Flatplans

After doing the storyboard, I had a good idea of what I would like to do for the film poster. I really liked the opening sequence, where we see a close up of the characters face looking up towards the camera. Not only does this directly link to the trailer, but it also seems imposing like you're looking down on him or as though he is looking up distressed. The angle links to "Rise" literally and makes him look sort of like he is in pain mentally, which I wanted. It's bold and close up so that the audience can't look anywhere else. I thought this, with the film title in a large and bold font would look really good, especially if I kept to the grey scale palette. The greyscale colour scheme reflects the 1960's and also suggests a lack of colour; much like the emotional struggle for the main character and I also think it will add a gritty edge. The only problem was whether or not to have the eyes open or closed on it. To solve this problem, I drew out the poster plan with the eyes open and attached a small cut-out of paper with the eyes closed on, which I could stick on top to compare outcomes to see which one I preferred. However, due to an indecisive nature I decided that it was probably best to gain answer from my target audience, not only because they could decide for me, but also because it is pointless picking something my audience will not like as I am making my product for them. Below are the two alternate versions:

I also had a problem to overcome with the credits at the bottom, as I hadn't actually closely identified who or what was credited here. Here are some sections of other film posters that I used to help me when identifying the content.

From looking at examples of film poster credits, I learned that the main components are production companies, which have their logos repeated underneath, actors/actresses, screenplay writer, producer, soundtrack producer, costume designer, special effects designer, director, release date and possibly a website for the film. I tried to include these elements in my plan, but it was quite hard to fit it all in, however, I will definitely include these components (apart from irrelevant roles such as special effects designer) in my final product.

I am quite pleased with the plan for my film poster, and I think if it is in grey scale it will perfectly reflect the mood and real-to-life look I want my products to achieve. After asking people that I know, who are in my target audience, I realised that the main consensus was to create the poster with the eyes closed, as people said it looked more mysterious, emotion-filled, or just more interesting.

After completing this plan, I moved on to planning out my film magazine cover. Unlike the film poster, I didn't really know what I wanted it to look like. I wanted something that would reflect all of the elements that I want to achieve. I knew I wanted to take the idea from "Little White Lies" of graphics and the idea of creating an edition of a magazine which is based on just one film, which takes up the entire front cover. I made a couple of rough plans to see what I might like to do. (Shown below).

However, all the rough plans that I made either seemed a bit restrictive, conventional or hard to achieve. (For example drawings/photos of reflections). I still wanted something different to conventional magazines, and I felt like I was still focusing on "Little White Lies" and trying to get as close to this as possible, which wasn't something I wanted to do as I wanted something original. So, I thought about the different themes in the film idea, and how I could incorporate these into one image. The ideas of nostalgia, modern day, emotions and coming of age seemed to fit together in speech, but not visually, as they seem like a bit of a "mis-match" and disintegrated. This is when I came up with the idea of a collage. I thought that if I had a grey scale image of my character's face (to keep the continuation of grey scale between products) then I could collage records, text; both well-known and my characters, scenery from the trailer and other views of my character on top. I thought this would also portray the mix of ideas in the film as well as the disintegrated situation the character finds himself in. This would not only reference the past with the images used, but it could also display the theme of nostalgia in the actual processes of manufacture, as it will be done by hand and then scanned in, rather than done entirely using modern technology. I could also collage other pictures of my character into it, so it became reminiscent of The Beatles' "Revolver" album cover. I really likes this idea, and below is the annotated flat plan I came up with.

I really liked the diagonal line that the face creates, because it looks a bit like a literal metaphor for the title of the film, "Rise." I came up with the idea of filling the space that this left with scanned in pages of the character's notebook seen in the trailer, or photocopied pages from it, to add another process. The masthead is the outline of my writing, adding the the hand-made look, whilst adding a bit of a modern twist as I hope to recreate this in photoshop in the actual manufacture. It's hard to visualise what it will look like from the flat-plan because it just contains outlines compared to what the actual one will hopefully look like. The dimensions for this is height - 24.4cm and width - 19.6cm, which is smaller than A4 and what I wanted. Throughout the making of flat-plans, I have begun to write the title of the film "Rise" with a full-stop afterwards; "Rise." This looks like a kind of literal contradiction and shows the struggle of emotions for the character as his "rise" is stopped or cut short. This emotional struggle is typical of gritty dramas, which often focus on this subject.

Below is a photo of me working on my final magazine cover flat-plan.