Film Poster Design

1. ANCILLARY TASK –
CREATING MY FILM
POSTER
A2 Media Studies

2. STEP 1 – TEMPLATES
After researching different film posters I
decided to design two brief templates
from what I had learnt and what should
be included in the poster…
Title = Loving You
This will be in a
hand-written font, as
it seems more
personal and unique.
Slogan = “do you
ever wonder what
their reaction might
be”
This is a quote from
the trailer, so links it
nicely to the film.
Critics Quotes = At the
very top of the poster,
along with a star rating.
Release Date = full
written date, sometime
near valentines because
of the romantic genre
QR Code = bottom
right or left hand
corner. This
technology should
hopefully attract the
younger viewers
Production Company
= the name and logo
will be on the poster,
presented clearly.
Convergence = using
a twitter hashtag
Intertextuality =
‘from the directors
of…’

3. DESIGN ONE
In both designs I decided to have the title at the top as I
believed this would catch the audiences attention the
most, rather than being at the bottom under the picture.
As well as this, most of my images I took we front on,
meaning they would look better placed at the bottom so
their bodies didn’t look cut off.
In this design I decided to place the QR Code and the
Twitter hashtag near the top of the poster as, like I
mentioned in the previous slide, I believe it will catch the
eye of a younger audience and placing it at the top would
be more strategic than at the bottom. Just above this I
have put in the intertextuality, this is important as it
shows the viewers what the film will be like as they can
relate it to another film.
Just under this I have put the slogan, this will give the
viewer a small insight to the feel of the film, so it is
important to keep this at the top.
The release date isn’t the most important detail on the
poster so that is placed at the very bottom, however it is
placed centrally to keep the poster aligned. Just above
this is the critical quotation, this will become of interest
to the viewer once they have decided whether they are
interested in the film itself, so I have placed it near the
bottom but not last.

4. DESIGN TWO
The two designs I made despite appearing initially very
similar, I have made some small changes.
The importance of the film title still remains so I decided
to keep this at the top of my film poster, however, I did
decided to move the critical quote from the bottom to
right under the film title. This is because the star rating
should grab the attention of the viewers and draw them
in to look at the rest of the poster.
I kept the quote from the trailer in the same place as I
liked the way it looked, stretching across the width of the
poster.
I decided to move the QR Code to the bottom of the
poster, because despite the fact it may attract a younger
viewer, the importance of it wasn’t key and it can still
interest people even when placed at the bottom, due to
the fact it stands out well. I placed the Twitter hashtag
just above this as they both link to online social media.
I kept the release date at the bottom for the same reasons
as on the slide prior.

5. STEP 2 = SET UP
Unfortunately I had little to no experience
with Photoshop when it came to creating
our Ancillary Tasks, so I relied on my
teachers to show me the basics and the
rest I could figure out as I went along. The
first thing my teacher told me was to set
up guidelines, this meant that when
positioning things onto the poster they
would all be in proportion and in line. This
was extremely helpful and gave a great
finish to the poster.

6. STEP 3 = BACKGROUND
Once I had set up my guidelines I then
started to think about what I wanted as my
background. This was harder than I
thought, as it couldn’t be a pattern
otherwise it could distract from the main
image but being one colour just seemed too boring.
After a while I decided to do a gradient, darker around the outside and
getting lighter toward the middle. This made sure the background wasn’t
dull but was simple enough that I kept the focus on the main image. I
chose to use the same colour turquoise that was featured in our
production logo, which helped link them together.

7. STEP 4 = MAIN IMAGE
After creating the background to my poster I
now had to decided which photo, out of the
ones Millie and I shot, I wanted to use as my
main image. As I have explained in my blog
post ‘Ancillary Task = Photoshoot’ we only had a
small choice of images to choose from, but I
luckily had my eye on a photo that was able to
be recovered. So I opened this photo in
Photoshop and firstly decided to sharpen the
image as it was ever so slightly out of focused
which wouldn’t be good as film posters are
usually blown up to big sizes, so it would’ve
ended up even more distorted. After this I
needed to cut the image by using the magnetic
lasso tool’ so I no longer had the background, I
just wanted Ann and Flo. This took many
attempts as I had to careful draw around Ann
and Flo, be very precise so I didn’t cut out parts.
I eventually ended up with this image…

8. STEP 5 = SPOT HEALING
I then went around the edges of the image I had just cut with a tool
called ‘spot healing’ this basically smoothed out the edges by
infilling any holes or chunks with the image that was previously there
before I cut it. This tool was very helpful as it made my main image
look ten times more professional and how I had imagined it looking.
It gave the image a cleaner cut and on the final poster this precise
edge would look a lot better.
Without Spot
Healing
With Spot
Healing

9. STEP 6 = FILM CREDITS
Film credits are a key part to any film poster and I soon realised that I
hadn’t included them in my templates. So I went online and researched
into film credits and wrote about it in my blog post ‘Ancillary Task =
Designing Credits’. After doing the research and creating my credits I
then placed them onto the poster. I had to mess around for a while
deciding where I wanted to place them and how big I wanted them to be
but I came to a decision to have them right at the very top, taking up
the width of the poster. I chose the font to be black, despite finding in
my research that the font was predominately grey, because the light
turquoise background meant that the grey font was too hard to read.

10. STEP 7 = CRITICAL QUOTE
I kept the positioning of the critical quote the same as
in my templates, but I decided not to include the star
rating as I wanted to keep the poster as minimal as
possible. I also choose the quote to be in orange as it
created a good contrast to the turquoise background
but not so much that it obstructed the final look of
the poster.
The quotation I used also appears in the film trailer
and I decided to do this because I wanted to create a
clear link between the trailer and my poster. We chose
for the quote to be from Sundance Film Festival
because it was a low key independent film festival
which matched well to what we wanted our whole
production image to be.

11. STEP 8 = TYPOGRAPHY
Due to the fact I forgot about the film
credits when creating my design
templates for my poster, when
creating my title I had move the
position of it further down than I had
initially planned. However, I subsidised
this by making the title larger than I
had planned and put it in black to
make it stand out from the rest of the
poster.
The font of the title may be
recognisable as it is the same font
which the title appears in in the film
trailer itself. I wanted to keep this the
same to again create that all important
link between the two.
Film Title

12. Despite when researching film posters I found that most commonly the actors/actresses
name weren’t in the same font as the film title, I thought that it worked well in my poster.
The minimalism of the rest of the poster meant that the names really stood out bold and
drew attention to the poster. Unlike big Hollywood film my film didn’t feature world famous
actors/actresses which mean that the names themselves wouldn’t attract attention but
positioning them in the middle of the poster and making the font bold and large, would help
with making them eye catching.
Actresses names

13. STEP 9 = QR CODE
I created a QR Code for my film poster a while back, before I started to
create my film poster or and originally made it based on the colours of our
production logo. This meant that when I came to place it onto my film
poster, it just disappeared due to it being the same colour. So I decided to
change the background colour of the QR Code to the same orange of the
critic quote. I used the fill tool on Photoshop to select the background and
make it orange, I then selected each block and change it to black from
turquoise.

14. BLURRED EDGE
I placed the QR Code originally in the
centre of the film poster, however it
thought the orange attracted to much
attention away from the title of the film.
So I decided to move it to the bottom left
hand corner of the poster. I like the positioning of the
QR Code but something still felt wrong. I realised that
because I placed it over the top of the main image the
orange and the colour of Flo’s jacket (behind where I
place the QR Code) really clashed and this looked
odd. I couldn’t think of where else to place the code
so I decided to go around the edge of the code with a
blurring tool, which soften the edges to the
background colour, making it blend in more. This
immediately looked much better.

15. STEP 10 = CONVERGENCE
I found in my research that many films aimed at a younger audience
normally included a Facebook or Twitter hashtag which when googled
would lead them to the film’s website or some other sort of
marketing. So seeing as my target audience was teenagers I thought
this was very important to include. I decided on Twitter over
Facebook due to it featuring in our trailer, and this created another
nice link between the two. I wanted to keep it simple, so I decided on
#lovingyou. After choosing this I then went onto DaFont and decided
on my favourite four fonts.
Moon
Flower
Jenna Sue Spring
Step
French
Press

16. FRENCH PRESS
After deciding to use French Press I noticed that the background of the
screenshot from DaFont was white and the font was black, I wanted to reverse
this. So I went into Photoshop and used the filling in tool I used previously, on
the QR Code, and filled the background in black so that when each letter
changed to white I would be able to see them and then selected each individual
letter from black to white. This took and long time and there were very small
sections which were hard to fill, yet needed to be as they were easy to see if not.

17. I then erased the background colour of the hashtag, by using the
cutting tool, so that when I placed it on the poster it was just white
font. I then went online and found an image of the twitter logo and
used the lasso tool in Photoshop to cut around it so the background
was gone. I then placed it on the poster and found that the blue
didn’t fit right with the background so I picked a colour from the
same palette I used for the background colour and filled in the
Twitter bird a different blue. I then placed this image directly below
the hashtag I had just put on.

18. STEP 11 = FINAL POSTER
Here is the final poster I
created by completing all
these steps and conducting
the relevant research…