Film Poster

Our brief : capturing the essence of a film in one image and accompanying it with a quote from the film harmonising type face to create an aesthetically pleasing poster. My chosen film : Little Miss Sunshine. I mainly chose this due to the juxtaposition between the title and content of the film, thinking this would give me more freedom with my design.

An analysis of the released poster : The poster being predominantly yellow, not only signifies 'sunshine' in the name of the film but is symbolic of happiness as well as visually being bright in order to draw people in. This poster, like the name of the film, initially implies a happy story. However, when you look at the contents of the image, you quickly become aware of the pressing matters faced by the people within it. Dark shadows beneath the subjects imply the height of the sun, emphasising the heat and therefore the matter of urgency in their strides. Is it that the family are weighed down by the darkness of their demons and running away from something as the tagline - 'A family on the verge of a breakdown' - of the poster could suggest? The poster is very high in contrast with deep black shadows mirroring the black of the type face. The colour scheme is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, despite the contrasting genres - 'Coming of age' and 'Horror' - however, if you asked my parents, they'd argue they were the same thing. As I'm sure this is a common belief, perhaps the similarities were calculated to add a humorous underlying tone within the poster.

Things to consider : Aesthetic – It should get attention so the message is delivered. Focused – It should focus and communicate on a single message. Ordered – The sequence should be well-ordered and obvious. High Resolution!!

Brainstorming, I decided to take a more abstract yet literal approach to the meaning of the film. Choosing the quote 'A real loser is someone who is sos scared of not winning, they don't even try'. Initially I found it challenging to remove the visual imagination portrayed by the film and create new, original content. However, breaking the quote down into imagery I was lead to the phrase 'digging your head in the sand' as I believed that was a harmonising content with the quote and subsequently the hard-comings of the characters in the film.
Visually I messed around with a few options...

After feedback from my peeps and tutor, I decided to go with the image displayed last - a literal image comprised of photography and illustration being a head in the sand. The colour scheme was more fitting with the film also, and in terms of typography, I wanted the words to compliment the layout of the poster, whilst also implying chaos to represent the characters stories. I played around emphasising different words and using different layouts but settled on the word 'scared' as this is the most comon, ignored and limiting emotion within the family.