Mock Poster

So I haven't yet got my images sorted for my ancillary task of a film poster, so instead, I've found pictures similar to those I would take and mocked up a poster this way instead.

Practice on photoshop

Ideal Actor

My character, Freddie, is quite a laddish kind of boy. He stays up late and spends most nights out trying to pull. Therefore I ideally want an actor with a certain kind of swag or style about him, such as Jack O'Connell from the 3rd and 4th series' of the channel 4 drama, Skins.



For the part of Freddie's mum, Emily, I would like a kind of comedianic actor to play her, but also at the same time someone fiarly approachable, such as Tina Fey from Mean Girls, Date Night and the US comedy series, 30 Rock.

Different styles of magazines

I've been on the website for two popular film review publications, Empire magazine and BFI Sight and Sound. I've found that both publications have reviewed the British film Submarine.

Film of the month: Submarine

Unlike so many other British TV comedians who have made the transition to film directing, Richard Ayoade reveals a distinctive cinematic talent with his debut, the skewed teen romance Submarine. By Isabel Stevens


Too precocious. Not believable. That was The New Yorker’s assessment of Holden Caulfield 60 years ago when they rejected The Catcher in the Rye in story form. We know now that they overlooked two things: that the mundane details of pubescence often benefit from enhancement, and that self-involved teens in possession of a skewed but perceptive outlook and a singular vocabulary have a knack of talking their way into our hearts.
With Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, 15-year-old dictionary reader Oliver Tate becomes the first British adolescent to join the likes of Max Fischer, Harold Chasen, Ferris Bueller, Tracy Flick and Juno MacGuff in cinema’s register of larger-than-life, idiosyncratic teens – coming as he does from Swansea rather than Hollywood. But in some ways Oliver is a familiar subject for a coming-of-age tale: a briefcase-and-duffel-coat-sporting geek who realises his dreams of getting a girlfriend and losing his virginity – one of those awkward but erudite-behind-the-scenes types who would run a mile from the drug and alcohol-fuelled kids in Skins (and whom you suspect Caulfield would call a phony for the close attention he pays to the playground hierarchy).
Through Oliver, Ayoade channels a lot of the characteristics he himself displayed as Moss, the computer nerd he plays so delectably in Channel 4’s The IT Crowd. But like his kindred spirit Max Fischer (from Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, 1998), Oliver isn’t a wallflower but a first-class schemer with ambitions to single-handedly save his parents’ marriage, rescuing his mum Jill (Sally Hawkins) from the clutches of her ex-flame, spiritual guru Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine), and his dad, marine biologist Lloyd (Noah Taylor), from depression. He’s also trying to get his relationship with Jordana (Yasmin Paige) back on track after her mother develops an untimely brain tumour that keeps getting in the way of their love life. As you might have guessed, Submarine – like Rushmore – is very funny largely because of its protagonist’s staggering capacity for self-delusion.
Like the eccentric, hyperactive teenage mind into which Submarine torpedoes us, Ayoade’s film – his feature debut – barely rests, darting between Oliver’s everyday routine and his memories, fantasies, fears, oddball observations and quasi-philosophical musings. There may be limits to how much precocity an audience will tolerate, but Ayoade’s highly subjective approach makes us care more for the pompous Oliver than we might otherwise.

Cliché dictates that, in typical teen film fare, the object of a geek’s affection should be either another female of the species or else the polar opposite, an unattainable goddess. Here, however, the girl is an emotion-hating pyromaniac with a yen for blackmail, herself only marginally more popular than the boy; in one great scene under a railway bridge, Jordana stands with a cigarette in her hand and a smirk on her lips, ordering Oliver to his knees.
It’s not unusual for British TV comedians to graduate to directing feature films, but Submarine is very much a fully fledged feature rather than just an extended comedy sketch show; it’s also an adaptation that works even better on screen than the source novel did on page. Though Ayoade preserves Oliver’s interior monologue from Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 book, he capitalises on cinema’s objective faculties to undermine Oliver’s fantastical views on his new relationship – focusing, for instance, on Jordana’s scrunched-up face as Oliver attempts a sloppy post-coital kiss.
Throughout, the deadpan approach to acting rules – especially for the excellent Craig Roberts, whose facial muscles are hardly flexed at all, except for the slight smile Oliver wears after he loses his virginity. This isn’t, however, as distancing an effect as it might be; whether Oliver is horrified by the thought of Graham and his mum together or simply trying to trip his parents up with hypothetical questions, the emphasis stays on his big, brown puppy-dog eyes. Yet ultimately it’s less Oliver’s charm that wins us over than that of the film itself. Oliver may start off as Jordana’s plaything, but soon young love is being celebrated with fireworks and sunsets shot in such coy soft focus they feel like memories, each one accompanied by one of Alex Turner’s wispy, delicate tunes. All of which could, of course, come across as rather corny, but Swansea’s industrial backdrop (combined with Jordana’s hatred of anything romantic) keeps the sentiment at bay.
Still, a heady nostalgia pervades this tale of bygone teenage years. Ayoade transports the noughties Oliver of Dunthorne’s novel back to a time when teenagers had to pass notes in class, and communication was more direct and painful (without Facebook or email, Oliver has to resort to scrawling on his hand the reasons why Jordana should sleep with him). Indeed, with all the typewriters, Polaroids, super-8 footage and other near-obsolete technologies on display, Submarine feels like an ode to old analogue ways. Crocodile Dundee is in the cinemas, we’re told, but the only other obvious period details are Graham Purvis’s over-gelled mullet and his New Age self-promotional videos. Purvis’s “mystic bullshit” light-show may terrify Oliver, but Ayoade revels in it, indulging the soft spot for gloriously cheesy 1980s effects he’s shown in past directorial work (music videos for the likes of Vampire Weekend and Super Furry Animals, as well as the TV spoof Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place).

Similarities between the titular horror author Garth Marenghi and Submarine’s Graham reveal Ayoade’s other passion: lampooning smarmy, self-satisfied twits. With Oliver he strikes a balance: he’s not a teenage Alan Partridge, more a younger version of High Fidelity’s list-loving Rob or Peep Show anorak Mark. But with Graham there’s no restraint. Paddy Considine has a lot of fun with the caricature (and gets some killer lines), but it’s noticeable that Ayoade’s adults aren’t quite as well developed as his teenagers. Sally Hawkins manages admirably to bring a sense of reality to her portrayal of Oliver’s uptight mother, but – apart from some eloquent musing on depression by Oliver – Noah Taylor’s sad face and droopy eyes are the only real clue to how father Lloyd is feeling. (In Rushmore’s Herman Blume, Anderson created a far more convincing world-weary parent.) Despite this, Submarine has some lovely observations on adulthood – as any film about teenagers should. “When you grow up, your heart dies,” is the aphorism voiced by the articulate loner in The Breakfast Club (1985). But for Jordana and Oliver, the opposite is true: growing up is when you go gooey in the middle and no longer want to burn someone’s leg hair.
With its off-kilter stance, split-screen antics and musical interludes, Submarine feels very indebted to the Wes Anderson template of filmmaking, though Ayoade does temper his wackiness with the real particulars of teenage life (classroom banter, Jordana’s eczema). When we see Oliver desolate over the loss of his girlfriend, his kindred spirit isn’t so much Max Fischer as the forlorn, clueless Gregory in Gregory’s Girl (1981). But Ayoade can be just as sly and self-conscious as Anderson when he wants to be. Submarine is littered with references to the nouvelle vague (from beaches and bicycles to the Ma nuit chez Maud poster on Oliver’s bedroom wall), and takes full advantage of cinema’s repertoire of jump cuts, zooms and freeze frames. But Ayoade’s not just being playful for the sake of it. When Jordana and Oliver first lock lips, Oliver is so happy he keeps his eyes open, and the camera too is so excited it jumps about all over the place; for their second kiss, Ayoade does a slow 360-degree turn, savouring the moment.
For in the end, like the most successful forays into adolescent existence, Submarine doesn’t quite feel like it’s made by a grown up.

Above was the review from BFI Sight and Sound, it has gone into intense detail on the style and the background of the film and the director. It has also really evaluated the film and its meanings and conventions. This is a review that is aimed towards film buff's who are truly interested in the film making process.

Below is the review from Empire magazine.

Submarine

Plot
Oliver Tate (Roberts) is besotted with Jordana (Paige), a feisty girl in his class. Yet, as he embarks on his first relationship, he also frets over that of his parents (Hawkins and Taylor), a situation exacerbated by one of his mum's exes (Considine) moving in down the road.

Review
Before Submarine, Richard Ayoade’s steps towards the big screen were tentative tiptoes: little cameos in the little-seen likes of Festival and Bunny And The Bull. It doesn’t help that, despite winning over many with his man-robot antics in The IT Crowd as über-nerd Moss, playing alongside Chris O’Dowd’s mildly more worldly Roy, acting is hardly his forte. Indeed, it is behind the camera that Ayoade has finally found his cinematic feet. And, boy, can he dance.

Submarine is, simply, a joy. A joy jostled by the comedy of discomfort, sure, but like early Wes Anderson (a comparison that no doubt makes Ayoade squirm, but his film bears it well), its quirkier and darker tendencies are leavened by the warmth and likability of his characters; Ayoade even manages to make you sympathise with Paddy Considine’s mullet-crested bullshit guru — a man so self-absorbingly ignorant he can tell a room of people that “light is the most important gift we have from the universe” and believe it.

Besides flagging up his love for the medium through savvy visual references and some well-played fourth wall-breaking (listen out for the voiceover gag about crane shots and zooms), Ayoade has also cast his debut perfectly. And we’re not just talking about the adults, including two of the UK’s best actors (Considine and Sally Hawkins) and one of Australia’s most underrated (Noah Taylor). Craig Roberts (an oddly appealing facial blend of James McAvoy and Martin Freeman) and Yasmin Paige (whose Jordana is burly yet vulnerable) make a wonderful couple, his hesitant introversion balanced by her fiery extroversion. Oliver spends most of the film hanging in doorways, while Jordana is the kind of girl who prefers to slam doors.

Both are considerably assisted by Ayoade’s humdinger of a script (adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s novel). Their virginity-losing date, for example, begins with Jordana snapping, “Thanks for living up a fucking hill”, and concludes with her warning, “Don’t get cocky.” Meanwhile, Oliver talks of brief hat phases and routine searches of his parents’ bedroom, while at one point poignantly reflecting, with truly adolescent angstiness, that “we’re all travelling under the radar and there’s nothing we can do about it”. Well, one thing is for certain: Ayoade’s time under the radar is well and truly over.

Verdict
A perfect blend of cool, quirky comedy and warm-hearted drama, crafted with such poise that it should see the transcendence of Ayoade from TV nerd-comic to true big-screen talent.

This review is exceedingly different to that of the one in BFI. This is a much smaller review, a kind of bite-sized chunk of information which makes it easily readable for everyone, not just hardcore film fanatics.

Successful poster campaigns

The film industry is a huge revenue based business, when you look at the figures earned recently from films such as 'Avatar' you've got to realise that there's a lot riding on these movies, therefore they need a successful marketing campaign.


A successful poster campaign for its time I feel was Danny Boyle's Trainspotting by Irving Welsh. I've looked into an interview involving the designers of the poster campaign to see their thoughts behind its success.



CR: The posters for Trainspotting were so unusual when they came out especially the campaign around the characters with one poster introducing each one (I realise there were larger posters with all of them on too). What was your inspiration for this? How did the campaign come about?

Rob O’Connor: Irving Welsh's novel, from which the movie had been adapted, was written from the multiple points of view and in the voices of each of the main characters, and we felt it was important to stress the individuality of those personalities. Only Ewan MacGregor and Robert Carlyle were reasonably well known at this time, so it was quite unusual to take this approach. The characters in the story themselves almost seemed more important than the actors playing the roles.


Mark Blamire: I can remember a few years earlier seeing the individual character posters for the film Reservoir Dogs, designed by Mia Matson at Creative Partnership. It was a really impactful poster campaign at the time. I kind of used this as my challenge to do something which had this power to capture your attention. The Mr Orange poster, by the way, isn’t the reason why we chose orange as the main colour, it's just a happy conicidence.

We had been initially given a still by the film distributors, PolyGram, from the film Backbeat, as a kind of visual guide for creating the Trainspotting poster campaign. But we hated the image and wanted to come up with something better. The film company had approved the idea of the individual shots for a character-based teaser campaign but the main image for the final poster was to be a group shot of the actors in a tight huddle. It wasn’t until we tried to get the actors into the group shots that the friction started. It was at this point that we realised that whilst the characters from the story were in a gang, they were by no means friends who could implicitly trust each other or want to be seen in a tight huddle-style group photo all hugging and being chummy in the manner that was initially planned.


The idea didn’t seem to work, so we took the actors feedback on board and still tried to do the group shot, but got them to shout or fight with each other so they were still in a combined group photo, but it was more aggressive and dangerous. It worked a lot better but it still wasn’t perfect.

 
It was when we moved on to photograph the individual images for the teaser character posters that it all started to really work. The actors on their own in front of the camera really brought the ideas to life. For example, watching Robert Carlyle transmogrify into his Begbie character when the camera started clicking away was quite a thing to behold. When we got back to the studio and sat down with the photoshoot to try to turn it into posters we realised the group shot approach no longer worked.


We were working on the main poster – and struggling – and also the individual character posters, which came together almost instantly, and seemed to be the only solution worthy of presenting to the client. We had also taken a literary device from the Trainspotting book by Irvine Welsh to introduce the numbering system [in the book it originally starts at number 63 which was confusing for the poster so it got changed to #1 though to #5].

RO’C: That’s right, the numbering used throughout the campaign was a nod to the recurring device used by Welsh in the Trainspotting book – Junk Dilemma #63 – and so on.




MB: It was at this stage that we threw away the idea of the group shot and tried to make a combined version of the individual shots to make the main poster using a grid and boxes to contain each character. We introduced the device of a train station departure board (actually inspired by a British airport’s brand identity guidelines from the 70's which used a yellowy orange colour for its cover) and added the caption 'this film is expected to arrive 02:96 –  to continue the theme of the departure board. Also on the early visuals we had used the skull and crossbones dangerous chemical warnings symbol.



But we swapped the yellow for a brighter orange background. This move also paid homage to the original book cover. The film company didn’t like the device and we argued that it needed to be kept, as it conveyed an element of danger in the posters – an argument we eventually lost.




After reading this interview, it has made it pretty apparent that a film poster isn't easy to put together. It needs a lot of thought put into it so it fits in with the idea of the film.

Common conventions of the film poster

The film industry is a huge revenue based business, when you look at the figures earned recently from films such as 'Avatar' you've got to realise that there's a lot riding on these movies, therefore they need a successful marketing campaign.

After doing some research, I have found out several key elements to a good movie poster campaign.

1. It needs to stand out

The poster company needs to grab the audience's attention straight away through their use of posters. This doesn't necessarily have to be through flashy images, a good method of grabbing the audience's attention is by using some of the film's main characters, this doesn't only introduce the audience to the characters, but can give hints to the story's plot line.




The posters for the film 'The Hangover' have captured the stand out method well. None are particularly beautiful, nor are they real iconic designs, but they’re very effective at getting people to look.
The flashy gradient background, head-and-shoulders character pictures (which can improve response rate,) and bright lighting make it difficult not to stare at one of these posters.


2. Showing without telling

The most effective movie posters are iconic, presenting the themes in the film without resorting to flat out saying what it’s about.
They use imagery, whether a close-up of a character or item that’s a major plot point, or a simple graphic, to establish the film’s plot. Combined with an eye-grabbing design, this can be an incredibly effective way to gain attention and create interest at once.

3. Create an incentive to see the film

When using icons and more abstract imagery doesn’t work with your film – say, for example, it’s a serious drama or a thriller that can’t be explained with iconography – using an image that provides viewers with an idea of the story is a great idea.
Many of the best modern film posters use pictures that put the viewer in the middle of a scene from the film, creating tension and a major incentive.
The incentive is that in order to resolve the situation, the person looking at the poster needs to see the film and find out what happens.

4. Create desire amongst fans and non-fans

With film studios cranking out comic book adaptations at a rapid pace, it’s the ‘true fans’ that end up last in the marketing line.
Studios can rely on them to see their new releases regardless of its review coverage or promotional materials, since chances are fairly strong they’re already aware of it. Great film posters, particularly those for adaptations, use this dual appeal to enhance their advertising.



5. A look that's consitent with the film

 Some of the most memorable film posters out there have used bold, unique artistic styles to their advantage.
What separates these posters from their ineffective art-for-art’s-sake rivals is that they’re consistent with style, in both the movie’s promotional materials and throughout the film itself.



This 'Watchmen' poster uses a consistent look successfully. Since it uses an instantly recognizable comic book style, it grabs the attention of fans of the book. It’s accurate too, using the same type of stylized imagery as the film itself. This consistency means that it isn’t just a great theater-based marketing tool, but a recognizable image for DVD and other releases.

6. A look that suits other formats

Here’s the danger in getting too ‘arty’ and delicate with your film poster: it’s eventually, after release and theater shows, going to be shrunk to a fraction of its original size for the DVD release.
While a growing number of films now use different designs for their DVD cover than their in-theater promo posters, most of the classics and high-budget blockbusters still use the same poster for both.




This means that your imagery, your titles, and your major points of interest need to be just as visible on a small DVD case as they are on a giant movie poster.
The 'Jurassic Park' poster above really gets this feature, using imagery that’s just as visible and clear when it’s small as when its gargantuan. For your poster to work for the long-term, it needs to have scalable, clear, and lasting design appeal.

7. Recognisability, if there's a sequel, make it obvious

From time to time, the entire box office seems to be made up of sequels.
There’s a good reason for it too – some of the most financially dependable films are sequels to successful franchises.
From films that dominated both the commercial world and the awards scene to purely commercial releases, few films can guarantee studios income like a good sequel.
That’s why sequel posters tend to be highly related to the first release, generally with a giant title in the top third of the canvas and instantly recognizable imagery throughout it.

Film posters in popular culture

Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature photographs of the main actors. Prior to the 1990s, illustrations instead of photos were far more common. The text on movie posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tag line, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date, etc.
Movie posters are displayed inside and on the outside of movie theaters, and elsewhere on the street or in shops. The same images appear in the film exhibitor's pressbook and may also be used on websites, DVD packaging, flyers, advertisements in newspapers and magazines.
    
Movie posters have been used since the earliest public exhibitions of film. They began as outside placards listing the programme of (short) films to be shown inside the hall or movie theater. By the early 1900s, they began to feature illustrations of a scene from each individual film or an array of overlaid images from several scenes. Other movie posters have used artistic interpretations of a scene or even the theme of the film, represented in a wide variety of artistic styles.

The collecting of movie memorabilia began with such things as scrap-books, autographs, photographs, and industry magazines, but quickly expanded in the post-World War II era. Collectors began seeking out original advertising material, and the classic "one sheet" movie poster became the pinnacle object to own for any given film. Other material, such as lobby cards, other-sized posters, international posters, personality posters, and glass slides also began to become highly sought after. Today, the field of movie memorabilia collecting has grown into an internationally recognised community of increasingly serious and financially secure collectors, making it one of the fastest areas of speculation for investment