Final Film Poster (Ancillary Task)

After minor changes, here is our final, finished film poster and thus concludes our ancillary task. The initial poster received very high levels of praise and was very much liked. However, virtually everybody had quarrels with or disagreed with the stars or the review quote. We knew it would have been a risk! We initially made the stars smaller, then removed them, pleasing some critics. I eventually decided I didn't wish to have any review on the poster and many agreed, I do believe one group member decided to keep part of this review as he was happy with how it was.

Rough Film Review (Ancillary Task)

This is our first shot at a film review. We stuck to our plans to replicate one double spread review and implement features from another and it went pretty well. This was done in Photoshop as we were much more fluent with it, however I created the run around in Quark Xpress as opposed to using Photoshop to do everything as I felt a change in software would be good for my work. We did not however type up words from a review yet as we wished to have feedback first

Rough Film Poster (Ancillary Task)

After holding a photo shoot with our main actors, we imported them onto photoshop on the Mac and began work on the poster. We used this picture as it shows the two original perspectives of the characters; Brian's feelings of misfortune and Karen's glee to finding a potential lover. We decided to keep the generic text at the bottom of film posters, however with our names and even our own logo (see right of COMING SOON) We kept the headings in a simple font and added a catchy tag line we collectively came up with. Taking a risk, we decided to put on a review from a potential pre-screen and finished it off with fade towards the bottom.

Using Photoshop

We used Photoshop in order to create and authentic, realistic film poster. We began by first of all taking pictures of our actors, deciding which one to use then import it onto the Mac. After creating a new layer in Photoshop we cut out the edges of the actors and used the soft edges tool in order to make it not look as if they had been cut out of paper. We decided that leaving the background predominantly white was a good idea, showing the innocent mystery of the plot with black fading into the bottom (using a fade) to make all the information at the bottom more clear as well as adding to the idea this is not a love tale, bad things do happen in this film. Our titles were put on top and a heart was used as a full stop, complimenting the romance part of the genre and bringing more attention to the word love, as its meaning is questioned in the film as Karen clearly believes love is found by forcing men to save her. after inserting further text we sourced from another poster we researched we were done. The only added touch was to create our own logo, drawing in a cube and placing three J's on it. They were then warped in order for them to look as if they were part of each of the three face of the cube on display.

The video beneath shows how a person i found on Youtube made his very own poster and used this as an example'



We also used this software to make our review. It was done in a very similar way but more care was take with the alignment to minimise the work we would have to do in QuarkXpress.

Using QuarkXpress

I used QuarkXpress simply to put a run around on text and line text up perfectly within my film review. After removing the lorem ipsum from my review, I imported it directly into Quark. I then inserted the text with a run around where I needed it. I only did not use Quark entirley as Photoshop was simply an easier option for the whole group to interact with.

Small Introduction to Film Reviews

Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases. The plot summary and description of a film that makes up the majority of any film review can have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. Poor reviews can doom a film to obscurity and financial loss.

We were toldto make a film review as part of our ancillary task and below are some examples we found which are both from leading film review magazine, Empire;

This review, clearly a single page review shows some content and pictures as would expected to be seen in most reviews. However what i really liked about this was t

he profiles at the side with the circular pictures. I found this a great touch and was set on having this in our very own review. I didn't however like the idea of the single page review, it was too common amongst my peers and we wanted to be different, not to mention we quickly realised all the bigger blockbusters are featured on a double page. With all this in mind, we decided to look for a double spread.

This was what we found and thought it would be a perfect example to base our own on. We decided to use this almost like a stencil but implement the profiles off the first one that we liked.

Small Introduction to Film Posters

A film poster is a poster used to advertise a film. 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 film 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.
Film 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 (and historically VHS) packaging, flyers, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, etc.