My Take on a Film Poster

On Monday, we had James back in school teaching us how to use Adobe Photoshop. 

The previous week, we had our first lesson in cutting objects out of background, creating layers, using transparency and putting layers together to create an image. I, feeling silly, turned a simple pumpkin into an evil pumpkin with big red eyes, an evil grin and a Dali-style moustache and layered all that onto a haunted house background. It looks downright ridiculous:

This week, we had the task of creating a film poster using the grid tool to help us arrange a layout. We could either use a still from a movie that's already been made or use a still from our AS work. I chose to take a still from my AS work as I remembered that I still had all my files from the AS project. I took a nice still of the film (where my protagonist is side on and looking up, out of the window. I thought that this shot would be good to evoke questions to a viewer on a film poster. 

Firstly, I got rid of the background and created a feathered edge around the outline of the protagonist and her hand against the window. Then I layered and blended the image into a black background and added all the appropriate text. When I looked at it though, it didn't look very professional, the title of the film didn't work very well with the poster at it was too prominant on the poster. So, I played around with Photoshop and found the tool that allows you to add a gradient to either text or a picture. I added a black gradient and was able to make it look like the title is emerging from the darkness of the background.

I didn't have very long to create this poster and so it isn't as good as I could make it. After I saved the poster using the photographed image as the main image, I wondered whether I could use any of the filters to make my poster look better. I applied a paint-like filter and I think that this made the poster look slightly more intriguing than just using the photograph.

Poster with photograph:

Poster with paint filter: