Film Posters and Catching an Audience's Attention
- Giovanni Peresson
- May 5, 2023
- 4 min read
By Giovanni Peresson 06/05/2023
Why do we use film posters?:
Film posters have been a fundamental part of cinema since the very beginning of the medium. Before the internet and modern technology, we use every part of our daily lives film posters were often the first time someone would hear or see about a new film coming out, and even before that at the very beginning of cinema when it was essentially a magic trick being done by the traveling circus' for example the kinetoscope it would've been film posters stapled to walls that people would have found out the magic of moving pictures coming to their own town.
Think of films you've seen in the past and
want to see in the future, the movie poster is as synonymous as the trailer in making you want to see but also the nostalgia factor when you see it or think about the film. take an example, The Fablemans, Spielberg S. (2023) during the final scene when Sammy walks into David Lynch's office and we see the old western posters on the walls.
Film posters are exactly like modern-day thumbnails we see on videos on the internet, they must be eye-catching and draw the attention of possible viewers and stand out from the rest. Essentially the main purpose of a film poster is for advertising plain and simple, it's to get more people to watch your film, but it's not that simple to achieve this.
How to catch an audience's eye:
As said above, it is a form of advertising used by film companies large and small, and even 0 budget films, having an eye-catching and engaging poster is an essential part of getting potential viewers
to even consider watching your film. On top of this, they also have to serve as a piece of art, like the film itself it also has to serve this function.
When looking at film posters in my opinion what makes the best stands out is the ability to portray the emotion of how a film will make you feel as a viewer although not giving away too much. A common technique used by graphics designers for decades is using famous actors from the film as the key image used in the poster as it draws people's attention also the use of bright colours that stand out such as reds can be quite common.
"Posters are the most visceral way of advertising a movie. You see the image and you react to it." - Tom Hooper, CinemaBlemnd (Wakeman, 2014), This quote in my opinion sums up quite well what you should be trying to achieve when creating your own thumbnails and posters for your own films, documentaries or other formats of video content. What Hooper is trying to say in this reference is that with film posters and the way they are created they give you a sense of emotion similar to viewing art at a museum or reading a book. There isn't a point in creating a poster if it doesn't have meaning within itself if you separate from the film "A good advertising image is not necessarily one that sells the most product; it is one that pleases the largest number of people" Fowles, J. (1996). Advertising and Art. In J. Fowles (Ed.), Advertising and Popular Culture (pp. 86-100).
My Process:
*The poster above is not the finished version, when finished it will be added to the blog and noted*
For the Teaspills film poster I had full creative freedom and I wanted to create a black a white poster and to use 1 other colour. I came up with the idea in pretty quickly and began working on it, I have previous experience making thumbnails and various other graphic design projects for games, clothing, cars, YouTube videos, short films. I started off in photoshop with a 27x40 inch template with an aspect ratio of 2:3 as this is generally regarded as the standard format for film posters. I also used a pixel density of 300 per square inch but anything between 150-300 works fine.
I added the tittle at the top of the page In a large font then on a separate tab I got the two images of the actors which I lowered the saturation then used the remove background tool to easily mask out my image which I then transfered the layers onto my original project file and set them at the bottom slightly overlapping each other and added a little bit of outer shadow to blend them together nicely.
It roughly around this time I came up with the idea using a teacup tipped over with tea spilling out of it in place of the "A" in the title. For this I used a public domain drawing of a teacup as a reference to see how it looks and I quite liked it after seeing and ended up using keys as the "l's" as well.
I then proceeded to create the actual tea coming out of the cup using the brush and eraser tool making come out of the side of the cup and spread out down page. to make it look a little better I used dark colour and also made it wavy. As well to add to the character Courteous Finnick being a locksmith I added old locks in the tea at random angles as if they where also coming out of the cup.
The last thing I done was add the credits on the left middle where there was some clear white space and left a space under that in case in the future there would be anything else to be added to it. For the final version I am working with another graphic designer I have worked with in the past to create the final versions of the locks, cup and keys.
References:
The Fablemans, Spielberg S. (2023)
Red Notice, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Netflix, (2021)
"Posters are the most visceral way of advertising a movie. You see the image and you react to it." - Tom Hooper, CinemaBlemnd (Wakeman, 2014)
"A good advertising image is not necessarily one that sells the most product; it is one that pleases the largest number of people" Fowles, J. (1996). Advertising and Art. In J. Fowles (Ed.), Advertising and Popular Culture (pp. 86-100).
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