Final Project Design Element - Poster Designs (Final)

These are the final designs for my posters which make up the design task. They are likely the final desgins but may be tweaked a little if new photos are taken etc. but I am happy with these designs overall. They convey the side of the vampire film I want to portray with the much darker and violent style compared to the modern day vampire films like "Twilight" which use more desatured blues and golds to connote it more teen orientated and romance focused. Mine has gone back to the original horror colour scheme of black, red and white immediatly giving it the sense it is certainly not like modern vampires in terms of chosen genre by focused more to the horror side like it originated, yet still modern so it doesn't completely alienate itself from today's audience with setting and certain elements of it being based on more modern vampire lores so people can still follow and understand the project. It could be described as an alternate to "Twilight" as this focuses on the horror and supernatural elements rather then the romance so if people didn't like that, they could see this and watch something more back in line with the original vampire films.

When you look at the posters, they are quite heavly based of the "Blade" one in my research with the colour scheme, the central actor in the middle of the single posters and the typography being key in helping connote the style and genre of the film. With mine, it has hints at gothic elements and looks more scratchy and jagged which gives it a much more horror style feel as if the text has been slashed by claws, each helping connoting the monstrous nature of the characters. Mainly as it looks like the text is wasting away with its broken and drained appearance from the effect that has been put in it, contrasting the nature of the characters as well as since they are vampires, they never age or die while everything else around them keeps aging and wasting away, just like the text used which connotes just how unnatural they are and helps enforce that while they look human there are actually monsters.

The tagline shares the same typography for the same reasons and to fit in with the  overall scheme and aim of the poster (to connote it as a vampire film going back to its horror roots) but the actual wording helps explain and shed a little light on to the character in the poster. For example, in Matt's his says "Sometimes forever is too long...". This gives us the immediate impression that he is sick of the immortality he possesses, finding eternity "too long" like he realises what he has become and just wants this curse he has to end after being tempted by the other character, Gabriel. As the beginning part of the tagline shows about how if you become a vampire you get the gift of living forever but the contrast between the two characters tries to show it can be a gift or a curse under different circumstances like in Gabriel's, we see how his says "Sometimes forever is not enough" instantly connoting how he embraces the gift he has and to him, it's not enough to enjoy his immortality.

Final Project - Reflection so far...

Here are all my current designs for my print based products, the film poster and magazine cover. For my particular project, I have done 3 film posters instead of one as my film trailer revolves around two characters and both are equally important so rather then create only one poster where it detracts the attention from one, I created two separate ones with one for either character and one with both in it together. It allows for the personality of the characters to be expressed briefly with the tagline giving a clue to their role in the trailer like in Matt's, this tagline is "Sometimes forever is too long..." which immediately gives the audience the impression that he does not want to be a vampire and is more the protagonist role within the trailer even though he is a monster so albeit the more anti-hero role like in "Blade". From the look of them, they are heavily based off the  "Blade" film poster with the character being almost central in the poster and the faded image in the background which is seen better in the double poster. The colour scheme is also similar with the main use of reds and blacks for the text, backgrounds etc as I want to show how the film will be of a similar tone to the"Blade" films, more darker, violent and grown up compared to recent vampire films like "Twilight" which uses more desaturated blues, blacks and golds as that is more teenage romance then the horror action of "Blade".

The magazine cover on the other hand tries to capture the more retro feel of horror styled media to connote it as a horror film orientated magazine by using the black, white and red colour scheme which is the common colour scheme connected to most horror based media (Blade, 30 Days of Night etc.) so I tried to include that into the magazine so it's easily identifiable with the audience to what genre the magazine focuses on. The Dracula poster in my research was my biggest source of inspiration as I really wanted to do something of a similar style with the more Gothic typography as it would make my magazine more unique then other current magazines which tend to be more general like Empire etc. so that fans of the genre can easily find a magazine that just caters for that type of film rather then pick Empire and have to trawl through it just to find the one article on it while this would focus entirely on it. It still needs tweaking though in terms of the colour scheme as, while the red, black and white are common horror style colours, after discussing with peers it feels like something is missing so we experimented with adding more colour and effects to try and get the true magazine feel as none of the design parts are perfect, all need tweaks to ensure they are the best they can be. I intend to retake some more photo's, one that are suited to the posters and magazine as the current ones were more suited for my original idea so some new ones would be a good way to improve my project as I have also learned some new ways to edit photos on Photoshop to make it look more like if it was taken for that particular design element. (Examples will be posted soon when files are converted to jpegs)

In terms of my film trailer, I am disappointed with its progress. Fair enough it was plagued by people cancelling on me when I intended to film but wish I had some more footage or changed my project earlier to lessen the hit I have took on the filming schedule. Currently I have about one full scene, the spine part which holds it together (may need to re-shoot it due to a few issues) and some old footage which can be used for the later part of the trailer, the action part where many scenes are spliced together. Apart from this, I don't have much other footage but all my scenes storyboarded so I know what needs to be shot and how it will be shot so at least its planned out so the filming can be done effectively and efficiently.