Movie posters constitute people's first impression of movies and play an important role in the promotion of works. Some people even spend money to buy a poster for a movie.
There is such a top movie poster designer in China: it needs to make an appointment one month in advance, the construction period is long, the given work will not be reworked, and the price is 1 10,000.
But many great directors are still willing to spend time waiting for his works, and the audience will even go to the cinema to see a bad film for his posters.
This designer is called
Yellow Sea
Fujian native, graduated from the Design Department of Xiamen University.
Before the Yellow Sea, China film industry paid little attention to movie posters, and filmmakers mainly stayed at the stage of attracting audiences with stars-
The big face piled up on the poster is not beautiful at all.
20 15
Looking for dragons
Posters are a typical example.
What, you said it looked familiar? I feel the same way.
Huang Hai decided to break this inertia thinking after realizing that he likes to pile up star portraits.
In his poster, the story of the film itself is the focus, and the star's face is only a small part of the film. So the pilot poster he designed for "Searching for Dragons" is like this-
Since the design of movie posters began in 2007, Huang Hai has been doing subtraction-cutting off useless scraps and digging out the core of the movie.
He is most grateful to Jiang Wen, because his first work was directed by Jiang Wen.
The sun rose.
This also laid the foundation for his future design style.
At that time, Jiang Wen's requirements for posters were simple and rude: look at feelings, don't take photos, and look for materials from movies. After rejecting hundreds of designs, Huang Hai's works were favored by Jiang Wen.
This poster was "an instant hit" at Cannes Film Festival: with a big red background, barefoot women and embroidered shoes hanging from branches, the story came out at once.
This strong visual impact and unique artistic conception touched everyone, and he also designed several other posters for this film one after another, which made him famous internationally at once.
After that, the posters of the Yellow Sea began to try more Chinese styles.
He always studies scripts carefully, selects characters and materials from stills, and then shoots live experiences, captures the emotions of characters with his heart, and applies the traditional elements of China as visual language to poster design.
20 14 Huang Hai was invited to be directed by Xu Anhua.
golden age
When designing the poster, he gave a picture like this:
A woman dressed as an intellectual youth stood in the corner of messy ink dripping, and the traces of splashing ink were irregular and scattered at will, which was a metaphor for the quiet and peaceful posture of the woman in troubled times.
The combination of dynamic and static reflects the contradictions and conflicts between the background of the times and the characters. The hostess stood stubbornly on the paper, just like a nobody in the flood of the great era.
The story of Xiao Hong, a female writer, is vivid in my mind, which also indicates my wandering life.
After that, Huanghai also designed five international editions, which took more than half a year. Xu Anhua, the director who has always been strict about details, said "OK" after seeing the poster, and there was no change.
The Yellow Sea has a strong appeal to the use of ink painting and calligraphy, which is neither a distraction nor a finishing touch.
In Zhang Yimou.
shadow
In his poster design, he only uses black and white to extract the black of ink and the white of rice paper to form the keynote of the poster.
The whole movie revolves around the body body double and real people. They are both antagonistic and unified, just like the shape of Tai Chi gossip-they are integrated and separated forever.
The word "shadow" is used in the running script, and the brushwork is vigorous and elegant, especially the last stroke is intermittent, which gives people a hard feeling and just implies the personality characteristics of "shadow".
For Wong Kar-wai.
master
In the US poster, the Yellow Sea uses the traditional arch elements of China.
The two men in the door stand opposite each other and pose the gait and fist of martial arts-arches, martial arts and robes, which are the perfect balance and interpretation of movement and quietness, the hazy and delicate expression of friendship and the sense of long history.
It not only shows the elegance of a generation of master Ye Wen, but also has a sense of lens and literature. These are quite in line with Wong Kar-wai's personal style.
In the poster design of animated films, Huang Hai also showed a super high standard.
Big Fish & Begonia
Our poster uses highly saturated colors, and through the changes of lines, levels and colors, it depicts a magnificent and imaginative picture.
In the middle is a smooth line of Dahongyu. The girl touches the mouth of the fish and draws a wonderful meeting between them.
The interweaving of red and cyan blends the ocean and flame, including the phoenix with wings spread, which has strong oriental aesthetic characteristics and also opens the audience's imagination of a mysterious dream.
For the digital repair version.
My Neighbor Totoro
In the poster of China, Xiaomei and Xiaoyue are running happily on the hairy belly of my neighbor totoro. The overall style is warm and healing.
As soon as this poster came out, it caused a strong response in Japan and once boarded a hot search. Everyone praised the design of this poster as no less than the original.
Japanese film
Thief family
In the China poster, Huang Hai added an umbrella in the style of Ukiyo-e painting, which combined with the classic scenes of the film to form a feeling of "home".
In addition to a strong sense of beauty, it also shows the family concept conveyed by the film to the fullest. Director Hirokazu Koreeda praised the euphemistic and implicit beauty of the East.
In the 20 18 Best Poster in the World selected by British Film Magazine, My Neighbor Totoro and the thieves are among the top 20.
Including the documentary of 20 16 fire.
I am repairing cultural relics in the Forbidden City.
Huang Hai also designed a series of posters.
In one of them, he chose the part of "Ruyao Green Glaze Three-legged Bottle" as the background color of the poster, and added a silhouette of a figure with uniform tone on the broken porcelain.
It not only combines figures and artifacts, but also shows the daily restoration work of craftsmen in detail. Perfectly convey the theme of "great history, small craftsmen, choose one thing, lifelong".
The Yellow Sea also helped Chen Kaige.
Monk Comes Down The Mountain
Designed a very eye-catching preview poster.
At that time, when this kind of ink-and-wash poster came out, it made people feel full of advanced feeling, and everyone's expectations for the film were much higher.
But in the final official poster, the director still chose the version of Stars, which is a fairly good movie.
Besides, who will go to see this movie without a star? Stories? Chen Kaige has been unable to tell stories for a long time.
An excellent movie poster carries the most sincere emotion and artistic conception behind a movie, not a simple group of people.
While fully guiding the commercialization of movies, it can also carry forward the aesthetics of the East. No wonder so many people say:
Basically, the film doesn't match his poster.
Finally, let's enjoy the works of some masters.
The Significance of Different Fonts —— A Case Study of Font Design for China Movie Posters. China's pictographic Chinese characters, which combine form and meaning, make people "look at the text to create meaning", read the words with understanding, and have unique and clear visual charm and communication effect. Compared with English letters, it does have more advantages. However, foreign designers have created many excellent font designs for movie posters through their unique perspectives. chained address
Small/small seal characters
Zhang Yimou's film Hero is easy to recognize without losing its classical charm and rich in historical flavor. However, the introverted, calm, solemn and beautiful temperament of the script of seal script also reveals that the film is not about the fierceness and killing of the war, but the wisdom, strategy and sentiment of the characters under the war, and the script of seal script just puts this appeal in place and makes people remember it for a long time. ,
official script
Battle of Red Cliffs was a famous battle in the history of the Three Kingdoms, in which the wise military strategy was praised by later generations. In this poster of Red Cliff, it is more solemn, simple, calm and restrained in the form of seal cutting, and this dignified temperament is in line with the contradictions and entanglements in the relationship between characters shown in the development of the film plot, such as humanity, honesty, love, power, ambition and brotherhood. These values appear at the same time and conflict with each other, so * * * has become such a historical drama with some tragic colors. The solemn and dignified temperament unique to the official script renders these just right.
regular script
The title of Lust, Caution directed by Ang Lee is based on regular script, and at the same time, it incorporates the traces of rubbings. Coupled with the application of plum red, it is full of lust without losing its literary temperament. The arrangement of ancient Chinese characters from right to left, combined with the typesetting combination of English and Xiao Zhuan, is more exquisite and international.
cursive script
The poster of "A Generation of Masters" directed by Wong Kar-wai is a master of artistic conception. In the rainy night, Ye Wen fought alone, posing behind the enemy, braking statically and relaxing to a certain extent, as if he were advancing, retreating, static and sharp. China's cursive script behind him as the background is smart, the brushwork is patchy, magnificent and unique, which is really more interesting in combination with the overall boundless atmosphere of the poster.
Semi-cursive/running/calligraphy (China's calligraphy)
The title of Mei Lanfang's movie poster is running script, and the brushwork is smooth, elegant and refined. It can be said that the story of Mr. Mei Lanfang with the quintessence of Peking Opera as the background is perfect. One is to express the elements of China, and the other is to embody Mr. Mei Lanfang's Peking Opera art and honest sentiment. Elegant and generous running script temperament is just right.
Song typeface
This poster of "The Thief of the Years" is written in Song style. Songti is the product of block printing, and it is a printing font. Song style is more standard and formal than the previous calligraphy fonts, but it also has its unique charm. The inscriptions in the posters have been artistically designed, which makes them have some characteristics of their own. First make mottled effects, such as rubbing marks, then use Mi Zige as background decoration, fill in color changes, and use vertical text typesetting to prop up the poster trunk. After a series of changes in line with the film style, the text is also very infectious, which is quite well combined with the film temperament.
Songti calligraphy
There are many changes in style, such as thick and thin, long and flat. The poster in the above picture is a thin song style, which is often used in book printing and can be called book song style. The thickness difference between horizontal and vertical is not too big, but it also has a special taste. Such a romantic movie, the hero and heroine look at each other in the picture, and the picture is warm. Traditional Chinese characters in Song style are used as the main theme, and then typesetting in other characters looks fresh and literary.
cursive script
The original handwriting always gives people a cordial feeling. Those years recalled the lush years of the campus. It is very appropriate to use handwritten handwriting as an inscription. A group of classmates and partners sat in rows on the high platform and spent their youth together. How are those years worth remembering? Handwriting, every stroke can't be copied, and every stroke touches the scene.
Design font
1. Zhiming and Chunjiao is the work of Peng Haoxiang, a Hong Kong geek director. It is a relaxed and innocent love movie. Peng Haoxiang, with his consistent humorous features, reveals romantic and pure characters' feelings in those seemingly random and irrelevant adult topics and hot and cold humor. Zhiming and Chunjiao is such a movie, and the movie poster is also so lightly graffiti, using some cartoon naughty fonts and bright colors, and in this relaxed atmosphere, it prints the unique style imprint of this movie.
Infernal Affairs series is the pinnacle of Hong Kong gangster films. Two young people were put into the police station and undercover with the underworld, which gave them a dual identity. They want to hide their true identity, gain the trust of their colleagues, and at the same time send information to their respective bosses. In this endless hell, they all want to leave as soon as possible, so a fierce battle began. In the poster, infernal affairs characters are outlined in the middle. The characters are like a maze, compact, conveying the confusion and difficulties of the endless world, and it is difficult to extricate themselves. At the same time, it is full of tension and conflict, giving people a feeling of instability. How does this font language fit such a movie?
3. The Painted Skin, known as China's first magical masterpiece of New Oriental, is not a movie fan, but I appreciate the font design in its poster. This is a work designed by a famous design company this morning. The word "painted skin" is traditional, the font feels sharp and vigorous, and the design is full. Coupled with the texture processing of the texture, it has both magical artistic conception and gothic horror, which conveys the film temperament well.
4. Jiang Wen's "Let Bullets Fly", according to the poster font, was created with "bullets" associated with the film's title elements. This is a common font design technique, and the key is how to relate it properly. In "Let Bullets Fly", the bullet passes through the font on the left, just using the strokes of the characters to connect, so that the cut font will not look awkward, but will have a sense of design and speed, coupled with the sharp deformation of the strokes, adding a sense of sharpness to the film.
Which focal plane can be called "a stroke of genius"? A truly excellent film will contain a lot of clever brushstrokes, and an excellent director will not make a film full of problems. We can see the problem, and so can the director. The reason why he shot like that may be to let people know and know something through this question. For example, The Shawshank Redemption, Let the Bullets Fly, The Grand Master and other movies. , contains a lot of clever strokes that are not known.
1, The Shawshank Redemption
In order to escape from prison, Shawshank posted a poster of a beautiful woman on the wall, and it was this poster that made him escape from prison successfully. But there seems to be a small BUG in this poster, that is, who posted it for Shawshank after he escaped from prison. So many people scold this movie, saying that it has an obvious BUG. However, this is not the case. When checking the poster, there is a shot from the inside out. As long as you look at this shot carefully, you will find that the poster is actually just pasted on it. It doesn't matter if no one puts up a poster for that man. This is the crowning touch, but unfortunately not many people watch movies attentively.
2. Let the bullets fly
When I first saw this movie, I thought it was the movie with the most bugs I had ever seen. Take Carina Lau as an example. When Mabond turned around for the first time on the train, someone tried to kiss Carina Lau, but Carina Lau slapped him. Here is a subtle close-up, which is a small BUG. Then there is the scene after Carina Lau's death, which is completely different from Carina Lau's own clothes. And looks, figure directly changed a person, this shot doesn't need a body body double, Jiang Wen actually brought a close-up to the camera. These scenes all contain profound meanings. Jiang Wen wants everyone to guess, and the sexual knowledge implied in the film is also a mystery.
3. the head of a generation
There is a fighting scene in the movie, in which Zhao Benshan hits Tony Leung Chiu Wai. After the fight, Zhao Benshan praised Tony Leung Chiu Wai for his talent. The reason is that during the tournament, he couldn't understand Zhao Benshan's routine, but blocked his opponent's attack in his own way. If you don't stop yourself, your eyes are likely to be blinded. There are some routines of tournament means. If you don't know them carefully, many people don't know that one of the tricks of this tournament is the finishing touch.