Wednesday 29 September 2010

Arthouse






MY PROGRESS - FROM BRIEF TO FINAL IMAGES

After receiving this brief in the post I set about finding out what the meaning and definition of Arthouse really is. I had some ideas beforehand but I felt in order to make a well informed decision as to which films to pick I needed to do this. The great thing was that I instantly knew which films I was going to pick.
I have been a fan of Studio Ghibli films for a long time and this was an obvious choice for myself as soon as the option “World Cinema” was mentioned in the brief. The company is Japanese and after just returning from a trip to Tokyo myself I was full of inspiration from what I had seen and experienced there.
I felt that this was perhaps jumping the gun a little by instantly picking a set of four films to make posters about. So after some research and a little mind mapping I had come up with two other ideas that I felt were worth exploring. These were; a hammer horror night, which would showcase films like the original Dracula and Frankenstein etc. who were made by the company Hammer and the second idea being a film night called ‘Kaiju’ which would show films like godzilla and Gamera.
I made mock ups of the Hammer Horror night and the Kaiju night posters. For the Hammer Horror night I experimented with minimal imagery and type e.g. for the Dracula film poster I placed two upside down white triangle next to each other which symbolised the fangs of Dracula and so on and so forth for the other posters. I also put together some posters using typical Hammer Horror typography which is iconic of the original posters. Even though the development was going well I really didn’t enjoy making these posters and I didn’t feel they truly depicted my style of work.
I then moved on to look at how I could explore the ‘Kaiju’ film night. These were all Japanese films and the name Kaiju means monster in Japanese so I began by trying to make the perfect lettering which lent itself to Japanese typography used in the original poster for godzilla etc. After asking a number of people if they could read the word Kaiju I got a mixed review, some people could see it and some could not. Due to the mixed reaction this immediately put me off wanting to continue with this idea. After coming away from it for a while I decided to push on with making visuals in hope that marrying the text and visuals together it may look better. At first I tried to draw each poster and quickly moved to collage as I seem to have lost my ability to draw. Using patterns to create a new and rather modern looking Godzilla I was quite happy however the same effect didn’t carry through to the other posters. I really didn’t feel confident in advertising and designing posters for films I had only got a glimpse of. So I went back to the drawing board.
I came back to my Studio Ghibli idea and as it so happened I came across and image of spirited away in which someone had drawn the bath house from memory in a block colour of red and then an overlay of a girls silhouette. This immediately spoke to me as a creative. I had previously been struggling in how to produce posters using Studio Ghibli images because they are so unique and stylised that I thought it would hold me back but this image showed me that it didn’t need to be that way.
Looking at the DVD boxes for the Studio Ghibli films I realised that to most other people the covers look like they would be aimed at children due to their animated style. However, the stories within the films and the meanings behind the animations give enjoyment to both children and adults. So, as the DVD covers only really appealed to children and may be overlooked by anyone older yet knowing that they would still find enjoyment in the films I felt I needed to create posters that advertised the films to an older audience while creating posters that still put across the unique style of the Studio Ghibli animations.
The choice of red and white was to try and hint at the Japanese backgrounds of the films. I also wanted to the focus to be upon the drawings. I took stills from the films and put them straight into illustrator. I picked object or characters from each film that weren’t central to the plot but were there in key parts e.g. the sweet box is used throughout GOTF by the older brother, he gives it to his younger sister as a pick me up or a treat. When his little sister dies he realises the sweet box is empty also. People who have already seen the films would also pick up on the subtle references and perhaps get a slight enjoyment in recognising such images. The typeface used was a similar typeface used on the covers of the DVD boxes and I felt keeping such a simple colour palette and using the same typeface on each poster unified them as a set and drew attention the images.

SUMMER PROJECT REVIEW
Together in our tutorials we reviewed each other’s posters. I was a little worried beforehand that they were too simple and that made them boring. They were well received by my group and having put them up on my own blog I have received a couple of good comments about them. My tutor lizz made a good observation that a couple of posters needed working on so that they worked a little better as a set. She also mentioned that I could make each poster work a little harder which is what I was expecting to hear. She suggested changing the typeface of each title of the film. I believe this would add more character and would take away and fears about the posters looking boring or plain.