Since fall 2013 I have been working with Shortlist on their continuing series of alternative movie posters for films that are soon to be released during the given time. I started it with the alternative Gravity poster. Below are the ones I've done during this past season. More to come for sure. Enjoy.
The work on Thor started by my wanting to explore the aesthetics of the silent cinema era, something I've barely tapped. Eventually I was drawn to the poster of Fritz Lang's "M" (I realize this is a sound movie, but really close in terms of time period). The epic hand was the hook. While conceiving the Thor poster, the draw I had was the hero always having his hammer in hand and that is where the connection was made. Be sure to view the entire Thor poster collection here.
While making the Oldboy poster, there was no direct pool I tapped into in relation to inspiration or homage. I played around with the use of circles and the treatment of icons, similar to when you see the "minimalist" movie posters. I am a fan of seeing how you can tell a story through pictures/images, which is what led to my poster series of simplisitic icons. My alternative Oldboy poster was sort of an extension of that. See the entire collection of alternative Oldboy posters here.
There were many drafts for my alternative poster of "Her." A lot of experimenting with the use/depicition of an imaginary person, whether it was a silhouette, an outline, a shape of a woman but depicted by binary code and much more. Unfortunatley it all came out not as I imagined (or more simply, just cheesy). Finally I honed in on the idea of being alone or isolated, which is something I took away from viewing the film. The film still of Joaquin looking down was my pull along with the amazing color palette of the original movie poster and what was displayed in the film; these two components helped shape the poster for me. I ended up using the floating binary code as my representation of Samantha, that she is all around in this non-defined presence. The entire colleciton of alternative posters is amazing; see them all here.
