P5

My Poster

Evaluation

To start evaluating my poster, I studied it as I would somebody else's poster. I annotated the features which I could then begin to discuss and compare:

Moving clockwise from the top, I can discuss what is good and bad about each feature. The title is large and visible, a necessity on film posters, but the colour yellow was not on my original palette. Using this colour against what I set out in my pre-production was risky but I believe it has worked better because it has the light bulb to match with.

I made my star prominent like on the posters of 'Fish Tank' and 'Lady Bird' which I had used as my inspiration. On those posters, the star face the right but, on my poster, the star faces the left and is looking into camera. The protagonist looking at the camera can sometimes not fit but I decided that it could fit the 'coming-of-age' genre. On the other hand, I did not add the talent of the film to the poster, this is a convention of movie posters but, as none of my actors are celebrities, I decided to not. This is a feature that the target audience of my film might want if there are celebrities that the audience would go to the film to see but that is not the case with my product.

I noticed that 'coming-of-age' film posters almost always have a tagline. Taglines are short phrases that either sum up the character, narrative or message of the film and are often vague and philosophical. The taglines for the posters I used as my inspiration were:

"Fly Away Home" - Lady Bird

"Find Your Kingdom" - The Florida Project

"Live, Love and Give As Good As You Get." - Fish Tank

So I followed the convention and designed my film's tagline, "Be Bold", which is a common theme of the genre: Identity.

As I chose this phrase, I thought of a light bulb and how they link to being bold; they were invented by Thomas Edison and you have to be bold and think outside the box to invent. The light bulb also symbolises an idea, which links to being bold because my protagonist is impulsive and determined, traits that have similarities with ideas and boldness.

I decided to add a release date quite late in the process because of some feedback I received. This was very important because someone could see it outside of my 'coming-of-age lens' and they saw this film as a possible comedy because their was nothing specific to direct them to the actual genre. I then added this release date in its cheesy 'Coming of age May 2019' way because then it could add a different layer of attraction to somebody viewing the poster.

The credit block is an essential legal requirement which I was obliged to put on the poster. I wrote the credit block during my pre-production so it was simple to just place on the poster. 

Feedback I received on this was that most posters have their credit block centralised, which I had to think about. I saw it on my poster and thought that it would not work as it fits better with the quotes on the left-hand side. I also looked at it through a formatting point of view and the centre of an area is the most important band of space, which is occupied by my protagonist, and the credit block is an unimportant piece of information that people do not read. Therefore, I decided that the credit block would stay where it was.

My three inspiration posters and many others contained reviews from esteemed sources and star-ratings. I followed this convention on my poster by having my reviews that I had made up but from real sources:

Making up quotes is easy but feels like I should have real quotes to back up my poster. However, without an actual film I cannot achieve real quotes.

If I made this poster again, I would start with a better colour palette, when I designed my ideas, I had specific images in my head that I should have avoided. Instead, I would look at the main colours of the images I wanted to use and found different colours that match and complement them. As well, I would design ideas of the basis of my poster and get feedback before I was at a more confident point.