My Name is John- Poster

This post is to briefly take you through my process of creating the My Name is John poster which I created. The first thing to talk about is my inspiration for the poster: The Lobster, a weird film that doesn't have anything in common with My Name is John particularly but I really like the art style on the poster and its use of black and white.

This is more a cream colour where as I will probably use a pure white to save on printing and also to make it stand out more,  but this is definitely my main inspiration. I really like the simplicity and the single central image of the film's lead character that is just a bit odd which creates intrigue and by extension a desire to see the film.

So firstly I took a picture of John holding a card and removed everything that wasn't his skin, so clothes and background to leave just this cut out of John and the card. I then reduced the saturation so that he was black and white. I then turned the contrast up slightly to emphasise shadows and tuned the brightness down slightly as well for the same effect.

I then added the title, I wanted a simplistic, typewriter style font to give that basic but sleek look, I didn't want it to be flashy just to look professional and sleek.

I then added the JOHN words in the alternate corners so as to mimic the style of a playing card where it would normally say Joker, I got this idea simply from the card which John is holding, to make it look like a playing card to illustrate the idea of magic because the only thing other than gambling that really uses playing cards is magic and as such I can expect audiences to draw this connection.

I then added a mini version of the poster to the card which John is holding to create the picture in picture effect, I then added a second even smaller one to the card in that small version I had just added, this was to create the effect that no matter how far in you go it will always be him holding the card of himself, however I didn't add a third because it wont be seen when the poster is printed.

I then googled what fonts are typically used for the fine print of film posters and mimicked this by adding the crew and director line at the top so as to add to the professional film look of the poster as well as to simply credit those who deserved it. At this point I was happy with the poster and considered it to be done so I sent it to the crew for their opinions.

The feedback I received was very positive and people seemed to love the poster, the only suggestion I got was to add the banner to make it look more card like, which I did and I must say it worked really well, I then had to go back over and re-insert the smaller cards so they matched the large image, this was no issue as it was just a case of hiding the writing layers and then screenshotting the resulting image and putting it in position, I then lower the opacity and erase the bits that would be covered by John's finger. Easy. and that was the final step for the poster. There were a few minor edits to the text to change people's roles but aside from that it was done.

Here is a final higher quality image of the finished poster, I am extremely happy with how this poster tuned out and think it would look great up on the wall, the only thing I would hopefully like to add in the future are some awards badges just above the title or perhaps underneath it, but we have to win some first.