Creating the Film Poster - 25/11/2011

Every production company uses at least one poster in their marketing campaigns - even low budget independent films like 'Four Lions' had one poster to help sell their film. When creating this poster, it was vital that the poster linked with the film magazine front cover and trailer in order to ensure that the audience recognised that the poster belonged to our Hangman film and that they could synergetically link it up for themselves when seeing the poster at a bus stop and then later seeing the trailer on their television. Like the magazine front cover, I took images of the main protagonist Melanie (actress Lucy Rimmer-Hall) and kept her as the main image on both the front cover and the poster in order to preserve this synergy. I actually used two different images I had taken and edited them to combine together since both photos had components that I wanted for my final product. So before photoshopping, the two individual photos looked like this:

And after photoshopping, I combined the image to create this finished movie poster:

As you can see, I have combined both images and altered them to create a completely new image. Firstly, I cut the gloved Hangman hand seen in the second image and copied it onto the first image, which I wanted to use as the basis of my poster. I felt that the hand looked perfect in the second image, but went completely wrong otherwise since Lucy was almost smiling (rather than appearing frightened) and the image overall looked too similar to the one I used on my film magazine front cover. The first image was similar enough to the film magazine cover that it would be recognisable to the Hangman marketing campaign, but not too similar that it looked exactly the same (I will explain the similarity and synergy through the trailer, film magazine front cover and poster in a later blog). Once I had cut the hand out of the second image, I enlarged it and made it contrast more so that it appeared more black and sinister. The hand is shaped like a claw, as if it is getting ready to grab Melanie around the neck and kill her brutally. I then altered the forestry background behind Melanie and the Hangman hand (like I did in the film magazine front cover) my changing it into a black and white colour and lowering the contrast so it appeared like a grey blur - as if Melanie's life is about to blur into nothingness once the Hangman's clawed hand reaches her neck. I then made the contrast on Lucy brighter and changed the colour of her eyes to a more innocent and natural looking green colour - the same as the magazine cover - in order to emphasise her innocence and make her and the black hand contrast from the bleak background and overall be eye catching to passers' by. The last thing I altered about the image was the hangman book Lucy was holding - the writing on the page didn't stand out like I had envisioned it and I believed that it needed to since the whole film revolves around the Hangman gloves and this very book. Therefore, I used the burn tool on photoshop to highlight the words 'THE HANGMAN IS COMING..' and the unfinished hangman drawing and game on the opposite page so that it became a stark contrast from the white page and will be a noticeable and sinister image to the audience.

Film posters will nearly always have six pieces of information on them - the film tagline, title, cast and production billing block, release date, film company logo and the certification rating. Firstly, I had looked at other film posters to see were they placed their film taglines - some placed them along the top of the poster, and others placed them directly under the film title at the bottom of the page. I felt that there would be too much text if the title, tagline and billing block were all at the bottom and the image would in comparison seem sparse if there was nothing striking at the top of the image, so I decided to place the tagline 'THIS IS ONLY A GAME' at the top. I used a bloody red colour associated with blood, gore, death and anger - four features that encompass our film completely and are associated with the horror genre. I also used the 'Cracked' iMovie font that we used in our trailer in order to reinforce this font being associated solely with our movie. At first, I was worried that the tagline would stand out too much and the audience would be confused as to whether that or the 'HANGMAN' title at the bottom of the page was the film title or not, but these worries dissipated when I made the 'HANGMAN' title in an even larger white font that seemed to stand out more than the smaller bloody-red font at the top of the page. Again, I used the same cracked font to reinforce the synergy between trailer, front cover and poster. Nearly every film poster has a cast and production billing block - they contain the names of the lead actors and important production figures that created the film. My billing block reads as follows:

'LIONSGATE PRESENTS A CONOR WYNN PRODUCTION “HANGMAN” STARRING LUCY RIMMER-HALL CHARLOTTE WESTALL WITH BENJAMIN JONES CASTING BY VICTORIA DUNN MUSIC BY MARILYN MANSON DIRECTED BY CHARLOTTE WILLIAMSON EDITED BY VICTORIA DUNN WRITTEN BY CONOR WYNN'

I used the structure adopted by most movie posters and started of with 'LIONSGATE PRESENTS', since that is the ident used at the start of our trailer. I then included the three members of our production team me (Victoria Dunn), Charlotte Williamson and Conor Wynn as various roles, even though we all took part in all positions needed to create our product. The names of the three main actors in our movie (Lucy Rimmer-Hall, Charlotte Westall and Benjamin Jones) was then included. At first I was unsure whether to include the three names of the major actors in our film in a more noticeable place on the poster, but I just felt that they didn't fit in anywhere on the poster and since Lucy Rimmer-Hall has starred in the main role in the major British horror hit 'The Creeps' (as conveyed in the Actors List') I didn't think it was necessary since she was already a recognisable figure to a horror fanatical audience. We also included 'MUSIC BY MARILYN MANSON' in this billing block since his song 'Eat Me, Drink Me' features as the soundtrack in the trailer and may entice a wider audience of fans of the singer. Next, I decided to place the cinematic release date underneath the billing block in a bloody red lettering the same (but smaller) to that of the tagline at the top of the poster. The release date in Halloween would give a more sinister and spooky aspect to the poster, and would be more rememberable than a random release day on some insignificant date. Although I have already established the release date, I chose not to put a specific release date (instead putting 'RATING TBC') since this poster has been created a year in advance of the film actually being released and would not yet have been rated in any other professional marketing campaign - some films are not rated until 2 weeks until the film is actually released. Lastly, I included the 'LIONSGATE' logo but altered it to match the bloody red colour of the tagline and release date. The logo is important in enticing film fanatics who have seen Lionsgate films before and would like to see any film that has been produced by this company. 

Overall, I think my poster links well to my front cover and film trailer - the way in which they synergetically link will be discussed in one of my next blog posts.