Exhibit Two

Movie Poster

Design: I thought this up from so many of the survival posters I've seen, they all tend to have a general feel to them. First,  you have your landscape involved represented as dangerous or uninviting.  Next, you need your talent shown usually above the landscape with a look of distress on their face(s).  These are very simple in design but should give off a very powerful sense of discomfort. 

Contrast: Developing contrast for this photo was a bit strange because most of the images and even the text have a cold feel to them, but it works. Obviously, the biggest break away here is the talent, who is quite dark, but I've even altered him to fit more into the sky. I think the reason the pure white letters stick out is that most the snow in the image has a cold blue to it. Also, nature does not make straight lines, humans do, so when I put those strong straight letters against a backdrop of wilderness they stand out strongly. The title, does have a small but sharp outline and drop shadow, just to ensure it stands out with more importance.

Alignment: I gave myself a grace zone of one inch inward from each side, partly for future text but also because the case this poster goes in may have a frame that digs in over the poster itself. Originally the title was a bit higher but after applying a guide layout I dropped it down so that it's now sitting on top of the bottom third of the image. Also, I adjusted the kerning of the title to spread it out slightly with a touch of scaling to have it meet both left and right boundaries. I placed the names of the actors riding the bottom boundary snugged up to the left or right boundaries. To the top right I have my tagline right aligned, same as the actors name below making a nice crisp line down. 

Repetition: Across the entirety of the piece each layer has been color matched to the dark sky to some degree to try an make sure this looks like a complete landscape. The tagline and two bottom actor names are same typeface and size. The title is also the same typeface but in bold and an adjustment to scale and kerning. 

Proximity: There isn't much in the way of proximity in this poster as it is, the actors are on bottom, title is the middle, tag is up top. However, if I put more into it, there would be various credits that would take up there own spot with a much smaller text. Alternatively, you may have favorable comments from critiques, I could put them down one side together to separate them from other text.

Photoshop: I started by creating a new web project with a 27 x 41 inch canvas (standard poster size). Now, I brought in my mountain image, and cropped it down to the size of my canvas, but it wasn't exactly where I wanted it, so I moved the image over to put the peak more to the right side. However as shown, I've got empty canvas, so I made a selection along the side and used content-aware scale to bring the forest, clouds, and sky over to fit the width (I then repeated this for the sky on top). Next, I brought in my talent photo, first I flipped the canvas along the horizontal axis so he would face more toward the mountain, with that sorted I could crop the image down to a profile shot. At this point I found I didn't like the sky so I masked the mountain and erased the sky behind it and replaced it with a stormy scene. Now, I lined up my layers from the back to front, clouds, actor, mountain, and later text on top. I quick masks the man's background out and set his blend mode to multiply, using history brush to smooth out the edges. I then color matched the mountain and the actor layers to the background and added a gradient. At this point the mountain was still sticking out quite harshly so I used the smudge tool to clean up the edges but also add a smudge in front of the mount to simulate cloudy distortion. Here, I added my guides and applied my title using a font I found called "Lemon Milk." I used a sharp outer glow and dark shadow with about 100 kerning. Finally the tagline and actor names are the same typeface but smaller, with less kerning, and no additional effects.

Revision:  After getting feedback from my instructor and peers, the main standout is how dark the man is. So, I added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and clipped it to the layer containing the image of the man. I tweaked it until he matched closer to the clouds and mountain and didn't have such hardness to him.

Credit: