Creating the Poster

The poster was more difficult to start work on than the magazine, as there was a less clearly defined structure that needed to be followed (i.e. no masthead, puffs, et cetera), but the first step was to establish  a strong background, title, and stylistic feature to make the poster clear in its intentions.

Following this, I inserted a shot of the London Eye (from the trailer) behind the stylistic bars to further establish the strength of the urban theme. This was done at about the same time as I was working on the two functional features of the poster; the billing block and certificate.

Then came some of the more noticeable form-related additions, such as actors names and awards. As a film that blends low production values with high ambition and Hollywood story lines, I thought it was appropriate to make the awards and reviews slightly more prominent than the actors names, as they are all relatively unknown.

The next key addition was our actor himself, in another shot taken from the trailer. In a piece of imagery similar to the posters for Looper and Welcome To The Punch, he appears to emerge from the city into a surreal world of smoke and broken glass. This strong central image, and its addition to the poster was the moment when the whole thing appeared to me to be coming together.

Many changes were made to do with rearranging the awards, reviews, actors names, and certification, but I feel like the strongest amalgamation of these aspects can be seen in the final poster. This can be seen at the bottom of the post.

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Creating the Magazine

After finalising the 'The Martini Shot' masthead, it needed a logo, which I designed in Adobe Illustrator and imported into Photoshop. The small martini glass looked a little plain, so I inserted a coloured background, which can be seen in the image below as a polygon. At this stage the puffs had not been completed, as all the text is white and not finished.

Following this, I finished the actual writing of the puffs and attempted to add some depth to the cover by playing the colours of text.

This continued as I changed the sizing and colours of the puffs themselves. However I was still aware that the cover was lacking in some ways, with an empty space below the masthead and no fine details yet inserted.

I thus set about adding the key elements such as barcode, pricing, issue number, and the like. I also added a set of marketing slogans to the bottom of the image and inserted a fourth puff line, in order to better distribute the space on the cover. The word three was changed to a larger and bolder 3, to ensure that the headline maintained its visual strength in the face of the newly input 'Film Festival Special' that fills the formerly problematic empty space towards the top of the cover.

Below is the final cover design for my magazine, which has been tidied up in terms of alignment of text. The other major difference is the removal of the 3D effect, which looked effective onscreen, but did not come through in the printed version, as it caused the cover to look like the result of a printing error. I am pleased with this final look regardless, as what the cover loses in stylistic quality, it gains in sharpness and boldness.

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Influences on the Magazine Cover

The above mood board is a good representation of the ideas that I initially wanted to encapsulate in my magazine cover. The ideas of the 3D images did not come across in the physical copy that we printed, and looked blurred or poorly printed. Thus, the effect that I had applied was rejected in favour of a bolder, clearer image, which fits with the 'Sight & Sound' influences of directors staring intently and disarmingly into the camera. This, and the 3-in-1 idea of the directors has been successful in the cover, to the extent that the 3D effect was in fact superfluous and could be sacrificed in the name of stronger imagery.

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The Martini Shot

Above is a working masthead for my magazine, The Martini Shot. This particular design does not quite work, as changing the final T into a martini glass and O into an olive has made it look like the magazine is called The Martini Shoy.

As far as the name goes, the last shot of a filming day is called the Martini shot, as the next shot of the day will be in a Martini glass. This is something of an inside joke in the industry, and thus denotes the magazine as one for people who take cinema and filmmaking seriously, but also want to have fun and enjoy it. The strap line 'THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE FOR QUALITY CINEMA' shows the subject of the magazine more clearly than the title, and thus makes the magazine a little more accessible. As I am sure all this makes clear, I intend to produce a magazine cover that is firmly in the vein of Sight and Sound.

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