FINALE

Story

A boy wishes to disappear from the world. He found a wish-making website and entered his request. However, when his request really came true and he starts to fade away literally, he begin to realise that he didn’t really want to disappear after all.

Genre

Psychological, drama, animation.

Poster

My poster is inspired by documentary and psychological thriller films, both of which often depicting the faces of the protagonist. I am also inspired by Impressionistic art as well, and I managed to find an artist whose work I really want to reference with: Carolyn Anderson.

http://carolynanderson.com

Her works  are really washed out, which really suit my story of a boy literally fading from the world.

I decided to do digital painting as I am still an amateur at it, and hence I wish to improve on my digital painting skills. Furthermore, a digital painting can also be used to represent the line between dream and reality, which is the kind of tone I want to give for my ‘film’. I also want to use this opportunity to practice my use of colours, because well I am really not good at using colours.

As for the image itself, I gave a white background to emphasise the faded look of the boy. I use many blueish hues to represent the sadness of the boy, but also added in yellows to hint the happy ending of the film. Furthermore, the mixture of sadness and happiness is reflective of the ups and downs in life, which is what this film will show.  The faded look of the boy’s eyes also has a meaning: it represents his loss of purpose in life, and his negative perspective of the world.

As for the title, the word ‘Fading’ refers to both the literal fading of the protagonist, and also the notion of fading away from reality ( aka entering into a dream). The word ‘mist’ refers to his blurred vision of the world, and also his change in perspective as well ( when the mist clears up). It also represent death, due to its whitish look from afar.

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PROCESS OF POSTER MAKING

PAINTING

The main references I use for this are 2 of the paintings by Carolyn Anderson:

Step 1: adding base colour

Step 2: Adding colour of the facial features

Step 3: painting!

Step 4: editing the eyes (mainly)

Step 5: colouring the hair

Step 6: trying out different layouts (cause why not)

I ended up still using the original layout as the second one looks too much like a sci-fi thriller film, which is not what I am going for.

Step 7: Touching up, fixing here and there, cutting out parts of the painting and repositioning them.

Step 8: Adding colour balance, making it more blueish so to make it look sadder.

Step 9: Adding the title

Step 10: blending the title into the image by adding another layer and painting over it.

Last step: add in all names so that it will look like a legit film poster.

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That extra blooper

I actually did a lot of brainstorming for the title. So here is the list of all the titles I thought of:

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MOVIE CAMPAIGN

Target audience: Everyone., but mainly teens and adults.

So for the movie campaign I decided to use 2 posters. 

The main one will be shown at train platforms. 

Reason:

It is a place where a journey will take place, and my film will be about the journey of the boy discovering himself, and will also be about him making choices that will change his path and destination.

I decided not to put this poster at the bus stops as I decided to put the other poster at those areas instead.

I thought that it will be really interesting to put at the end of the train carriage as well, since it is rare for posters to be placed there, and hence will spark interest among the public.

And this another poster which I did halfway (I wanted to do a full body figure of the boy) and realised that it will not turn out welL ( also partly due to time constraint), and so I abandoned it:

As for the other poster, it is inspired by the Toy Story 3 film campaign ( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-innovative-movie-marketing-campaigns-sarah-verblis ). And here it is:

( P.s the font is the same as the one in the main poster)

It is based off these two references:

 

This poster will be placed all around Singapore, and here is an example:

At bus stops

 

At random locations, like the canteen or cafeteria

 

The website is the one that the protagonist uses in the film. 

I also thought of making a real website of it, and have You-tubers to review on how great the website is, and maybe even making a fictional character on twitter or youtube or Instagram who made the same wish and the protagonist and ended up disappearing from the world.  But due to time constraints ( mainly), I am unable to execute these ideas out.

Another part of the movie campaign is using the twitter account of the film to post not only snippets of the film, but also poems, quotes, and song lyrics about mist and fog and fading away, and also hint about the gist of the story without giving out too much.

Here is an example:

I found the haiku from: http://oaks.nvg.org/other-haiku.html

and it is one of my reference for the film title.

For that particular haiku, it hints that the protagonist in the film will undergo a renewal of self.

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 Here is the newer version of the poster I did after the critique:

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REFLECTIONS

I really find this assignment challenging, as it is so hard to make good film titles, and do a good layout. I feel that I should have make my layout design more interesting, but I guess my digital painting skills is not good enough to execute all the nice layouts yet. I think I really improved, especially in terms of combining different colours together and digital painting in general. 

It is a really fun assignment overall though. I really enjoy the whole process.