HomePlanet's Movie Poster from Concept to Key Art
The motion in motion pictures is an illusion. It’s a progression of individual images capturing a fraction of light, time, place, and setting. Key Art selects one frame, one image, one concept enticing enough to capture the viewer and convey a film's concept. Fine art masters understood the power of the single image to convey emotion, story, the soul, and mystery. Ask any award winning photo-journalist, the single image has power.
Imagine working on a new film that takes months to complete. You’ve gotten good feedback, everyone seems pleased, but how will you attract an audience?
Key Art, otherwise known as a One Sheet or movie poster, is a single image created to sell your film, to generate curiosity and excitement for movie viewers entering a cineplex or those at home streaming a movie. Your poster may get 1-3 seconds of their attention before they pass it by.
Will they stop to look at your One Sheet? Will they remember your movie weeks later when it's released to theaters and festivals?
Like any good novel or film, there is a singular concept holding all the elements together. Story, characters, genre, and concept are fused together. It's the task of Key Art to distill everything down to a single image that hooks the viewer. What's the secret to effective Key Art? It's knowing what your film is truly about.
Key Art does not need to tell an entire story, nor should it. Rather Key Art sells the promise of a story, a whisper of its genre. It’s a promise, a tease, a whiff of emotion, danger, desperation, or the hilarity of slapstick.
One image can say so much as long as it’s the right image. Want to sell a vampire movie? Show a field of bright red and two white fangs. Add the title below, "Dracula Lives." What more do you need to say?
Before HomePlanet went into production, we came up with various concepts using stock photos and text. What did these images have to say? What sort of film were we making? Once the film was shot, we then used stills from the footage. We enhanced the color pallet and distorted the lone, dark figure seen on the original spec poster. The Key Art conveys a lost soul, a journey of mystery and emotion.
We focused on a single image to convey the drive and despair of his long quest. It's a tease. It's a promise.
We took our concept to Clara T. Barbeito, a talented graphic artist who created the character rich art for Qikfinger Film’s award wining short, Saint Grady Animatic. Her concept for HomePlanet pushed the Key Art into something etherial and otherworldy, an image questioning reality itself.
She submitted specs of her concept and then created a compelling One Sheet, a single image filled with enticement.
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