Digital Darkroom Assignment #12

cletus

Assignment: Movie Poster

We're going to try something a little bit different for this assignment. All of the previous assignments have revolved around using a specific tool or performing a specific task. This time we're going to take on a project. We're going to use image editing software to make a movie poster... just like those cool eye-catching posters you see every time you walk into a movie theater.

Rules

• Make a poster for a fictional movie - Not only do you need a title for your fictional movie, you need to decide what kind of movie it is and create a poster that fits that genre
• Use at least one picture that you have taken as part of the poster design
• You may use only one program for making your poster (i.e. no creating complex shapes in Adobe Illustrator and then importing them into Photoshop)

Hints & Tips

• If you're in the market for a new Photoshop book, Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS Down & Dirty Tricks is full of tricks for creating Hollywoodesque effects.
• Pay special attention to the text (I guess the proper term would be typography) on your poster. On almost any movie poster, the text is a tightly integrated part of the overall design.

wxwax

This is good. Hard, but good.

wkwork

Here's one to start with:

wxwax

That's great!

ginger_55

wxwax wrote:

That's great!

I agree that is great. I can't afford that book right now. If I did buy it, I would buy it by a slow boat, on the internet, the cheap way. Takes weeks to arrive, but worth the wait. The problem is that I just bought three photo books, none for that stuff. There is another one, something about Classic Photoshop, or something, Kelby might be involved. I wanted that one, but decided three was going to have to be it.

On that movie poster, it really is great. I have no idea how to do that. The black on the side, etc.

ginger

snapapple

I gave this a try
I had trouble with the diagonal print. I should have put it all in one box. But, I think I got it. This made me realize that I hardly ever take pictures of people just doing things. They are all looking straight at the camera. That does not work for this kind of thing. A good lesson. I used the filter for Poster edges on the shots before putting them in the poster. It gives a different sort of print look.

wxwax

Very creative, snapster.

ginger_55

Snappy, My name? On your poster?

snapapple wrote:

I had trouble with the diagonal print. I should have put it all in one box. But, I think I got it. This made me realize that I hardly ever take pictures of people just doing things. They are all looking straight at the camera. That does not work for this kind of thing. A good lesson. I used the filter for Poster edges on the shots before putting them in the poster. It gives a different sort of print look.

Snappy, did you use my name on purpose.

Legally, my name is Mary Jones.

Took me a moment to see that. If I have time, I will ask you how you do get the edges, the red part, etc.

ginger

cletus

Good stuff guys

wxwax

cletus

Finally got a chance to throw something together:

ginger_55

cletus wrote:

Finally got a chance to throw something together:

doG, that is neat Cletus. I don't think I ever will get anything thrown together. I don't have the imagination that you all do, I am an observer, someone else needs to give me funny copy.

I did pick up a magazine yesterday, had something in it about doing movie posters, thought I would tell you all. Was $10. I hate that about photo magazines, had some other stuff in it. Was called Photoshop with a pale user under the title.

ginger

DavidTO

cletus wrote:

Finally got a chance to throw something together:

Very nice. It would make a more convincing movie poster if you made one minor change: one-sheet movie posters (the standard size poster) are 27x41. Yours is too tall, so it doesn't look like a movie poster. Also, I love the bottom of the poster. Very nice. The typography at the top and the texture don't look movie posterish to me, though.

Better than I've done, though (you'll note that I've not posted anythying yet!).

Part of the problem for me is that I'm a trailer editor--I cut movie marketing and I work for a company that does a lot of print work. It's daunting for me, and I haven't bitten it off yet.

Here's the company I work for.

cletus

DavidTO wrote:

Very nice. It would make a more convincing movie poster if you made one minor change: one-sheet movie posters (the standard size poster) are 27x41. Yours is too tall, so it doesn't look like a movie poster. Also, I love the bottom of the poster. Very nice. The typography at the top and the texture don't look movie posterish to me, though.

Better than I've done, though (you'll note that I've not posted anythying yet!).

Part of the problem for me is that I'm a trailer editor--I cut movie marketing and I work for a company that does a lot of print work. It's daunting for me, and I haven't bitten it off yet.

Here's the company I work for.

Better or worse???

DavidTO

cletus wrote:

Better or worse???

I think it's more movie-posterish. What do you think? That basic size 27x41 is a unit of measure in the movie industry called the one-sheet. There's also a two-sheet, and I forget what billboards are, but they're 32 sheets, or something.

Here's some history on it:

http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/NewSite/INDEX/ARTICLES/onesheet.asp

http://www.filmposters.com/about/definitions.asp

I also think that if you look at posters, you'll find that most type is flat, or has some type of texture that makes the type "real", like metallic or something. Anyway, good work. Very nice poster.

wxwax

Cletus, I actually prefer the first. I lik the effect of the long black before the image at the bottom. It isolates him nicely, plays off the dark theme. I understand why the design is not practical, I just happen to like it.

David, very interesting to learn of your background. That's some intense work, as I understand it. Lots and lots and lots of tweaking the product?

wkwork

Very nice Cletus, but a bit noisy - is that intentional?

DavidTO

wxwax wrote:

Cletus, I actually prefer the first. I lik the effect of the long black before the image at the bottom. It isolates him nicely, plays off the dark theme. I understand why the design is not practical, I just happen to like it.

David, very interesting to learn of your background. That's some intense work, as I understand it. Lots and lots and lots of tweaking the product?

We make changes until they run out of time. So yes, a lot of tweaking, and a lot of egos to please. It's mostly fun.

Here's some of my work:

Troy Teaser

Troy Trailer

The Last Samurai Teaser


I also prefer Cletus' first. I was just pointing out what the constraints of movie posters is. His first is more interesting as far as design goes. Part of the challenge, though, is working in the medium. One thing you could do with the second version is to reduce the size of the player, which would allow you to mimic what you did in the first version.

DavidTO

wkwork wrote:

Very nice Cletus, but a bit noisy - is that intentional?

Professional designers will add some noise on top of their image to make it seem more natural. It blends the blacks/colors made in PS with photos more naturally, as everything then has noise. I do think that Cletus may have gone overboard with the noise.

cletus

wkwork wrote:

Very nice Cletus, but a bit noisy - is that intentional?

No....

This picture is a scan of Fujichrome 1600, so there was a lot of grain in the image to begin with. To make maters worse, area that I used in the poster was pretty small in the original slide so the grain is greatly magnified.

wxwax

DavidTO wrote:

We make changes until they run out of time. So yes, a lot of tweaking, and a lot of egos to please. It's mostly fun.

Here's some of my work:

Troy Teaser

Troy Trailer

The Last Samurai Teaser

Excellent stuff. I can imagine the egos and constant second-gussing that goes on. There's a lot of money riding on their projects! Love your work. If you have time, check out a show on The Weather Channel on Sunday, September 26th, 8:30pm ET/PT. It's called Alaska Meltdown. Your work reminds me of the whale montage in Act I, in a way.

DavidTO

wxwax wrote:

Excellent stuff. I can imagine the egos and constant second-gussing that goes on. There's a lot of money riding on their projects! Love your work. If you have time, check out a show on The Weather Channel on Sunday, September 26th, 8:30pm ET/PT. It's called Alaska Meltdown. Your work reminds me of the whale montage in Act I, in a way.

Wish I could, but my TV is not connected to the outside world. No cable, no satellite. Just a DVD player.

wxwax

Ah well. I showed my talented editor your work, he loves it, commented on the nice pacing.

OK, hello the house.... change of subject. Anyone able to explain to me why Photoshop CS has so many fonts listed, but so few of them actually appear to be loaded? I get question marks on quite a few in the standard drop-down menu. There really seems to be an extremely limited amount of fonts in the standard issue CS.

cletus

wxwax wrote:

Ah well. I showed my talented editor your work, he loves it, commented on the nice pacing.

OK, hello the house.... change of subject. Anyone able to explain to me why Photoshop CS has so many fonts listed, but so few of them actually appear to be loaded? I get question marks on quite a few in the standard drop-down menu. There really seems to be an extremely limited amount of fonts in the standard issue CS.

Don't know that I've seen that problem. CS can use any of the fonts installed on your machine (standard Windows fonts, Post Script, Open Type, etc...) I don't have any idea what would be causing stuff to show up as question marks.

lynnma

wxwax wrote:

Ah well. I showed my talented editor your work, he loves it, commented on the nice pacing.

OK, hello the house.... change of subject. Anyone able to explain to me why Photoshop CS has so many fonts listed, but so few of them actually appear to be loaded? I get question marks on quite a few in the standard drop-down menu. There really seems to be an extremely limited amount of fonts in the standard issue CS.

Yeah.. I've noticed that Sid.. I LOVE fonts.. I'd be interested to hear some feed back on this..

lynnma

My Poster

GREAPER

Pretty cool, why does the red box around your title fade out in the dark area in the top right? Was the layer with the dark area put on after the title box? I think it would look better if it were all the same brightness (the red box I mean).


Maybe you could move that layer on top and see what it does?

lynnma

GREAPER wrote:

Pretty cool, why does the red box around your title fade out in the dark area in the top right? Was the layer with the dark area put on after the title box? I think it would look better if it were all the same brightness (the red box I mean).


Maybe you could move that layer on top and see what it does?

Hi Greap... I added "lighting effects" at the last minute.. I threw this together in about 20 minutes just for fun.. I don't even know if I've saved the layers.. I'll go look. I was just playing..:D