Poster - Planning, Drafts & Production

Hand Drawn Draft Posters 

When the task was set we started planning what are poster was going to be like. we went step by step so that it would be easier for us to make out which items go where on the poster but we had time to discuss our ideas and we came up with a simple layout of what our poster could look like.

When we were deciding for what type of poster we were going to have we immediately knew that we had to add the doll "Corky" from the movie in it because it is one of the key attractions being the main element in the film.  so we started our first draft of the poster which is visible below and immediately knew what had to be done. We realised that the title itself was too big and also gives away a lot to the audience what the film is about. another issue which we saw problematic was the tagline being too far stretched in the poster to the point where, as seen in this rough sketch, is not even fully visible as it ends incomplete so we knew this was a factor we had to work on.

The second time we even added more aspects which would boost viewers discretion of our film. we gave ourselves a rough idea what was going to be included in the poster which included the critical acclaim, the billing block, age certificate, logo of production company and also release date. but we, as a group, realised that this poster was far from finished as we needed to work on changing the name of the title and thinking of a good position to add the tagline. another important aspect which we realised was not going to work was positioning image. even though the horror cliché of being stalked was pretty good we had to think of space for the important aspects of the poster

Poster Hand Drawn Draft 1

We realised that everything in our old draft had to change if this was going to work as there would have been too much text on the screen for the viewers to actually make out and see which one is most important and we needed to also give them the chance to view the image to even guess themselves what the genre of the film  is.

Poster Draft 1

After realising that many adjustments had to be made from the hand drawn posters and even the title itself, we came up with a new title which was the actual name of the doll and also changed which is and now is the name of the doll.  We knew having a black background in our poster would prove effective in viewing and also when linking to genre conventions. We also added two of the main actors in the story, the tagline of the film, the release date of the film, a critical acclaim and a billing board. All were done to make the audience thrilled at what they see. We decided to have the release date during Halloween as during this time of the year people are looking to get scared and would want to see the hot new horror film in cinemas and this leads to the chance that our film will create great hype due to this. We also added critical acclaim as we knew this is what also gains audiences attention as once audiences see a review from a well known reviewer and see that it is positive they will be certain that the film will be good. We also thought that having a red big font would be effective in catching the viewers eyes as it stands out  from the dark background. The tagline on the poster makes audience know what type of genre the film is as when they see the word "Nightmare" they will come to the idea that it is a horror film. Last aspect of the poster is the billing board which included all the people who helped work on the film and provided all the essentials. As we showed our teacher our first draft he said it worked well as a first draft but some improvements would to be made which included  the tagline, the font of the review, and the billing board. We also needed to

include age certificate and logo.

 Poster Draft 2

After showing our teacher the first cut of our poster draft he found it very good as a first draft but noticed how key aspects were missing and what could be added to make the poster more effective. in this poster we were missing the age certificate of the film and the logo of our production company. we realised, even though the poster looked good from a visual point of view, it still needed improvements. one we noticed was the tagline which was seen to be too far stretched across the poster and also how its text size was smaller than the other titles on the poster. Our teacher told us how the audience would only draw their attention to "Coming this Halloween" rather than the tagline so we knew that this was going to hinder our progression so that had to change. Another aspect we changed  was the size and font of the critical acclaim as this would depict this point different from the other red coloured text which is visible in the poster. We then added the age certificate and made it bigger in the bottom right corner and also added the logo of our production company in the bottom left corner to make audiences aware of who made it. But there were major changes that need to be added to this poster which involve the doll being ,ore bright which we did attempt and also need to take a new picture of the doll as our teacher suggested to lose the one shoe of doll.

Audience Feedback - Drafts

The audience feedback we received were critical but constructive to allow us to improve, we had problems with the font as some people found it clashed with the red shoe in the background. The title was another issue as it was criticised for being too big and conflicting with Corky's "head" as the image is the USP so it should be presented clearly. Another feature which was critical was that there was no "critical acclaim" added onto the poster and this is an important feature for many theatrical posters as it sells the film.



  

  

Hand Drawn Teaser Poster Draft 1

We thought it would be a good idea to make a teaser poster for our filming hiding all elements of what the evil is. This works well as a teaser as it does not reveal to the audience any of the characters in the film other than one of them which is very blurred so it will be hard for the audience to tell anyways. we first thought of this to be a character poster but our teacher thought it would work better as a teaser trailer which we agreed with after we saw the hidden elements it carries. The only two elements that this film requires is the title and the release date. We will make sure to add the logo and the age certificate in the second draft of this poster.

Final teaser poster

Since the main poster changed over the week we realised that the teaser poster was going to change as well. this Included the text font and colour of the title of the film and the release date. This shows synergy between the character posters, the main poster and this poster through the title.

Character Poster Hand Drawn Drafts 1

 We created these character posters together, we decided to use a knife as a prop in the poster because its a typical convention of horror genres. Also we wanted to portray a dark hallway with the each individual character at the end of the hall with a small light on the knife with the reflection of the doll to show how vulnerable the characters are and that there are the targets of Corky. The reflection will show the expression on Corky's face to show his murderous intent, with the characters in the back doing various activities associated with their character. In the end since we used a shallow focus on the images taken, we decided to use these supposed to be character posters into a teaser poster because the character in the background was too blurry. Also we thought that a picture that portrays each characters face along with a black/white background will be much better, so we decided to use that instead of progressing with these drafts.

Character Poster Hand Drawn Draft 2

We also got a little bit more creative and thought it would be a really good idea to also make character posters along with our main and teaser poster.  Using the same method we did for the other posters started with a simple drawing then went on Photoshop and started editing the pictures we took for the poster to make it look more professional. The character posters also have links to the genre conventions of each character either has a black background showing evil, a White background showing innocence, and a background which is half black and white to show their sense of innocence yet still twisted by evil.

 Draft 1 Character Poster Andre George

 This character poster is a photo version of the hand drawn draft, this clearly shows the characters facial expression with him staring into his hands along with the line "Destiny no longer in his hands" to connote that something bad is going to happen in this film. Also we put the actors name in the top as a USP to attract audiences from the actors previous film associations.

 Draft 1 Character Poster Martin Elesheku

Draft character poster Adam Zaatri

Official Poster Draft 1

After receiving the feedback from our first draft we decided to make changes to the official poster this included taking a different picture of Corky from a close up angle with one side of his face covered in darkness while the other is shone with light. The other features from the other draft poster we made still consist in this poster which includes the critical acclaim, Billing Block, Age certificate, Title, tagline and release date.

Official Poster Draft 2

In the second draft of our official poster the only thing that mainly changed was the colour hint in the poster and the positioning of some text. This included the names of the actors in the film and where the critical acclaim would be placed. But we showed this to our teacher and it still didn't pull off as a professional poster at all. So from this we knew that many things needed to be added and changed if this was going to work. We also separated the image from the text below so that Cork's face would be more visible for the audience.

Official Poster Final Draft

 This is what we came up with as our final draft for our poster. What we included was more critical acclaim with star ratings to make it look more professional. We also changed the colour font of the critical acclaim to orange to match Corky's hair and also to be linked with the theme of pumpkins for Halloween. This is also seen in our release date as there is a jack o lantern head in the spot where the O would be which makes audiences aware of its theme just by looking at it. The size of the tagline is also much more bolder and the release date size is far bigger than it was before which makes it more easier to read. The billing block text was also changed to look more the ones on professional posters. With these changes our teacher was please with what he has seen and our group  was satisfied that it look like a professional British film poster.

 

The poster below shows the corrections we had to do following the feedback we received from our teacher who thought our poster was really good. It also received positive reviews from our fellow classmates. This is final official poster for our film. 

Final Feedback - Pros

1) Good use of stars and quotes

2) Editing is good

3) The image and font reveals the genre

4) The effects is really good

5) The poster reveals the genre through image, font, colour and release date

6) Good use of production company
7) Text and image is positioned well