Film Poster: Photos

Before going out to do my photoshoot, I needed to identify a suitable location, because even if I did use Photoshop to heavily change the image afterwards, I wanted the photos to have a realistic and authentic impression. Most of the posters I have looked at use the setting of the poster to establish the setting of the film, so I decided that I needed to do my photography in a location that I had already used during filming to help show cohesion between my product and the promotion of my product. 

Out of all the locations I had shot in, the Big Mead was the most idyllic and also offered the best natural lighting, especially along the walkway with the trees forming a canopy. A lot of the posters I took inspiration from used lighting effectively to show contrasts and make the subjects of the image more defined. The Big Mead provides an environment which is not intrusive and quite simplistic, and this would allow me to ensure that the characters are the main focus on the poster, whilst also capturing a location that the most intense part of the film takes place in. 

The first problem I encountered was that I needed to be in the photographs, and so this prevented me from actually being the photographer. In order to clarify the framing and position of the characters, I took these 3 sample photos where my brother acts as a stand in for where I would be. This way when taking photographs of the two subjects my brother could always look back at the ones I had done so that he had a visual understanding of the types of shot I wanted. You will notice that these photographs mirror some of the stances in my flat plans, apart from the second shot, which is a shot I directly imitated from the Fast and Furious 7 poster in my 'inspirations and influences' post (except for the fact that I wanted my character to be looking upwards as if looking to his brother in heaven). 

These shots were completely unplanned and were an idea that I generated when walking up to the Big Mead. I thought that I could get some close up shots of a road, specifically a road with the white lines running down the centre of it, and use this as a background for my poster. Then I could use Photoshop to frame Dylan and the Father either side of the white line and use this to represent the 'line between grief and guilt', where the road is symbolic to the road accident in the narrative. However I was aware that the effect of this may look too fake and highly edited, which I why I am still apprehensive about using this idea. 

These shots experimented with Dylan framed in the foreground of the image. Placing the Father behind added more depth to the photo and by having the characters wear the same clothes they had in the film, the contrasts of light and dark were maintained at both a literal and figurative level. It also helps maintain consistency across both products. In some of these shots the characters are in the lower half of the frame, leaving the upper half empty and filled with open space for the title and tagline. Keeping this variety meant that I could try out different ideas in Photoshop without narrowing down my vision too far at this point. A point of recognition is that in these photos Dylan is looking downwards, and this is because I think that there is a greater intensity in his eyes, whereas when he is looking upwards he appears more nostalgic and reflective. 

Keeping with the idea that I wanted to give Dylan more prominence on the poster, I switched the characters so that Dylan was in the background but still the main focus because you could see his face, whereas the Father's is hidden. In these photos I tried looking in different directions to create a range of connotations. I have already stated that when Dylan is looking upwards I wanted it to symbolise the bond he has with his brother, but here I also show him staring at the Father to establish the tension and conflict between the characters. The fact that the Father is still looking downwards reflects how he is initially oblivious to Dylan's vendetta. 

This shot is very similar but out of focus. What I wanted to achieve here is the possibility of using the whole image as the background, with the intention of putting the text in the foreground to be the main focus. With the picture blurred, audiences will be teased about what is going on and consequently this allows them to pay more attention to the text. 

I am less sure on these photographs. They frame the characters at a much more intimate level and I feel like this counteracts the subtlety of the characterisation that gradually builds up in my film. It doesn't seem to produce the tense effect I want because the characters are too close together in the picture and I feel like this undermines the physical distance I kept between them in the film. Although this could symbolise their connection through loss, I think that the scale of the characters is too overwhelming to work effectively on the poster. 

The above photos are another display of my spontaneous creativity. Even though I kept the Father in the shot, I thought that I could crop him out of the photo and replace it with another image of Dylan facing the camera. This way there would be two versions of the same character and this could highlight the conflicted emotions he is experiencing. The stance where Dylan has his back to the viewer and is holding a gun represents the cold-hearted and volatile personality, whilst another image of Dylan facing the camera could expose his emotional uncertainty and humanity. This juxtaposition of the protagonist would work well, although I think that by removing the Father from the poster a large part of the plot and its themes is ignored. 

Another deviation from my flat plans, the pose here aimed at using the tunnel-like pathway to create a spacial gap between the characters in order to symbolise their ongoing emotional pursuits. The slight changes in angle and framing experimented with the depth and the engagement of the characters. I was adamant that I didn't want Dylan and the Father to be standing face to face (which is why Dylan is in the foreground and the Father in the background) because this reminded me too much of the posters released for Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, both of which used this stance to create a godly and physical barrier between their protagonists. I felt that had I done this, there would be too much emphasis placed on their differences whereas the film is more about their underlying similarities. Also, they are completely individual characters coping with their own demons (the Father's responsibility for the death and Dylan's feeling of failure as a big brother) and by placing them face to face the film becomes reliant on their conflict, rather than their individual identities. 

I do like a couple of these photographs, namely the top two, but I don't feel like I will use them because the characters are isolated to the border of the frame and so they aren't as centrally prominent, making it more difficult for audiences to engage with the image. 

Something I had knowledge of before undertaking this task was that films never limit their promotional campaigns to just one poster. There are normally an assortment of them so that some can be released in other countries or for the simple fact of showing more variety in the build up to the film. A notable example was when the first Avengers movie was released and there were lots of different posters and banners for each of the individual characters (I know this from attending my local Cineworld) in order to emphasise the scale and impact of this film. Therefore as a little side project I was planning on making a couple of extra posters to form a promotional campaign. My idea was to use a main poster featuring both characters (the one I will submit as my final product) but also make two supplementary posters of the individual characters. This is why I took a range of headshots of the Father at different angles so that in Photoshop I could decide which looked best. 

These were the shots of Dylan that I may use for the standalone character poster. Unlike the Father, I had a very specific idea that for most of the shots of Dylan I wanted it to resemble a prison mugshot to denote the criminal and potential violent outrage of his character. His expressions are also quite solemn and emotionless, which I think helped to evoke a sense of weariness in his appearance. With these individual shots I feel like the characters look more exposed and flawed, which helps to humanise them before the release of my actual film.  

This set of photos reflects one of my flat plans, and I like it due to the suggestive contrasts and the central focus on the two protagonists. On the other hand, despite my characters being framed in a central position, the walkway always veers off to one side and I think that this damages the central alignment of Dylan and the Father. Additionally from a side angle there is not sufficient enough character engagement in terms of facial expressions, so whilst I like the body language and thematic depth of these photos, realistically I doubt that I will use them as a result of the lack of audience engagement with the characters. 

Photographing the gun was a nod to the poster for 'The Drop' which used props and settings on its poster rather than characters. This is a very unconventional way of promoting a film and so I wanted to experiment with some abstract ideas. The lack of identity in these photographs is a deliberate denotation of stereotypes, because to see a hood and a gun on a film poster is very suggestive and reliant on societal stereotypes. What I thought that I could achieve from these photos is a deliberate red herring for the audience. Like in my film, the assumption that Dylan will kill the Father is completely rejected after about two minutes and so the film then explores Dylan's change. The same thing would happen here, from the poster audiences would immediately interpret the film as a violent and thuggish narrative about youth culture, when in fact the film completely undermines this archetype, exposing the humanity and sympathy of the protagonist. 

I know that this would work very well as a way of subverting audience expectations but I do not like the aesthetics of the pictures enough to use them. This is an example where I thought the idea is very clever, but the execution of the idea undermines its quality. 

And finally this last group of photos was an attempt to add some visual style to the photography, since a lot of it has been shot in a rigid and straightforward way (not that this was necessarily ineffective, just repetitive). So the low angle added some nice variety to my shots by giving the characters more prominence, but at the same time it felt more detached than my other images. Dylan and the Father look too idolised and imposing to the overall image. I like the effect of the lighting looking down on them from above as I think there is symbolic value here, but I just don't think the characters are as visually engaging as they have been in the other photographs. 

With this extensive photography done, my next post will be an elimination process as I establish a shortlist of possible photos I will consider using on my poster.