I worked alongside screenwriter Sam Pollination to come up with a short film that showcases several movie genres and is connected through one actor, Phillip Sawyer, who is being interviewed about his most well-known roles. Our movie was acted and edited by Sam, co-written and co-directed by the two of us, and I handled the filming and developing a visual identity. Neither of us had made a short film before, so we didn't have many tools at our disposal; however, we both knew we wanted to subvert the audience's expectations and use our expertise to bring this project to life.
For the first phase of designing for our short film, I worked on creating film posters for our fake films that Philip would have starred in. Snakes, Ladders and Highways is a movie in the same vein as Dude, Where's My Car, but for its poster, I drew inspiration from old posters such as Planet of the Apes to establish how a movie could gain a cult following from a captivating poster. Our film, In Too Deep, was our version of a detective thriller with horror elements, and I leaned into the horror with the distorted imagery (mirroring the underwater murder within the film) and the striking colours. Finally, Fallen Petals was the most grounded of our three mini films, and I wanted the poster to present itself as quite simplistic, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Since the movie presents like an online interview, it was crucial to establish a visual identity for the company that would be interviewing Philip Sawyer. Sam and I both settled on the name, and I moved forward, deciding on typefaces for the logo and how I could design the logo. It needed to be a believable logomark, as it would appear on all the title cards. Gibson had a nice roundness to its type, and despite the name, I didn't want a fully square logo, which is how the logos underneath came about. Purple stuck out to me, and that colour became the throughline for the brand from the logo to the pop of colour on the thumbnail.
Thumbnail photo for movie - Influenced by YouTube GQ Thumbnails
To continue Phillip's story and flesh out the movie, I created a magazine article which exposed Phillip Sawyer's actions from his hometown to his first movie to events during the pandemic to create depth to the actor that Sam and I created and then mocked up my article. It was tremendous to really delve into this mini world and use real-world inspiration of actors who become insufferable when the cameras stop rolling.
If you want to check out our short film, click right here