A percentage of our marks come from designing a poster to promote our short film. This means combining the skills of designing and technical knowledge.
When designing a poster, it needs to appeal on a prima facie basis, immediately wanting the public to want more. It has to tantalise our interest, whilst give enough information for someone to judge the product on.
The technical knowledge required means we have to understand how to use a piece of software to the point it can pass as professional. The software we choose was ‘Corel Photo Paint’, similar to Photoshop it takes images and edits them. For our trial run we choose to take a photo still from an already existing film and adapt it into a poster.
We choose Trainspotting, already an influence on our work. It’s gritty tone and urban background matched our piece. Techniques employed for this poster can be directly used in our publicity poster.
We shall now discuss the various techniques we used to manipulate the image. Below is the orginal image.
This is the original picture. Usually you wouldn’t use a picture of this resolution as it wouldn’t stretch to the dimensions required for a poster. However we allowed this considering it was only for the purpose of a test-run and that the image of (‘Renton’ - the protagonist of the piece - lying on the floor of a rundown apartment) as striking and embodying of the piece.
We increased the mid-tone of the image, making the shadows darker and longer, by having the character surrounded by darkness it shows the bleak nature of his surroundings and how he can not escape it.
We also added a subtle swirl effect, this is subtle as not to distort the image, but centralises the image round Renton. It again emphasises how this world does not make sense to him so heroine is his salvation.
We then added the spotlight coming down upon him; it is dimmed it to show the nihilistic tone of the story. The spotlight has connotations of heaven, which contrasts him as an outlaw of society. How he feels judged and whether he is justified.
The writing is a quote from the beginning of the piece; it embodies why Renton does what he does, and the themes of isolation and anarchy. We turned the colour of; ‘Heroine’ to orange as it is the trademark colour of the piece. It also marks it out, showing how once you take heroine that is all you care about.
The result of these additions is the poster underneath.
Overall we think this would make an effective poster, but needs further additions to make it appear professional. We would choose a more exciting pose, fear is a more effective emotion then depression and will make a better selling point for our media piece.
By Timothy McNiven, Peter McLaughlin, Oliver Fitch and Joe Lawrence
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