Ancillary Task - Film Poster for Identity

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I really enjoyed designing this as it challenged me to be abled to wrap and represent the entire narrative and protagonist's personality within one single text.  I created the film poster using Adobe Photoshop and my initial key aims were to make the poster:

• contemporary
• stylish
• bold
• abstract and eye catching 
• coincide significantly with the themes present in our narrative

Target Audience

For my poster I am aiming towards a young male in his mid-20s of the ABC1 demographic. So in order to appeal to my target audience I used Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory to use Blake's sexuality to entice male viewers to want to see the film. I picked this photo out of the collection obtained from the photoshoot because I feel the sultry colour of her lipstick has semiotics of love and danger - both two things that a typical femme fatale character in a film noir will portray at some point or another. I also feel her facial expression looks seductive and therefore appealing to a male audience. Further analysis of my poster design is seen at the bottom of this blog post. Next I will show you the steps I took to put together this design:

Poster Plan I designed on Microsoft Publisher. Basic plan to show where I am going to put the main vectors of the poster and a guideline I'll use to follow on Photoshop.

Using watercolour brushes to create the background.

Adding a stock image of crumpled paper and changing the Blend Mode to Overlay

Making the cropped image of Poppy have a watercoloured appearance.

Adjusting the image adjustments e.g. Curves, Levels and Opacity. Also added brushes around the image of Poppy to look more natural with the background. She looks like she is floating in clouds which could be a metaphor for her state of mind.

Adding torn newspaper stock images to represent she is being looked for and that documents are being used to identify her. It shows the film's genre of a detective mystery.

I used Font Space to find the exact font I wanted. I chose a font which I felt would match the imagery so far. The font is capitalised, bold and grungey; all that would appeal to a male audience.

I used the Colour Picker tool to match her lipstick colour to the font colour. I then used layer masks and various brush sets to blend the text into the background to act as a double entendre that the WORD identity is hard to identify and is concealing itself within the poster.

I then found the "Universal Accreditation" font to create the credits. I added our institution logo, associated institutions and brands used in our film e.g. James Blake record label. These were all coloured using the lipstick shade again - to create a sense of cohesion and a house colour theme to the film.

I then added a tag line which is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emmerson. It acts as a decoding device for the audience as it will make them think - forcing them to be more active with the media text. This could be related to Stuart Hall's Encoding and Decoding theory, part 3; 'use' (distribution and consumption) "the decoding/interpreting of a message which requires active recipients. This is a complex process of understanding for the audience.”

Lastly I added some finishing touches like alignment, boldness, opacity and making sure all text was legible.

Close up of the film credits. Conventions used: 
condensed capitalised dvd credit font;
directors and producers listed;
institutions listed;
institution logos included;
film website;
release date in larger, alternative font;
QR code for increased interactivity;
cohesional colour scheme.