Film Poster - The Exchange

Film poster evaluation;

For this project, I had to design my own film poster for my group’s film. The film title is The Exchange, which suggests that something dodgy will be exchanged during the film, so therefore it makes the film dark & spooky, which is why the colours I chose are black and red.

 I decided to have a close up of Shaun’s face on the poster because he’s the main character. He is pulling a serious face which shows that the film probably isn’t suitable for children, and Film Noir films aren’t usually suitable for children.

 The other character, Josh, is also visible on the poster; however, his image isn’t a close up like Shaun’s. His image is much smaller and has a big dark shadow covering a bit of his right side which makes him very mysterious.

 In the middle of the poster the title can be seen. It is written in a big bold font, and is red with little shiny white strokes on the letters. This stands out from the images of Shaun and Josh and will grab the audience’s attention. Underneath the title I added a tagline “Who’s the lurking in the shadows?” I think that this suitable and is punchy. I altered the shape of the tagline so it’s leaning to the side, I done this because it turns it into a shape of a shadow because shadows are slanted.

 At the bottom of the poster I added a release date, and I also made it quite punchy “Watch your back on October 15^th” the “Watch your back” bit, I think, ties in really well with the film.

 I think that the poster suits its audience – 15+ males & females, because of its dark unfriendly colours. Also, the seriousness on Shaun’s face suggests that the film is aimed at teenagers and adults, not children. The colours indicate that the film could be violent, in some way, and that nothing good happens in the film.

 I decided that the film would be distributed by DreamWorks and 20^th Century Fox, because they are very big companies in the film industry, and people will know that the film means business. I also added a quote from The Sun critics “One of the best movies this year” because I thought that it would grab more people’s attention and will make them want to see the film when it’s released.

 I also made Shaun and Josh’s images black and white to make the film tie in more with the Film Noir genre. I think that the black and white gives the poster a negative effect and that does blend in with the film because overall the film is negative; Violence. The effect also tells the audience what age group the film is aimed at, because children films are always very colourful.

When making the poster, I used Photoshop. I used different layers, and different tools to make the poster.

I did intend to use the magic wand tool to get rid of the background on the images of Shaun and Josh but had problems with it, so I ended up using the eraser tool. I then copied and pasted the images onto a black background, then used the soften tool which blended the edges to make the images have a feathered outline.

 For the writing, I added shadows and different glows to them to make them stand out, which I think, worked.

 I resized Josh’s image to make him smaller. I did this by changing the scale. I cropped Shaun’s face so it was big and clear, I think it came out very clear due to the high resolution of the photograph. I also changed the contrast on both images to give them a shadowy effect.

 I decided that I wanted my poster be in landscape format because I knew that I would have been able to fit more things onto the poster, than on a portrait format, however, when I designed a second poster, I made it on a portrait format, and I wasn’t able to add many things to it.

 On the second poster I added a photo of Shaun to the side. The image I chose was a medium shot of him, so he is visible from his head to his waist. The background colour I chose was a gradient that blended from black to white, and at the top of the poster I added “Coming soon”. I turned the title round so it was vertical and placed it to the side of the poster, opposite Shaun. This poster is very plain compared to my other poster.

 Out of the two posters I designed, I prefer the first one that I made because it’s very “in your face” and has the ability to stand out, whereas the second poster doesn’t.

If I could change anything, I wouldn’t have as much text on the first poster because I think that the poster is too busy, however, I much prefer the first one compared to the second one.