Michael Bartlett, the writer and director of the Portland indie film, House of Last Things approached me in March of 2009 to commission the designing of a promotional poster for his film. His complex, thriller/drama had many layers in the story that we discussed in depth to find the best singular visual representation. What we came up with initially is seen in the notepad sketch above. The idea was to make the key character in the movie–the boy–prominent and innocent looking. Upon further inspection you see his mirrored image in the balloon and feel a sense of control and omniscience. The house is deliberately placed beneath the boy and the balloons to demonstrate the dominance the boy has over the house where the story takes place. A sense of space, depth and height are created in the poster by showing the other balloons vanishing upward into the sky. One of them acts as the ‘O’ in the title design.

In the construction of the poster, I used low-res images found on the internet to help bring the rough sketch to greater clarity in a proper digital layout. This helped to assess how the many elements interacted in their space so as to achieve balance and a pleasing composition. Once the low-res comp was looking good, plans for the photo-shoot were made. Shooting in the house basement in front of a black backdrop, I photographed the boy and the balloons using my Canon 30D and two Vivitar 285HV speedlights. Other elements like the flag pin and trees were shot later on location. The house and cloud images were pulled from the internet.

In post-production, using Adobe Photoshop, I retouched the boy’s skin, adjusted color balance and shadow/highlights in the individual elements and globally. The balloons were enhanced to bring out their depth and supernatural qualities. The title was designed in Adobe Illustrator and brought into Photoshop for its coloration and further manipulation. A number of layer adjustments were made to achieve the haunting tone and feeling that Michael and I wanted in the poster. The final composition is a 27″x40″ one-sheet poster seen above. A digital version of the poster is used throughout the official website, the facebook page, and more for promotional purposes to attract investors and create interest in the project.

Copyright © House of Last Things, LLC. 2010. All Rights Reserved.