Conceptualization

Conceptualization began with me sketching out some rough ideas of how the posters will look like – I looked into some research materials of what are some examples of double exposure posters.

I thought about the theme, story and genre of the movie.

Theme: Home
Story: Two runaways revisit old places to create their new home.
Genre: Drama, Coming-Of-Age

From there I did some sketches of my favorite layouts that I came across while looking at the web.

Notebook sketches of concepts

Visual References for posters

I looked into examples of creative double exposure movie posters and Singaporean film posters (rather than blockbuster Hollywood posters).

I realized there’s a sort of poignant, quaintness, calmness to a local film as compared to something compared to Transformers or Avengers. I noted this observation to allow my film to evoke less explosive tones.

Mood Board

I looked into one of my favorite cinematographers styles and color tones of my favorite movies for inspiration. It was interesting to note how I was very attracted to a certain look and vibe of a shot – such as that from Millennium Mambo, Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love. 

I realized that the vibes, mood and tone of the film was rather dull, cold and muted, so I chose the movies that reflected as such. Cold colors, desaturated and earthy tones of sorts.

I knew as compared to digital painting, photography was a little more restricted in terms of playing around with colors. So I asked my casts to be in earthy, neutral and dull tones, but I knew my source images were going to have purple, green and blue tones.

Post Production

Bonus points if you can see all four photos in the collage.

I played around with some color concepts as well. I consulted my design friends about the colors and they somehow agreed that it was either a dark gray or a neutral white suits the mood and tone of the film best.

Some colors looked too odd against the already complicated portrait of my characters, others drowned my design with matching tones, and the rest just did not match the tone of the film. Some were just plain painful to look at.

I opted for a much simpler neutral white, but my design friend suggested exploring with textures to keep the background interesting. So I went to dig out my canvas and snapped a picture of it.

Some tweaking and feedback from my friends later, I had my final piece!