Photoshop Practice Poster

For this years blog we need to include two ancillary tasks alongside our main task which in my case will be a short film. One of these ancillary tasks is a poster based on our project but, as this is a new skill to me I had to practice with the software we would be using for the final project 'Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)'. Due to this I decided to YouTube some tutorials to help me get familiar with the program, this was one I found very helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLwjnZboodo I also used peer/teacher assistance within class to help me discover which tools I'd need to use.

The task we were given was to create an original movie to allow us all to get familiar . My poster was of a new gangster movie set in the 1980's and I thought it would be smart to make it black and white to follow the gritty feeling the genre evokes. Below (on the left) is my first attempt. As you can see the lighting for each individual actor isn't very good as they all are noticeable different. On the right is the final version I made and there are some obvious changes. The first of which is that I made the whole image darker so the blending of the characters were a lot smoother. I think this gives it a more realistic quality to the poster as they all look as if they're all together rather than being put together from multiple solo photos. Another change I incorporated was the adding of the tagline and names of the characters. I believe this makes the whole poster look more professional and it gives a little more detail of the film stating that 'New York has a new gang' meaning the audience can gain information about the movie that may have been unclear in the first version. The only other difference between the two is the inclusion of the 18 certificate logo in the corner. I was unaware it had to be featured but after my teacher told me of this I added it instantly.

I believe this task was very useful as it meant I could develop skills before needing them later on for my final products movie poster. For a first attempt at using PhotoShop I think I created a good poster that looks professional to a certain level. If I were to do this task again I think I would take better care when cropping as I managed to take part of Idris Elba's head and there's noticeable white markings around Jon Bernthal's character from where I've left some of the background in.