Case study: Creating visuals for the movie industry
Last year I stumbled by chance upon a documentary on movie poster design. This documentary, which I enjoyed very much, was titled 24/36, and it was quite educational. I noticed that all participants felt all the big-movie posters used tired formulas and were cruelly lacking in creativity, while visuals created by fans or intended for alternate markets (festivals, SteelBook packagings, etc.) tended to be fancier and more imaginative.
I have been designing movie posters for almost 30 years and reminiscing on this, I see an opportunity to give my two cents on the practice of poster design.
The movie
First and foremost, you need to watch the movie. Whether it actually helps a lot or very little, it is never a bad idea to be inspired by it. Sometimes, a great trailer or a good talk with the distributor will suffice. From this point, the goal is the same: capture the essence of a two-hour movie in a single image.
Concepts
Once the process is up and running, we create concepts – about 10-15 different visuals. In Québec and Canada, it is standard practice for poster designers to work from stills (on-set photographs). Sometimes we also work from “grabs,” or photograms (images taken from the movie), or even image databases. Once these concepts are sent to the distributor, the back-and-forth waltz of tests and corrections begins. This whole process will have a huge impact on the final version of the poster. I have on file more than 1000 poster concepts, and it is my belief that 95% of these designs are more attractive and creative than the final printed posters. That being said, we have to admit that creativity is not automatically synonymous with efficiency.
What is the real use of a poster?
A poster has only one goal: to promote the film. It is not a work of art destined to be hung in the living room. A poster has to lure the moviegoers in theatres or influence them in their choice of movies amongst a competitive offer of titles and platforms. Of course, if in the same breath we create an image that will stand the test of time to become iconic, great, but this is the exception, not the rule.
Between a rock and a hard place
The poster designer often sits between a rock and a hard place, between the director/producer and the distributor. Even though these people’s goals are the same – to have a successful release –, certain views can remain irreconcilable: the distributor wants the most spectators or viewings possible, the producer aims for a national or international outreach, and the director, emotionally linked to their work, wants to protect their “baby.” But at the end of the day, in the Canadian market, we work for the distributor, whose instructions we must follow.
“The poster is not my film”
This is probably the sentence we hear the most often from the director. And it is quite true: no poster will ever replace a movie. It is a marketing tool, an item that tells its own narrative and which must be put in conjunction with all the other marketing tools: trailer, website, press docket, ads, etc. Each of these components is a piece of the puzzle and has only one purpose: help the movie attain the biggest outreach possible. The poster is only the door to the proposed cinematic universe, not the universe itself.
A circle of professionals
Generally speaking, distributors release many titles each year and have a lot of experience – at least the ones I worked with. The same goes for the producers, and all of them surround themselves with seasoned collaborators. What you need to understand is that the movie industry is a well-oiled machine that can accomodate all kinds of products: “auteur” works of art, genre movies, quirky and hard-to-peg titles, etc. All these movies have the potential to reach their audience, but never forget that each fragmented audience is used to a certain aesthetic and is familiar to a certain visual style that reflects its tastes and expectations. To put it more plainly, even if you can carve an unbeaten track, we are still in the same forest!
The competition
Movie theatres, Internet and TV are inundated with images and advertising. If your visual offers faded colours and a weak proposition, you can bet it will be overshadowed by the big productions. Never lose sight of the fact that in our market, the marketing budgets are quite small. All the more vital that the poster aesthetics have a commercial value. Another thing to consider is the fact that in the last years, the circulation method of posters has drastically changed. Nowadays, poster visuals are mostly seen on mobile phone screens and on streaming platforms; small details get hardly noticed and elaborate keyarts are harder to decode.
To conclude
Taking these notions into account does not mean that creativity in poster designs is a lost bet. You can see it as “bridled creativity” with a marketing purpose. When creating, adopt a certain detachment, keep an open mind, listen to collaborators, benefit from their experience, and never forget: the greatest movie posters in history are those associated with great movies that moved us.