Client requested artwork that was youthful, hip, and highlighted the queer friendship at the heart of the film.

I reviewed the film stills provided by the client and identified stills that had visual elements that could be used as building blocks for key art. Typically this includes shots of the lead actors that are high quality, well lit, striking, evocative or that convey something about the tone or themes of the film. In this case I focused on shots of the characters that evoked their friendship and ambiguously romantic relationship as well as the apartment-hopping/couch-surfing theme of the film.

This is how the sausage is made! I start by isolating various visual elements from film stills, then mix and match and rearrange these in an empty, poster-sized Photoshop file. I also scour through many, many fonts and experiment with different colors and effects for the title treatment. There‘s a lot of trial and error until the design elements start to „click“ and the whole thing eventually looks like a movie poster. Once I‘m satisfied with my rough draft of a poster, I repeat the process two or three more times until I have several different poster concepts.

Once I have three or four poster concepts completed, I compile them into a presentation and send the presentation off to the client for review.

The client will typically pick a winning design (or will request a mix-and-match design pulling elements from several poster concepts) and will request revisions for the final design. In the case of Rent Free, the client chose concept 2, but wanted to see the title treatment in alternate colors. They also wanted to add a little additional copy (the director‘s credit) and film festival laurels in order to fill some of the negative space.

Once an overall design is locked in, I‘ll go over it once more with a fine tooth comb to ensure there‘s no rough edges or misaligned text. I‘ll also organize my layers in the layered Photoshop file (to make them more legible for the client) and export the design into whichever file types the client prefers. All finalized files are packed up in a folder and transfered to the client.