In designing our poster, i first spent some time online looking at posters for some recent feature film releases. From this, i was able to gauge what the industry standard was, and then decide which elements of this i would incorporate into my work. By examining a range of different poster styles i could also learn which techniques worked more effectively, and which i preferred. Aside from looking at actual posters, time was spent considering the symbolism of the title of our production. We wanted the title to relate to the plot of the story, without giving the entire narrative away, hence why we chose the title “Quick”. We kept with this idea in designing our poster. We used the symbolism of a clock face to represent the concepts of time being considered within the narrative, but removed the hands from the face of the clock, suggesting that there is no ‘fixed’ time.
The main image is a medium close up portrait of the female character. It was decided that the female actress would be more appropriate for the main image of the poster, due to her interesting hair colour and expressive face. During the photo shoot, we asked her to don a concerned/frightened expression, as we felt that, upon looking at the poster and seeing fear on the actress’s face, it would give the audience a sense of curiosity as to what may have caused that, and so would draw them into watching the short film. We felt that using a human subject portrait as our main poster would give the audience the knowledge that there were human characters in the film that they would be able to recognise and connect with.
Also on the poster are some reviews, ratings and quotations from well-known tabloid magazines and newspapers. By including these, it helps the audience to believe that this is a genuine product that they can trust. We can assume that anything endorsed by such a big brand name such as The Sun newspaper must be of the highest quality, otherwise the newspaper would not risk their reputation by being affiliated with the product. This idea is very similar to the concept behind the TV show Dragon’s Den. By associating ourselves with such a respected name, we reassure the audience that our short film is also a product to be respected. The bottom of our poster adheres pretty strictly to the industry standard. The BBFC classification certificate has been displayed on the bottom left hand corner. It was decided that due to the mild, implied references of injury and death that run through the film, that 15 was the most appropriate age classification. The higher classifications are usually reserved for explicit cuts to violence, gore, or other sensitive themes. Although this short film shows nothing explicitly, it is suggested, so to use a classification any lower than 15 would mean exposing younger children to sensitive ideas and concepts that are not age appropriate. Also at the bottom of the poster is the ‘billing block’, which is simply a list of names of all the people that can be credited with having worked on the film. The main names included are those of the producer, director and leading actors.
To discover what influences we wanted for our poster, we looked at some pre-existing designs from films that fit the same/a similar genre to that of our short film. The posters that most influenced our work are shown here:
It is visibly obvious that my coursework was influenced by these pre-existing works. both Black Swan and Salt have used a medium close up of the leading female actress. By using a female, the posters become more appealing to the audience, due, in part, to the soft features of the woman's face, contrasting with the harsh backgrounds. The Clock Tower gave us the idea of using a clock face to symbolise time, however in The Clock Tower they have created clock hands from the female's legs, in this poster we decided not to include anything that even remotely resembled clock hands. We felt that this would further promote the idea of there being no fixed time within the narrative, and it explores the concept of not knowing how much time we have left.
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