decided to upload our trailer to Facebook, in order to gain more information about our target audience and also generate interest around our product. Due to the fact that we were learning about postmodernism, especially in relation to Web 2.0, we realised the importance of social media and how it is shaping our modern media world. Most producers nowadays use social media to promote their media package as it is extremely important in developing and creating a particular niche audience or even for reaching out to your originally targeted audience. I personally have over 800 friends on Facebook, which is a much larger and mixed audience of people from all different age ranges, which again allows for our film to reach a wider audience. 

https://www.facebook.com/max.twyman.7 (link to trailer on Facebook page)

 Instagram was also useful for uploading a short 15 second snapshot of our trailer, which would again generate excitement around our film and open up a wider audience. It helped us to again find out more about our target audience.

Vox Pops

We thought it would be prudent to ask a few individuals about our ancillary tasks, and this really helped us out in choosing our final products to put forward. As such we searched out a few people to answer some questions about the products, and filmed the results:

Conclusion

Our audience screening was the centrepiece of our feedback, and the results were mostly encouraging. The screening demonstrated a willing audience for a trailer like ours, with many favourable comments about the pace, colour, and tone of the trailer, all of which are aspects into which a lot of work has gone. The fact that we received fairly few negative answers or statistics was encouraging to say the least, and the screening allowed us to see firsthand initial reactions to the trailer. The results were also in line with the feedback that we had received on social media, where we were able to observe wider trends in audience and examine the ways in which different people perceived or reacted to the trailer. 

Our audience, both imagined and real, have really shaped the project, and one of the most prominent examples of this is in deciding which of our three designs, for both magazine and poster, to put forward as the final one. Asking individuals what they thought of each really highlighted the stronger and weaker points of every production, and shone a new light on what directions we might take. This is equally true of the trailer, and through consultation with a tangible audience, I feel that we have come away with a stronger product.

Evaluation Q4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning, and evaluation stages?

Software

My use of software has expanded greatly since AS, both in terms of the software that I use, and the way I use it. Final Cut Pro and Motion have been consistent, and though I haven't used Motion particularly effectively, the way in which I've utilised the features of Final Cut has changed dramatically. Where initially I was using mainly the Trim tool for editing, and the occasional fade to black, I have utilised at A2 the Blade tool, Crop function, Transform function, Ken Burns, Colour Match, Cross Fade, and various other productivity-enhancing features and shortcuts.


Entirely new to me was Photoshop, though I did have some experience in Illustrator and InDesign, both of which come from the same design package (Adobe) as Photoshop, so I had a rough idea of the layout. The learning curve was very steep due to time constraints and lack of base knowledge, but it was fascinating getting to know the ins and outs of the program, from editing the initial RAW photos to the final touches such as billing blocks and prices.


Hardware

At AS, our use of hardware on set was limited to basic lighting and the use of the Panasonic camera and tripod. This allowed us to employ a range of shots and experiment with lighting, but was ultimately a fairly straightforward way of going about things. We took ourselves further this year, using colour filters on large and small lights and using various methods of sound recording to try and ensure the quality of dialogue and diegetic sound. This required more commitment and organisation on set, but produced stronger raw footage than we had at AS.


Following the work on set, we had to use the microtrack to re-dub some of our dialogue, and this was something we were familiar with from our use in AS of a voice-over, recorded post-filming. We also had to use the SLR camera to take RAW images for the magazine cover – allowing use to fundamentally edit the photos to suit our needs.


Online

In terms of online work, we have used a far wider variety of websites and methods this year. Embedding from YouTube and Soundcloud, using blogs such as Art of the Title and InterTitles, and researching using IMDb, Wikipedia, and YouTube have all become integral parts of our use of the internet.


Blogger has remained central to the project, but has been accentuated by other social media such as Twitter and Facebook. These have allowed us to accumulate feedback on the trailer and ancillary tasks, as well as getting a closer look at our audience, and how we target our work in their direction.

Video analysis

Ancillary tasks analysis with regards to technology:

PHOTOSHOP IN ANCILLARY TASKS

AFTER EFFECTS AND SONY VEGAS IN TRAILER

Finished Ancillary Tasks

CM

Editing and Rough Cuts

The editing of the trailer went relatively to plan, however, the original plan of the storyboard was not followed. It was found that especially within the editing of Act 1 the interweaving of the meeting shots and the raid shots worked much better, providing a more stark juxtaposition of equilibrium (In the meeting room) and how that equilibrium was to be broken (The raid). It also served to anchor the narrative with the sound bridges of "This is the bastard that killed my partner" and "He will be in Denmark Hill at 0800 hours" providing a basis for the cutting, and a location and motivation for our protagonists actions.

Moving away from the actual sequence of the shots, which went relatively to plan, our second difficulty came within adhering to the colour and tone aims we had set ourselves. We attempted to go about this through the Final Cut feature 'Colour Match', with examples being shown below as to the various options concerning colouring. Due to our influence within the Chibnall quote concerning the "Dynamic narrative" connoted through the "High Gloss New-London" and Welcome to The Punch's neon gloss, this colouring was a major factor in presenting the stylistics which we had discussed in our research and planning.

As well as the importance of connotations we used this tool to make some shots look more professional, especially due to the mic shadow present within the interrogation scene prior to the darkening of the shot. 

In order to provide an increased dynamism to the narrative of the trailer and properly align the shots in conjunction with the music the backing track was needed, and when sent from our producer Agile, it was found that he had not properly synced to the shot changes as we had asked him to. As such, a manipulation of the sound on the magnetic timeline was necessary in order to prevent awkward cuts and emphasise the growing tension throughout the trailers development. This was also necessary due to the required manipulation of diegetic sound with regards to volume, with the voice overs (Especially during Act 1) being vital in the development of the actual storyline. The sound manipulation on the timeline is shown below.

Finally, we experienced difficulties when syncing our voiceover moments to the shots on screen, especially the moment with the 'news announcement'. This moment was particularly difficult as we wanted it to look and sound professional, especially because it is easy for a news style presentation, as seen in many films, to come across as quite 'amateurish' and so we spent a lot of time recording different voices until we found one that worked with the overall style of our trailer and the one, which sounded most professional. Another difficult moment was in Act 2 whereby we wanted to employ a voiceover of our main protagonist talking about our main antagonist, whilst being overlaid over a shot of the antagonist walking to his car. This was difficult as I had to cut particular moments of speech apart, adjust sound levels and then place each sound bite specifically over the long shot in order to keep with the timing and pace (overall rhythm) of the trailer. Some of the small speech was completely cut out in order to achieve this aim of keeping to the rhythm of the trailer.

A second rough cut can be seen below, with no music attached and incomplete sound.

Feedback

Positive:

- Colouring good

- Editing snappy (but improvable)

- Clear sense of character

Negative:

- No soundtrack

- Dialogue needs work in terms of sound quality and volume (possible re-record?)

- Narrative somewhat unclear (especially with two antagonists)

- Some colour matching or ken burns could improve style?

JL CM

Creating the Poster

The poster was more difficult to start work on than the magazine, as there was a less clearly defined structure that needed to be followed (i.e. no masthead, puffs, et cetera), but the first step was to establish  a strong background, title, and stylistic feature to make the poster clear in its intentions.

Following this, I inserted a shot of the London Eye (from the trailer) behind the stylistic bars to further establish the strength of the urban theme. This was done at about the same time as I was working on the two functional features of the poster; the billing block and certificate.

Then came some of the more noticeable form-related additions, such as actors names and awards. As a film that blends low production values with high ambition and Hollywood story lines, I thought it was appropriate to make the awards and reviews slightly more prominent than the actors names, as they are all relatively unknown.

The next key addition was our actor himself, in another shot taken from the trailer. In a piece of imagery similar to the posters for Looper and Welcome To The Punch, he appears to emerge from the city into a surreal world of smoke and broken glass. This strong central image, and its addition to the poster was the moment when the whole thing appeared to me to be coming together.

Many changes were made to do with rearranging the awards, reviews, actors names, and certification, but I feel like the strongest amalgamation of these aspects can be seen in the final poster. This can be seen at the bottom of the post.

CM