Heroes and Villains

Heroes & Villains Evaluation

For my Heroes & Villains assignment I had to create a minimum of 3 film posters that represent both a hero and a villain. The starting point for this assignment was for me to understand what the main concept of what a hero and villain are, as well as have other ideas as to what creates a hero and villain. To help me I created a mind map of words relating to the following questions, what is a hero? Who is a hero? What makes a villain? Why are villains bad? This gave me many ideas as to what theme I could go for as well as what type or characters I could create and basically give me ideas that I can make my own.

To get a feel for film posters and what they consisted of I reversed engineered three film posters. For the film posters Little Miss Sunshine, Bridget Jones (The Edge of Reason) and Salt I looked at the colour scheme, where the image was taken, what type of camera was used, whether Photoshop was used, if the font was consistent and the angle of light. I did this for each poster and in result of that it gave me more ideas and tips as well as a better understanding of what needs to be in a film poster.

To get more concrete ideas on what style and techniques I should use in my film posters I looked into Lionsgate (SAW) and Joey Lawrence (Twilight) for some inspiration as I like both the films as well as the film posters used for them. Lionsgate mainly focused on the imagery being black and white with only one colour, which was red being used. The red was symbolic for blood and danger, which there is a lot of during the film. The imagery would consist of either one actor/actress or an object, there wouldn’t be more than one person used in a film poster. Where as in Joey Lawrence’s film posters he uses either one actor/actress or more, with a cloudy effect around them in the image, which helps give it a feel. Also the colour scheme has more colours used than Lionsgate but the colours used are dull and don’t stand out much, due to the position of the light that is on the actor/actress.

Since looking at other film posters it gave me more ideas of what I wanted to do for my film posters, now knowing what I want my film posters to be about I created two mood boards. One showing the theme as well as style of what I want my film posters to contain and the other showing the story line along with key imagery that I may use and make my own. After knowing what I want my film posters to be about I created a synopsis for my film that I would try to be shown in the imagery used for the posters.

Before creating my film posters I created a proposal outlining what I will be setting out to achieve in my film posters. The proposal included a health and safety assessment, techniques, equipment, camera settings and sketches of what I wanted my film posters to look like on camera. Once the proposal was done I started to develop my ideas by deciding on lighting, layout, models, depth of field, location, shutter speeds, exposure, fonts, make up and film poster presentation. Instead of doing 3 film posters I have chosen to do 5 due to experimentation with different effects and styles.

To test out my proposal and planning of the film posters I did a test photo shoot which was to try to create the imagery I am after. In doing the photo shoot I learnt of light issues as well as angles that needed to be altered to capture the imagery I would like. On the final shoot for my film posters I decided to change the studio around to capture the right imagery and my whole shoot was a success as I got all the imagery I needed.

On Photoshop I gave all the images a plain background whether that is black or white also I kept the images used in colour instead of using black and white imagery, as I preferred it in colour. Plus I layered text that was scanned into the computer as well as computerized text and other imagery to help create the film poster look and style that every poster has.

As a final summary I believe I completed the assignment to the fullest of my abilities as well as covering everything there was to do on the brief and more. I think I have done what has been asked of me for the unit and have used my time well to handle tasks. I found the assignment hard to understand at first but then once understood found it an exciting project to work on. I would say I need to plan more in the beginning to be able to expand more in the project.