Movie Promotion - Film Noir Poster
Long before a film has been completed, advertisers and marketers get to work promoting the film and creating buzz before its release. Films have to compete for audience share. One of the main ways that movie studios promote a film is through a ‘movie poster’. These posters can be seen in many places – bus stops, outside movie theatres, video shops etc. They need to catch the eye and generate interest in the film they are promoting. These posters usually have standard features such as –
· Film title logo
· Main actors (stars)
· Photos of the main actors
· Bold images
· A ‘tagline’ – a variant of a branding slogan e.g. Be afraid. Be very afraid. – The Fly
· A ‘Billing Block’ – this is the ‘credits’ for the movie. The height of the typeface in the billing block is usually 25% or 35% of the average height of each letter in the title logo.
You are to create a promotional poster from your Film Noir movie. Use the information above when planning out the layout and features of your poster. You can take more photos of your actors, or use some of the production photos you took. Remember, the poster needs to be bold, eye catching and continue with the Film Noir style.
Follow the following instructions to create your poster in Adobe Illustrator -
- Open Illustrator and create an A4 page (for printing).
- Place your main photo into Illustrator by going to File – Place (then select your photo)
- Trace your photo by going to Object – Live Trace – Make
- Along the top of the screen you will see the Live Trace options. Change the Preset to Comic Art and adjust the Threshold and Min Area to get the bold result you want.
- Use the Text tool from the toolbox on the left to write your text – just click on the screen. You can use the Text options at the top of the screen to change the font of your text.
- Use the Selection Tool (from the toolbox on the left) to resize and position your text on the poster.
- If you with you may want to colour certain areas of the poster. You can use the Selection Tool and Colour Palette to do this.