EVALUATION: The Directors Cut
This project has allowed me to learn multiple new skills and techniques. While we briefly did screen printing last year this was the first time I have made any with a screen. Originally I planned to create two screen printed posters and one digital one. But, seeing as I completed the first two quickly I was able to create a third. I encountered many minor problems like the quantity of ink, method and force of pushing the squeegee, drying ink, working efficiently with wet pages in a busy environment and navigating around others in the studio. Human error, like printing in the wrong order or upside down subsided by the final poster.
One entirely new technique was creating halftone dots in Adobe Photoshop. This involved changing colour modes in a separate file and entering varying values until I was satisfied with the result. This effect is one I appreciate visually and has been very useful when screen printing, where only solid colours can be printed.
We created title sequences for one of our given films. I have never used Adobe After Effects before, but found the software fairly intuitive, and was able to achieve my desired result effectively. I look forward to using After Effects in future projects and creating more ambitious moving images
Of the artists that I’ve researched there are three that have influenced me the most. Corita Kent’s typographic work had very interesting compositions which helped inspire the placement of text in my outcomes, an area I typically struggle with. Her work also inspired me to hand draw many of my titles, either digitally or scanned traditional ink. Andreea Robescu’s illustrations influenced my magazine, where smaller illustrations and pieces dotted the pages. I really liked the sense of motion in her work, which I attempted to replicate with the falling turbine and the clouds that trail behind. Karaan Singh’s style of work worked well for screen printing, as it is mostly solid colours. My research led me to look at how I could include patterns in my work, halftone dots repeat across outcomes and in my magazine there are multiple instances of repetition.
I researched each film at the beginning of the project which helped me understand the plot, genre and audience. Psycho was released when Alfred Hitchcock already had a strong following, and the credited director was a large draw for audiences, because of this I made sure to present the name clearly in my outcomes. Horror fans are also a main demographic. For my outcomes I applied this same audience, using inspiration from specifically horror genre advertising when making my outcomes, utilising grungy textures and conventions of the genre (like blood, a knife, stormy weather and nighttime/darkness). There are quite a lot of dark colours in my Psycho outcomes that are often cut through with a singular brighter colour, inspired by the colour palettes of horror movie marketing and the films themselves. As the original film is black and white the limited palette works well. The torn paper outcomes I have created work particularly well for Psycho, as it resembles the original logo and reflects the film’s themes of divided mental states.
Donnie Darko is a more modern film, aimed at teenagers and young adults, appealing to viewers by showing teenage characters and the loneliness of high school and is widely regarded as a cult classic: A film that had little mainstream success, but has acquired a dedicated and passionate fanbase. This caused me to approach the film differently than my other posters, opting for less obvious visuals, which are more likely to be appreciated by invested viewers. Like the turbine falling through the sky in my poster. I researched the additional information provided by the director about the film’s rules about tangent universes and timelines so that I could portray that in my work. My magazine pages show small diagrams in a blackboard like style. My title sequence also has white text on darker backgrounds, and the shaking text shows the precarious nature of Donnie’s universe, which is destabilised by the crash of the turbine. This shakiness grows throughout the video, until the title appears completely still, reflecting how Donnie fixes things by the end of the film.
Saving Private Ryan is a successful war film that came out in 1998. The audience for this film is limited by the R rating and extreme violence to adults only. Though war films are usually aimed at men the demographic of viewers “was evenly split between men and women”. As an established director, fans of Steven Spielberg’s previous films were drawn by his credentials. So I also featured Spielberg’s name in my designs. I wanted my work to show the same themes of the film, showing death through illustrations of graves and military dog tags, linking to the film's scenes where these are shown to remind the audience. The violence and blood is a shocking aspect of the film, which I referred to with use of the colour red, often the only colour in each piece.
There are a few things I would have done differently if I had more time. I wanted to include more additional content like the badges I made. I had planned to make a sheet of stickers and one or two smaller, A4 posters to slip in between the pages. I would redo the title of my Psycho poster as I am not entirely happy with the type, which was hand drawn. I would either write the title with a brush pen like I did for the Saving Private Ryan poster or use pressure sensitivity like with Donnie Darko. I also would have liked to do more individual research.
Overall, I think this was a successful project and I am happy with my final results. I am very interested in movies and film making, so I was easily inspired and that research helped inform my designs. I think I have improved at showing the progression of my ideas. My title sequence fits the mood of the film through the music and visuals and research helped guide the layout of my magazine. Ultimately, my screen prints were successful and I have vastly improved my ability in that regard. I managed to complete work on time and I can see my improvement in terms of time management. I feel prepared for the next project and will apply what I have learnt.