Poster research/influences

In order to construct my poster, I researched into posters for other short films that I liked so I could not only understand the crucial features of a poster, but also what differentiates a poster for a short film to a poster of a feature film.

I began with the posters made for Bertie Gilbert's short films. For most of his short films, he has a very similar layout, and uses stills from the films rather than separate press photographs. 

I liked that for Let It Be the font is flipped sideways, which is something that personally I see very rarely. 

For Rocks That Bleed, I loved that he used stills from the film that had some movement in it: it makes the viewer quite uneasy, especially when coupled with shots drowned in red. It means that the font really stands out against the movement. 

In his posters, he usually just includes the title, the billing block, release date, and 'A Bertie Gilbert Film'. For the second poster, he includes a film festival award with the laurel wreaths surrounding the text, and the names of featured actors in the short film.

Below is the poster for Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier.

This short film was a prequel to his feature film The Darjeeling Limited, so it was released alongside it at cinemas. As it wasn't marketed in the same way as his feature films do, the poser is naturally much more paired back. I still felt that this was relevant for my research as it thought that this is a beautiful photograph, and frames the actors well, is edited with a grain effect that reflects the classic style of the Paris landscape, and the colours are really striking. For my poster I want more detail on release dates etc., but I still really liked the way this poster was put together.

Below is the poster for The Darjeeling Limited. This is most likely not the main version of the poster that was used in advertising, but is again a much more paired down version, similar to how you would market it if it were a short film. I particularly liked how they used the brown frame and featured the film festival awards.

This is the poster for Mahalia Belo's 'Volume'. This is an incredibly strong still from the short film, and I really like how they have positioned the film festival awards and the film title. 

The structure for my poster will be most similar to the Rock That Bleed poster, as I am keen to include lots of detail on the cast, film festival awards and a billing block, without overwhelming the poster. I will not include a tagline that is frequently used in feature film posters, as after my research I can see that this is very rarely, if ever, used for a short film poster.