Creating my own film poster

My idea

When looking at existing film posters in my last piece of research, I noticed that most use an image from the film in the centre of the poster. Especially in psychological thrillers. I like this idea, as psychological thrillers are very character based, so in my promotional package I will need to show the character instead of the narrative.

Extending the idea of using a character image in my film poster, I was drawn to use an image of a character at the top with something extra below or with one big main image.

My idea

Here are two psychological thriller posters. I am mostly drawn to the poster for Black Swan over Shutter Island, as well both films are quite different. Shutter Island focuses on the island in the title, and therefore an image of it helps the narrative be hinted in the poster along with the character above as he is the main character. However the poster for Black Swan just shows the female character who is the main plot and point of the film. Black Swan is my biggest inspiration when creating my psychological thriller, so I think I will go with one image to be similar.

My idea with inspiration

I think these icons work together well to relate to my trailer but also to show a new side of the story on my film poster. The mask, little girl, older girl and the use of the colour red and I use it as a theme throughout my production.

MY POSTER

Photo shootHere are various images I took for images to use in my poster.

I took different angles and ideas such as half a mask and a full mask so that I had more options when creating my poster.

Editing and create main image

Editing and creating main image

Final

TitlesTo create the film title for the poster, I used a different font to the one in the trailer, simply because I attempted it and found that with an interim feedback, many people didn’t think the font suited the poster and made it look too ‘student project’ like.

MASKEDFont: Chiller

Editing and creating texts

I used a Word Art box to insert the text so it was bolder, made it to the Chiller font and changed the colour to match my scheme.

Then all I had to do was to fit the font to the size I wanted it and the width of the poster I wanted it.

Subtitle/taglineBecause I have a subtitle tagline in my trailer, I am going to feature this in my trailer.

Even though I think it work better for continuity if I used the same font here (Head Injuries) for the subtitle on my poster, I think the font only best works big and I want the subtitle to be quite small on the page.

I used the font Agency FB and made the second line of the tagline bigger in size and had the word ‘truth’ in red- like the trailer.I also made sure the subtitle was in the centre.

Editing and creating subtitle

Accolades and quotesEven though in my research I looked at poster quotes and accolade mentions (awards, nominations, etc…) I decided that because my film is a low budget, independent film I didn’t want to publicise it as a mainstream film.

Extra info.In my previous research I looked at the date, extra information, credits that feature in film posters.

This information is usually very small on the film poster, in a colour so it doesn’t stand out too much on the poster but so that it is easily readable and nearly always at the bottom of the poster.

The reason for this information is to provide audiences with information, show who worked on the film and to provide details for how audiences can find out extra information about the film. This especially comes in handy if the poster is a teaser poster.

For the extra information at the bottom of the poster, I will be using the same font from the trailer and the same information for continuity. This font is called SF Movie Poster