messing around with designs

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY INSPIRED

CARTOON INSPIRED

TOTORO INSPIRED

Ancillary Tasks - Posters

So I've recently been having a play around with different poster ideas, mainly because I'm not actually too sure on what kind of feel I want my poster to convey to an audience. 
When I first started researching posters (see http://juxtaposedproductionsg324.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/film-posters.html), I realised how much I actually prefer teaser posters to the official film posters themselves; I think this is due to the lack of creditations on them and either the mystery of what a film could be about, or if it is a well-known film, then the excitement of the actors/actresses/plotline. 
My favourite posters to study and analyse have been for The Dark Knight, Totoro and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In particular, my favourite posters have been quite 'dark' and mysterious. For this reason, when I think of designing my own poster, my instinct is to make one inspired by this, however......Sadly, my film doesn't reaaaaally have too much of a dark element because the film takes place AFTER a darker element occurs (Oscar living alone). So, I'm actually quite stuck on poster ideas....Another problem I keep encountering is the choice of font. I'm quite a perfectionist and so even if I had an amazing poster design, if the font wasn't to the same standard, I wouldn't be happy. So it's all quite a dilemma! I can't be dealing with this kind of stress prior to the deadline. HELP.

Poster research time

Film posters all have a very different appearance and reception based upon the genre and target audience of the film.
Older film posters typically have quite bold primary colours and the main character's name is featured in a large type, sometimes even larger than the film title because this is what is being promoted. (DR.NO poster is an example of this).
Other posters do not need a great deal of advertisement, actor/character profiling or promotion, or even much indication of plotline. (JURASSIC PARK).
Some posters have a very artistic feel (PERFUME) and feature more editing than other film posters.

My favourite film posters are those made for Totoro and Harry Potter. I particularly love this poster for My Neighbour Totoro because of the colour scheme and its innovativeness.
Harry Potter is my all-time-favourite film franchise and so I love the way that each poster gives a feel of the magic within and the plotline is suggested, along with the characters. I also favour the way that they clearly follow on from one another; i.e. the posters don't radically change in format, style or design and so you can witness the growth of the characters and plot.

I'm currently undecided on what design I will choose for my own short film poster, I think I will take inspirations from both Totoro and The Muppets.

Title Sequence Image 3

Title Sequence Image 2

2nd image....this was surprisingly harder to complete than the first because I didn't think to do all of the images at the same time and so I lost the colours. This meant that I had to find as similar match as possible, using the eyedropper tool worked enough however, because I had used varying opacities, the colours weren't true matches. But, they work nonetheless. Particularly for this one in which the shed can be a darker colour because of the rain :)

Title Sequence Image 1

I recently reached the decision to create an image-based title sequence rather than just laying text titles on top of the footage or having a blank screen. The image above was a picture that I drew on to lined notepad paper and then scanned into a computer. I then used Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS6 to use fairly translucent paint tools on top. I am really pleased with the outcome of despite it taking a fair while to complete because only one layer of colour could be used otherwise it would layer darker and this meant that I had to do lots of erasing too!

Update on my title sequence...

Quick storyboard...

IDENT

Over the past week I have been set on re-creating/designing my production company ident because I wasn't happy with the one that I previously created at AS Level. I watched a few YouTube After Effects tutorials to learn some new skills and to come up with new ideas that I could use in my new ident.
In order to achieve this ident, these are the processes that I carried out:

• creating fractal energy
• making the fractal type dynamic
• playing with the contrast
• adding a cc vector blur
• adding colour correction curves
• creating text in the century gothic font

I really like this company ident because it is an enhanced extension of my previous one yet is completely different. Although, I am going to try and not look at it too much during production work because I know if I do, then I will probably start to dislike it. But for now, I REALLY LIKE IT, YAY.

Update

Seeing as I am currently unable to film because of the foul (rainy and soggy) weather, I have recently been thinking about other tasks that have to be completed such as my film poster and review. Thinking about my film poster led me to photograph my puppet and mannequin just to gauge some ideas on what I want my poster to look like and feature. One idea that I particularly like is having a landscape image with the face of my puppet on the bottom. This was inspired by the film poster for 'Submarine' (a Richard Ayoade film) and I also found some character posters for 'The Muppets' which showed Kermit, Miss Piggy, Animal, etc. in a similar position except on a portrait poster. Finding this was very helpful because I was slightly worried about creating a film poster that didn't include any human characters. I am currently undecided whether my brother Jacob will be a part of the film poster or not.
Another task that I have been thinking about is my opening title sequence for my short film. I want to make it quite a fun and animated sequence that will not only feature titles including director, producer, costumer designer, props and cast, etc. but also an animation of the puppet's prior life in which he was alone and living in a dirty/uninhabitable place until he is found by Jacob and they become friends. I have watched a few YouTube videos of other students who have created their own animated title sequence that fits with the kind of theme/genre of my short film. I want the sequence to either end with a blend from the animation to the real footage or a scribble into the footage.
HOW I WILL DO THIS I HAVE NO IDEA. WHY OH WHY MUST I COME UP WITH DIFFICULT IDEAS?!
The inspiration came from finding the original drawings of my puppet and I thought that it would be a nice idea!
I also want to create a 'fun' production company rather than the simple one I made at AS.
I have been considering the idea of using a flick book to stem the animation from. I could either create an animated flick book of pages with nothing on which progresses into being the pages upon which the animation is on or I could film a flick book.

Cheeky photoshoot in the bath...

How are short films consumed?

There are many ways in which people view short films. Although there only a few select outputs in comparison to feature length films which show in cinemas all over the world for several weeks after their release date. The most popular and successful method of consuming short films is on websites such as Virgin Shorts and the BBC Film Network. Another method is through film festivals - New York Short Film Festival, Cannes, Sweden, Brussels, New Zealand and Australia. At the New York Festival many international films are shown which do not exceed 30 minutes and are in digital format for the screening.

Further practice

Magazine practice

On Friday, I went to go and see Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and I loved the way that Bella Swan looked as a vampire, particularly with the heavy pigmentation of her eye make-up. For this reason, I thought it would be a great practice for a magazine poster and this led me to think of this possible title. It seems relevant because the term in filmmaking refers is a technique in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information; this seems to fit with what a film magazine is all about.
The great thing about this image is the colour of Bella's eye - it allowed me to have a play around to change the colours of it to purple, blue, etc. which gave the image a completely different feel.

Film Location

For filming, I have chosen to use my garden as the location because there is a large shed that I can use and there are areas which I can use for the wedding scene. My brother also loves playing in the garden so it won’t be difficult to film with him. A current problem that I am facing is the weather - ideally, I would love to have some dry or moist ground to film on because I can't really allow any mud/rain to get on the puppet or mannequin. Or, I would love for some snow this winter because I think it would add a surreal sense to the wedding and I think fresh, untouched snow would look perfect. (Maybe if I'm lucky, this might work out).

New stage of production...

So, the newest problem that I have had to conquer is making my puppet poseable...Originally, I thought I could put a very fine wire or pipe cleaner on the inside of the material, along with the stuffing, however, this didn't actually seem possible. This was because the arms and legs had to be sewn in shut before the body could be assembled and so it wouldn't be possible to get them in there. My nan and myself tried to think of many methods and the best one that we found was actually applying the pipe cleaners on the outside of the material and then coating this with another layer of material. My main concern with this was that it could actually make the puppet too 'chunky' because my material is actually quite thick and dense looking. However, we thought we'd try it anyway and if it didn't work out then we could just unstitch it and try something else (not really what we wanted to be doing seeing as it would add further to the construction time).
We tried it out and it was actually very successful.
Here are a few images of how we did it:

 

As you can see, it worked out well and meant that the puppet could be moved fairly easily. It was important for it to maintain a position because I am wanting to use stop motion and so it wouldn't be successful if it couldn't do this.

I also bought a doll's stand which enables the puppet to stand-alone and it will be easily concealable in the filming stage. The extra layer of material also made me realise how 'skinny' the puppet would have been without it and therefore would've been less likely/able to maintain a position.