Photoshop Practice

Before we could really start up and create our poster, we needed to brush up on our skills on photoshop. During a Media Studies Lesson, we took a few quick flicks of images similar to ones that will be on our actual poster and began to edit and mesh them together to see if our idea would infact work.

The main idea for our Poster is to have an extreme close up shot of our protagonist, Ursula, wearing her trademark midnight shades. In the reflection of the shades will be an image of the boy in the trailer as a way to create synergy for our audience and create an association between the child and our main character.

This idea will require us taking two images. With the image of the boy, we will have to use the 'Select' pencil on Photoshop to carefully draw around the boy and then press 'Cut'. If this is done successfully, we should be left with the required image of the boy cut out of the picture, leaving only a stencil behind with the rest of the image that too is unwanted.

We Tried This Out On Photoshop And Here's What We Ended Up With...

As you can see, this is very similar to what we described above. Unfortunately, the shoe has been left behind in the image and this has taught us to be very careful when selecting and to ensure that we check that all aspects of the image that we want to select is actually selected.

Once we had this image, We pasted this onto our image of Nicky of LNC impersonating our main character. This worked well and appeared somewhat realistic once the edges had been softened and smudged out. We had previously played around with the editing of Nicky and had used all sorts of effects to give us a basic idea of how we wanted our final production to look.

Either way, here's how our 'Trial Poster' turned out :

You can quite clearly see that we have put the image that we previously cut onto the main character's glasses. This works quite well although with the real image, the framing of the glasses will be more residing and so will provide a better outline for our character to sit in than the scarf used in this.

On our actual poster, our character will be wearing her signature bracelet of which is colourful, The dark editing that will be used on our poster will allow the beads of the bracelet to really stand out along with the editing on her lips that will be made a bold red.

In terms of writing, we wanted as little as possible. We want the image to be the main focus of our poster and so simply used text for the title and tagline. We will make these bright and colourful to further emphasise the childhood theme but use a smudged paint font that although appears quite innocent on the surface, still has a sinister tone to it.

The importance of Taglines on a film poster

Posters are essential to building up a voice and following for a future releasing of a film. In order for a film to be mentioned in conversations by future audiences, there must be a certain aspect of the poster that stands out substantially from other films soon to be released. Features such as a Tagline on the poster are essential to building up a following. If effective, they will be easily remembered and unintentionally fixed into the minds of the audience when the name of a film, in our case ‘Playtime’ is brought up. A successful Tagline will constantly be associated with the film and stay in the minds of future audiences.

LNC have decided that “Are You Ready To Play” will be the most effective tagline for our film. It is short and straight to the point and easily associated with the title of our film (Playtime). The tagline does not give away too much about our film but simply gives a vague idea of the playful theme. This is definitely the most effective Tagline to associate with our film

Influence for Playtime Poster

Sin city was also one of our influence as it is a crime thriller just like Playtime. The film's unique colour processing renders the film mostly in black and white but retained some bits in colour was the kind of theme we was going. Initially we wanted Playtime to be in black and white but we decided not to do this because we felt it would not appeal to our target audience so instead we used this concept in our poster. We were also attracted to the way the camera used angles to emphasise the importance of the characters. We tried to use a range of different angles from low angles to aerial shots but e then decided it would be more effective to do a close up shot of the protagonists' face.


The Movie Salt starring Anglina Jolie is one of or main influences for our poster. It has a similar genre and it also features a female protagonist which isn't very common and predictable. We were attracted to the way the main focus in the picture was her face and we thought we could develop that idea and incorporate the childlike theme we had. The eye catching feature on the salt poster is the prominence of the characters eyes and the contrast between light and dark. we tried to incorporate this by using a black background and the use of colour. We decided to make her lips bright red so they stand out and is the main focal point alongside the use of colour in the title and the young boy shown in the reflection of the glasses. The use of colour in the title depicts the relation how young children can be attracted by colour.
The simplicity of the structure of the Salt poster reminded us that clear and basic texts,fonts and boldness can elaborate the meaning and significance of how the film
can be portrayed in an exciting way without making it to busy.

Poster : Initial Ideas