My Film Poster Mock-Up

This is the mock-up poster I created after looking at other documentary posters and homophobic bullying adverts. I chose to use a light/baby blue to give the poster a light feeling, and then kept the title, tagline and symbol in a darker blue/purple that suits the background and still allows them to stand out. My final idea for this poster mock-up was to break away from the conventional 'one big image' layout and instead, use a mix of images taken from the documentary in 'polaroid' form. This layout should collect more attention as it isn't as conventional, and the collage of images gives further insight into the film.

Poster Research

Common Conventions of a Film Poster
In order to create a quality poster for our documentary, we felt that doing some research on existing ones would help us to do just that. We found that in order to make just as good we would have to follow some common techniques that were noticed when looking at examples of other documentary posters. These were:

• A picture from/to do with the film that takes up most or all of the poster as a background. This becomes a main focal point, so it must be eye-catching.
• A large title that is easily visible, with both it's style and position relative in some way to the film's genre.
• A tag-line that gives some insight into what the film is about is usually found near the title or at the top of the poster.
• An age certification.
• Release date for the film.
• Reviews are usually found somewhere on the poster.
• Other information such as a website, legal information and production companies can also be found.

I have chosen to analyse a poster for a documentary called 'Touching The Void'. Although this documentary has nothing to do with sexuality like our short film, by analysing it, it can still help us to create a good poster of our own.

Touching The Void - Poster Analysis

This poster is perfect for what it is supposed to do as it grabs the audience's attention/interest and gives insight into the film. The background picture is quite big and dramatic which catches the audience's attention. The picture has also been edited so that the person is blue and has icy cracks over him. This, along with the white background colour; gives the poster a very cold, icy and isolated effect. The picture also gives insight for a dramatic storyline as the character is falling from a rope.

The poster's title is eye-catching as it is large and red, contrasting the background and pictures. This title is also further interesting as the 'V' of 'Void' provides extensive insight as it is shaped to represent a void-like shape and can then be linked with the picture of the person falling.

This poster does not happen to have a tag-line, but however, the review and "based on" credits are very clear at the top of the poster.

Looking back...

If I had another chance to go back and do anything differently, I would definitely do the three following things:

• I'd write a more in-depth review of a short film to show my further understanding of short films itself
• I'd contribute further into extensive background research on documentaries and their conventions
• I'd contribute more towards the making of our group presentation

Individual Contirbutions

The following is a list of the tasks I have done individually towards our project so far:

• I came up with initial ideas towards our 5 min short film (fictional piece)
• I helped with background research into documentaries and the topic of homophobic bullying
• I attended the Clapham Learning Centre for a day on research into sound/audio
• I helped to create our audience survey
• I handed out audience surveys and collected results from them
• I have spoken to people about interviewing them for our short film
• I participated in our group presentation

Interviewees

Aimee
I thought this person would be interesting to interview as although she is 'straight' herself, she is the offspring of two homosexual couples. As this is not a very common situation, I felt that it would give our film another point of view to enrich the diversity.

Michael
This is a brother of mine and he admitted to being gay when he was at Cambridge University back in the late 90's. I felt interviewing him would would give a perspective on peoples views back then, as well as give us a way of comparing the difference in social acceptance and secularity.

Kevin
Kevin is the current partner of Michael, and since he works with US Army as someone who grew up in America, I felt that interviewing him would also give us further perspectives on homophobia in another country and in what is considered to be a very heterosexual industry.

Candidates for Interviewing

I have contacted a few people i know of, who would be good to have as they would broaden our range of opinion and experiences. I will post some further information on these candidates on this blog with regards to them, their background and how they will benefit our film.

Audience Research

Recently, my group and I put together a survey that we then handed out to around 40-50 young people around the age of 16/17. I helped in suggesting questions for the survey, editing the survey and handing them out to people in and out of our school before collecting the results.

Here is an example of the survey we created:

Research Into Homophobic Bullying

Homophobic bullying is a topic that is widely covered in the form of short film. It generally contains the views of people who class themselves as homosexual and those who don’t.
This topic is always approached in both sensitive and mature manners, but can still be a completely different type of film, e.g. a serious informative documentary, or a light-hearted comedy that looks down on homophobes and intends to make those in a similar situation feel happier.

A lot of well-made documentary style films contain factual information on homophobic bullying and in-depth conversations with those affected. This is a good way to take incentive when making our short film.
And in a lot of other films, re-enactments are used to create emphasis on any point being made or story being told. So by following this example, this would make our piece more engaging to the audience as well as allowing them to visualise situations better.

Example of an H.B. Serious Short –

Example of an H.B. Comedy Short –

Conventions of the Interviewed Documentaries Genre

Documentary Conventions on Prezi

"The Black Hole" - An Example of Short Film

An example of short film is "The Black Hole" By Phill and Olly -


This short film takes on the theme of greed. It casts a man portrayed to be very normal with a job he is bored with. Through an unlikely source, he finds himself slowly progressing through many stages of temptation and discovery that lead him to start committing a theft, before being locked in a safe half-way through the act, leaving him to die. A harsh, yet appropriate story to empower the moral that stealing is wrong.

Short Film

Short film is a technical term for a piece of footage that is less than a general feature length film; they can range to anything from say 3 minutes, to 45. These short films tend to be independently produced and generally made to be uploaded onto the internet and viewed by many audiences. There is no specific genre for short film, however social realism/documentary style videos are the most popular.