How to make a movie poster

[Dunnie-Shoryuken]

Any ideas, anyone? Any online programs or anything? Nothing Grade A, but just something to convey the over all image of the film.

[Amr Rahmy]

you have a reference for the poster?

post some stills of the film.

[ZazaCast]

First you should search the forum...there are a ton of threads on movie poster creation.

Then checkout this link for some good information: http://kerberosbites.wordpress.com/2...-badass-movie/

[Dunnie-Shoryuken]

Thanks for the info guys.

[Mark Stevens]

great article zaza, thanks!

[Ewan L]

Photoshop is the program you want.

[jghenderson]

Photoshop or InDesign. Anything else is subpar.

[Doc Bernard]

One of the biggest mistakes I see are trying to use frame grabs for the poster. The best posters use posed photos specifically for the poster. Don't give away the whole plot and story with the poster. Leave some mystery. A character holding a knife is better than the main character killing the bad guy with the knife. A shot of just the timer is better than the hero standing triumpantly over the defused atomic bomb.

Read this: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/64047251.html
Yes, it is done "tongue in cheek", but there are some good points to distill from the article. A lot of those are famous movies, and very recognized posters.

And PS is pretty good, it's what I use. If you know who is going to be printing it out, ask them first what DPI and color format they want the end result in. Many like 150-300 dpi and CMYK over any other res and JPEG.

[Amr Rahmy]

the link was cool doc. they did sometimes pick the worst possible example to paint a darker picture on the subject.

i thought 'text in the face' and 'the eye' were the worst.

but i thought the nature documentary blue thing was pretty much done by the same companies and there was a lot of effort put into them to look clean, and simple. the composition was nice and it reflected what the movie is about. the sky and ocean is in it's original color, and that's different from the blue running protagonist in the same alleyway thing.

they did not do the multi-layer thing(mature rom-com), or the silhouette(they did pick up the worst back posters that had some silhouettes). did they do the lets cram all the cast in the poster or lets cram head shots from the entire cast in the poster. the lets have a poster of every cast member in his costume stare into the lens(you can tell it was done with a medium format camera with no composition or any artistic vision).

side note: the best thing about how to loose a guy in ten days was the poster.

[nycineaste]

Look at alot of posters in your genre to get a sense of what's done. Don't worry about stealing ideas or following trends, it's a movie poster, meaning it's graphic design meant to communicate- it's not fine art. Also keep in mind since you don't have stars, you need to play up the other more exploitable elements of the story. It always bugs me out when I see a low budget movie poster featuring nothing but an unknown actor- it's like, give me a reason to care.