As an outcome in response to my essay, it seems essential to create at least one movie poster, having researched and critiqued the idea of ‘what constitutes a good movie poster’. I can use my findings to inform how this poster looks, demonstrating through my outcome, that I have engaged with my essay topic. How I demonstrate my findings as a produced outcome is still something I need to create initial ideas for and experiment with, however it seems clear that a big research point will be the designers who’s posters I have used as case studies in my essay:
Saul Bass
Saul Bass’ film posters are arguably some of the most iconic film posters ever made; working with directors such as Hitchcock, Scorcesse and Kubrick, Bass’ modernist approach to the film poster utilises simple shapes and primary colours in minimal compositions, with the dominant aspect of the poster often being a single graphic symbol, representing a key theme in the movie. Bass also produced the opening graphics for many films and was the first designer to incorporate motion into these. He also did some more commercial design, creating logos for big companies such as AT&T and united airlines.
I read the book ‘6 Chapters in Design’ which features a chapter on Saul Bass:
I found it interesting the way his combination of ‘emotion and intellect’ were talked about. It’s true his designs are very clever because he not only manages to distil the movie down into a poster, but into a very intuitive and simple poster, visually communicating the movie in a symbolic image or graphic. It almost makes sense that he designed logos as well, because if you think of a poster such as the one for ‘the man with the golden arm’ the black angular arm on the poster which serves as a visual m metaphor for the protagonists drug addiction, almost serves as a logo at this point because its so linked with the film and so simple yet effective. These ideas are definitely ones I will have to try and bring to designing a poster; I think it would be very interesting to designer a modernist poster taking inspiration from Saul Bass; a lot of people do create Saul Bass esque posters and kind of end up just copying his style and creating a pastiche, I want to really investigate applying his process.
Stephen Frankfurt
Frankfurt was primarily an advertising executive, creating many famous ad campaigns, however he did create a few very iconic movie posters including posters for Alien and Rosemarys Baby. Looking at his posters, theres often a lot of white space, and the designs seem very fixed to the vertical plane, with the hierarchy of type and imagery sending the viewer’s eye down the page. Frankfurt is critiqued for the similarities between his poster for Rosemarys baby and Downhill Racer, both of which contain a horizontal profile of a woman face in the top half of the image, empty space in the bottom half, and a small silhouetted image connecting the 2. While Frankfurt didn’t design that many movie posters, his designs are still very visually striking and memorable, to me they demonstrate a stepping stone between modernist posters like Bass’ and the post modernist posters which came after because he uses more sophisticated edited imagery, yet still very rationally and efficiently lays out the poster.
Bob Peak
Bob Peak was a commercial illustrator, and after trying his hand at movie posters, soon become known for his developments of the modern movie poster. He has worked on posters for movies such as apocalypse now, star trek, superman and James Bond. His posters are very loud, colourful and eye catching; compiling images of characters, key themes of the move and specific scenes into immersive visual collages. His poster for apocalypse now is particularly striking and very emotive with Brando’s face emanating an ominous expression. It’s also interesting to consider this idea of consumerism with this poster, even though Marlon Brando wasn’t the star of the film, his face is more prominent and it gives the poster more star power and draws people in.
Midnight Marauder
Midnight Marauder is a contemporary graphic designer, specialising in posters for movies. He has an incredibly large and diverse range of work, ranging from big blockbuster movies to small independent films, with the styles of his posters varying depending on the movie. The poster I am looking at for my essay is his poster for the documentary ‘Hal’ a documentary about director Hal Ashby. This poster is quite modernist, using a lot of white space and a very minimal approach, this design style is present in a lot of his work and works very effectively, however he also has posters which are a lot louder and busier, often using illustrative images and bright colours. I think Midnight Marauder may be one of the movie poster designers that I look more closely at for research because he is a contemporary designer, and the posters I will design, whilst maybe still being for older movies, will be created in contemporary context.
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