MAJOR PROJECT: Film Poster: Development/Final Design

As part of the submission, we are required to create a poster for the film which will need to be printed out. As a group we decided that we would base the poster off of the Quentin Tarantino ones that I had researched for the branding and title card. Our title card is very simple but bold, using the 3 primary colours - red, blue and yellow. We decided to use this colour palette as it is very fitting for the film and is reminiscent of both the graphics in the original Bonnie & Clyde film and Tarantino's films. The posters created for Tarantino's film have a particular design which is overly simplified and just uses simple shapes and outlines to highlight the imagery in them. The text is always bold and striking, contrasting with a bright coloured background. I previously analysed the poster shown below for one of his most successful and well known films - Kill Bill, which we took inspiration from for our poster design.

Before we shot the film, collectively we designed a mock up design using imagery from Atomic Blonde as Bobbie and Vince Vaughn as Clive, just to stand in as the characters in the time being. This mock up poster was used when it came to creating the real one as we used the same layout of imagery and text. We experimented with different posterising effects on Photoshop, as we wanted the imagery itself to look quite simple and not very detailed like in some of Tarantino's posters where they just use outlines and a two toned effect.

Poster - Version 1

Here is the first version of the poster. The 3 colours are evident with the yellow and blue for the font and a bold red background. We have added the bleeds of blue round the edges also like in the title card. As a temporary slogan for the film, Josh came up with and added the text 'They're middle aged, They're married, They need cash'. I suggested that we should change this to 'They need money' to continue the alliteration which we played around with before the final slogan. The image itself is very simple and doesn't tell the audience too much. 

Version 1 - Landscape

Here we experimented with the poster as landscape as opposed to portrait to see which looked best. However, I think for a film poster, it looked better as portrait which we will have for the final version. In terms of improvements, I voiced to Josh that I felt like the posterised effect was too extreme and the lack of detail took away from the design and from the expressions on their faces. He agreed and we continued to look for alternatives.

Poster - Final Version

Here is the final version of the poster which I will be sending off to have printed. We found an effect on photoshop which was more detailed than the effect we had previously used which I think looks much better and looks more like Sophie and Nik. I am happy with the final image we selected as I think that the unsure look on both of their faces should give a hint to the audience that they are not real criminals. With regards to the slogan, Simon suggested that we made the last sentence more unconventional. 'They need money' was too obvious for a couple in the real world and didn't offer any real clues to the events of the film. Therefore with Simon's suggestion, we altered it to 'They're about to break the law'. I think that this is much more fitting for the project and should throw the audience off and give them something more to think about. Overall, I am pleased with the development of the poster and think that the final design is exactly what we had in mind.