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During the epidemic last year, large and small theaters have closed, and the cinema films that were previously taken for granted are now a luxury and more cherished. This article is selected from an article published by Qi Guanqi in Reading Library 2001, reviewing the movie posters of the past two years.
Whether they like or dislike a movie, everyone knows its poster, and everyone can choose their favorite ones. However, when it comes to movie posters, the routines and doorways in them may not be clear to everyone.
As an indispensable part of the promotional materials, a successful movie poster allows you to recognize the genre attributes and story line of the film to which it belongs at a glance, and the text on it can also strengthen the understanding of the picture, and ultimately play an unexpected publicity effect. Even, collecting movie posters has long been popular.
However, under the market demand and fast food culture, the design of movie posters also has its own routine. A French blogger named Christophe Courtois once showed netizens the various routines of Hollywood movie posters, and now the poster design of Chinese films has also been well understood.
Therefore, what is the genre property of the movie, just take it and apply it. In order to save money, some publicity companies often use film stills, not to mention any sense of design.
Big eyes are generally horror, thrillers.
Back-to-back is mostly lovers or partners.
The bottom of the thigh must be related to beauty and love.
In the early years, when many Chinese-language films were close to being released, film companies began to plan to make movie posters, which always had the meaning of piercing their ears and eyes before they were on the palanquin. As we all know, poster design also needs overall planning, whether it is creative or shooting requirements are their own system.
With the public's increasing attention to movie posters, movie posters play an increasingly significant role in publicity and marketing, such as the ink poster and penfront poster of "Golden Age", which have triggered heated discussions among netizens.
Left: Splashed ink poster for The Golden Age;
Right: The pen-sharp poster for The Golden Age.
Nowadays, new media are widely used, and the countdown posters and box office posters have also come into being, and poster publicity plays an increasingly important role today, such as a series of dynamic countdown posters launched by "Hong Kong 囧", which is such an example.
In addition to poster design companies, there are now many illustrators and concept designers who have joined this camp, and the cooperation between poster companies and painters has been particularly obvious in recent years.
For example, the pilot posters of "To Catch a Demon", "Big Fish and Begonias", "Daughter Country", "Qimen Dunjia", "The Great Protector" and "The Demon Child of Nezha" are mostly integrated into the traditional Chinese watercolor painting style, and the style is clear at a glance.
My favorite poster should be able to fit the tone of the film, preferably with design ingenuity, not just good-looking, not too routine.
In recent years, the posters of niche literary and art films often have the heart of design in them, and the good design of commercial films is still reflected in the pilot posters.
In general, the lead poster of a movie is better than the official poster, because the lead poster is often designed at the beginning of the film, or when it is still filming, and it is more artistic, and can point to the theme through a metaphorical concept, which is better than the official posters piled up by star headshots, which is an "invariable law".
So, in the past 2018 and 2019, what are the excellent poster designs for Chinese films? Here are my options:
Poster for the international edition of Balloons
The "international version of the poster" of "Balloon" comes from Du Fengsong Studio. He has designed a number of movie posters for director Jia Zhangke before, including some posters of "Three Gorges Good Man", "Destiny of Heaven" and "Mountains and Rivers of the Past", I believe everyone is very impressed.
This poster seems simple, but it is better than the idea. The film tells the story of the protagonist Dajie's family, who are involved in a series of embarrassing and difficult to choose events because of an ordinary condom. The balloon is a metaphor in the film, and finally settles in the beliefs and conflicts in Tibetan areas.
The poster uses Dajie to buy a red balloon for the child from the county seat, tied to the rearview mirror of the motorcycle as the main composition, behind which stands a wife like a virgin, and the misplaced balloon becomes her pregnant belly. The balloon itself is a broken object, which also corresponds to the choice between the heroine's "Abba's undead" and "the child's stay". Therefore, this poster is superior in both theme and aesthetics.
Concept poster for The Party at South Station
"The Party at South Station", an extremely stylized film noir, its first "concept version poster" uses the male protagonist Zhou Zenong riding a motorcycle through the rainy night, and the main visual adopts the main aesthetic labels of the film - neon artificial light, expressionist shadow and rainy night.
Under the wash of the rain, the ground sparkles, and the neon lights hit the ground like blood, as if you can directly feel the bloody violence in the film. The oncoming raindrops make the ending of the film clear - No matter how hard Zhou Zenong tries, he can't escape this wild goose lake.
Notice that wrapped around him was the silhouette of a woman, and notice the silhouette of the woman, whose raindrops were actually cactus thorns, the mysterious and dangerous snake and scorpion woman in the standard film noir.
"Siberian Tiger" poster
The "poster" of "Siberian Tiger" is particularly eye-catching, and the design comes from the culture of shallow onions. A huge, dilapidated industrial mess, with the ruggedness of a thick northeastern post-industry. The style is reminiscent of the architectural design of Hugh Ferriss, an artist who designed the german classic silent film Metropolis (1927). Two men crouched next to a dead dog, looking utterly absurd.
We can observe that there are still a lot of details hidden in the industrial building behind, which are expressed in rare vivid colors:
A man in a wheelchair on the fifth floor, a Siberian tiger lying on his side on the sixth floor;
The pregnant woman stood on the stairs, staring at the two men in front of her;
There is a huge "demolition" word on the roof, and on the right is a character poster of the film;
The man in the window on the fifth floor on the right;
In the lower left corner, the words "There is a tiger surname Xu Mingdong in the northeast", on the right is another character poster, and the telephone pole seems to be Zhang Yu's poem...
The amount of information is too large, due to the small size, light color and not to be noisy, this poster is a lot of effort at a glance.
The secret visitor finale poster
The "fixed poster" of "Secret Visitor" is actually a design work released by Guliguo Studio in 2020. This poster uses a bird's-eye view, corresponding to the "basement of a sweet family of four" where the film takes place. A rectangular dining table is placed in the center of the picture, and five people sit in a row around it.
It looks like a dining table, but it is actually a tetrahedral contradictory space, and the angle and position of each character are completely different. The rift above may have been a "sweet balance break" in the family, but the design collided with the poster for the second season of the American drama "Battle of Succession".
This table can also be regarded as a door, after all, the character played by Duan Yihong is a secret visitor who breaks into the family, note that he is the only one sitting on the table.
And the little boy may be the one who knows the whole answer or the narrator of the story, because he is the only one who appears in the full body and has his back to everyone, and the door (or this table) becomes the baffle of the piano here. Everyone seems to be pregnant with a ghost, but we can find that everyone's perspective is unified, and the secrets contained in them are fascinating.
"Beneficiary" final poster
The theme of "Beneficiary" is "The Beautiful Marriage Promoted by Lies", and this poster uses the moment when the hero and heroine Wu Hai and Yue Miaomiao take wedding photos. If you only look at the characters and background scenes in the wedding photos, it must be a beautiful scene, but through this poster you can find that the camera is surrounded by illusions and darkness, and the sea water (corresponding to the end scene of the film) flows out of the bucket and bottle, suggesting the illusion of being wrapped in lies.
Inside the canvas is dynamic—Wu Hai's soaring in the air, Yue Miaomiao's dancing wedding dress, the flow of the tide, the dancing pigeons and the white clouds in the distance; outside the canvas is a dead silence—dark lights, broken glass, broken sofas, overturned buckets and wine bottles, unsealed mops, etc., also hinting at the illusion of being wrapped in lies.
The color palette of this poster is very critical, and the canvas is all bright colors, and the dark tones of the night scene are outside the canvas.
The overall material of "The Beneficiary" is actually very prominent, and the culture of shallow onions is really outstanding among the rising stars of poster design.
Hand-painted poster of the realistic version of Spirited Away
This hand-painted poster of the domestic release version of Spirited Away was designed by Waseda, and is particularly commendable in terms of composition, line drawings, and coloring. If you've seen Waseda's Weibo, you know how hard and laborious this poster is.
First the sketches were conceived, then the watercolor coloring, and then I tried to cover the original watercolor with heavy gouache because I wanted to change the color.
The official computer color grading was also carried out, making it into two different versions - "Dream Version" and "Reality Version", the layout and color are very comfortable. Chihiro rides the white dragon through the marshmallows and looks very soft.
The caption of the Dream Edition reads: "I'm so happy to meet you in this world!" ”
The caption of the realistic version reads: "You can only be sent here, and you have to go the rest of the way." ”
Hand-painted poster of the Dream Edition of Spirited Away
Sketch of a Spirited Away poster
Manslaughter trailer poster
Left: "Manslaughter" "Graffiti" poster;
Right: Poster of the "Manslaughter" version of the "Water Falling Out".
I like the earliest problem juvenile "graffiti" poster of "Manslaughter", but I love the trailer poster more, and the creativity and design come from "Yoko". This perfect interpretation of the protagonist Li Weijie with more than a thousand films read, the use of "editing" and "montage" to form a complete chain of evidence statement.
The designer turned the film into a bridge, and the yellow car of the rich family was about to fall into a situation of doom. In terms of visual imagery, it can be regarded as the ending of the plot of the rich children, and it can also be regarded as the psychological fall of the protagonist. This poster later launched a more complete version, which can be described as "falling out of the water", but it is obviously not as concentrated and prominent as the partial version.
A major trend of poster design in 2019 (including foreign countries) is also to like to use the local belt as a whole to launch two posters.
"Eight Hundred" international edition poster
The poster of the international version of "Eight Hundred" by the famous designer Huang Hai selects the image of a single-horse warrior in the traditional Chinese national shadow puppet play, the shadow screen is a map of China in 1937, you can see Shaanxi, Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong and Taiwan, a blood stain pointed directly to Shanghai, that is, the last battle of the Battle of Songhu depicted in the film - the Battle of Shanghai Sihang Warehouse.
This smear of blood also corresponds to the lonely loyalty expressed in the trailer of "vowing to solidify my land with my life".
At the same time, shadow puppetry is for spectators to appreciate, and the Four-Line Warehouse Defense Battle is a battle that is "watched". The Sihang Warehouse was located on the north bank of the Suzhou River, and the south bank was the public concession at that time, so every step of the battle was clearly seen on the other side of the river and the whole world, as if watching a shadow puppet play.
The joystick behind the shadow puppet symbolizes the lone battle of the eight hundred heroes united as one, which is really an ingenious design.
The main visual poster of the 22nd Shanghai International Film Festival
Poster of The Secret of the Book of Kells
The main visual poster of the 22nd Shanghai International Film Festival is themed "Chuangsheng Vientiane, Behind the Scenes is King". This "king behind the scenes" is in place, Sun Wukong shows a face in the water curtain cave, and the children practice it.
This main visual poster can be seen to combine two elements, and its main inspiration must be the picture of the monkeys rolling up the water curtain hole in "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" (1961), which has been deeply rooted in people's hearts; The second is probably the poster for The Secret of Kells (2009).
Many netizens shouted that the poster of this film festival finally did not use the golden knight, but is this really the case? The advantage of this poster is that it integrates various geometries and re-optimizes the combination, so that the central composition is still a golden knight, which is the cleverness of the Yellow Sea design.
Official poster of "I Am Not a Medicine God"
Right: "I am not a medicine god" pilot concept poster;
Left: Poster for the "Phoenix Flying" version of X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
"I Am Not a Medicine God" This "around the Buddha's WTO version poster" refers to the design elements of the Indian mural, in the center of the mural is an Indian Buddha statue with a twisted capsule, the Buddha silently stares forward with a compassionate gaze, and the clothes are gorgeous and colorful. Because of the emphasis on the sense of frescoes, deliberately old.
In addition to Buddhist themes, Indian murals originally had secular scenes. The five protagonists in this film surround the Buddha statue in a sitting position and surround Xu Zheng on Monday, and the two balance the left and right pictures like scales, paying attention to the overall picture balance. Monday's eyes did not fall on each other's eyes, suggesting a difference in their positions.
One of the trends in poster design in the past two years is that the overlap of design is relatively high, such as mural-style posters have appeared in many models. Foreign media Indie Wire selected the "2019 Best Movie Poster Top 30", including a Chinese mainland promotional poster of "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", which shows that this Kind of Chinese style poster is popular with foreigners.
Trailer poster for A Good Drama
The four hand-drawn posters of "A Good Drama" are tall buildings, oceans, islands and woods, which constitute the four acts of the plot, and the main plot can also be found in the poster.
There are stories in every corner, and when looking at the poster, we wonder where it will take our eyes.
This design is a common illustration style in many journals, and in recent years, it has been increasingly used in the promotional materials of films.
"A Good Drama" also launched a number of posters of different styles, such as the character posters drawn by Qiu Jiongjiong and the hand-drawn posters drawn by Liu Jian, all of which have their own styles.
Qiu Jiongjiong's "A Good Drama" character poster
Liu Jian's hand-painted poster of "A Good Drama"
"Evil Does Not Pressure righteousness" trailer poster
The trailer poster of "Evil Does Not Pressure the Righteous" is quite in line with the artistic conception of the original novel "Xia Yin", and the roof of Beiping City has become the main activity venue of the male protagonist Li Tian, and even constitutes his unique perspective on the ancient city.
"Roof" is an element of all the posters of "Evil Does Not Oppress Righteousness", and this poster also takes place on the roof. It also highlights the cold, oppressive hues of the sky, bringing out the tightness of the situation in Peiping.
The flying pigeons are more imposing, and if you look closely, there is a person with a cornice walking in the middle of the pigeon flock, invisible in the pigeon flock, confusing the public. The flying pigeon is also a prop to convey information in the film, which plays an important role in the plot.
"The Richest Man in Xihong" teaser poster
Poster of Brewster's Million Dollar Windfall
Not only is "The Richest Man in West Hong" a remake of the 1980s American film Brewster's Millions (1985), but the concept of this character scene poster is also taken from the main poster of the original film.
It's just that "Brewster's Million Windfall" is the protagonist emerging from the US dollar pile, and "The Richest Man in Xihong" is bound by the pattern of the renminbi (the plum blossom under the one hundred circle), as if caught in the mud, catering to the protagonist's theme of "spending money and worrying".
It even extends to two more.
Destiny Express pilot poster
A poster designed using optical illusions
The pilot poster for Destiny Express adopts the concept of Escher's classic painting Up and Down, an endless staircase that goes up and down, and uses illusion graphics to create a loop in which the character is placed.
This compositional design poster is also not new, including Nightatthe Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014) and The Cabin in the Woods (2012). However, its texture is still superior, better than the "Animal World" poster that uses the same concept.
"The Road Not Chosen" final poster
Yue Minjun's "Skin" series of paintings
The poster "The Road Not Chosen" was chosen because it was painted by artist Yue Minjun, who is known for his "Smiley Face Man" symbol, and continues his "Skin" series of paintings, which belong to the artistic design of the old bank.
The "Skin" series is to write the inner heart of the character on the face to bring out the inner state of the character, and these lines connect the three characters with very different personalities in the film.
Artists dabbling in hand-drawn posters is a good phenomenon, and I am more impressed by Liu Yifu's "Liu LianXu" poster, Zhang Xiaogang's "Blood" series of "Sunflower" posters, Yue Minjun's "Smiley Face" series of "Golden Robbery" posters, Zhou Chunya's "Dumplings" poster, Fang Lijun's "Flying" and "Bald Head" theme "Peacock" posters, Liu Yilan's self-imaged "Blood Guanyin" posters, and so on.
Official poster for The Last Night on Earth
After watching "The Last Night of the Earth", you know that the male protagonist Luo Hongwu is entangled in a nightmare. In this poster, he lies on his side on an old mattress and appears to have fallen into a coma. The heroine, Wan Qiwen, sits on the edge of the bed with long hair hidden, and the gun behind her hints at her complicated relationship with him.
Underneath the bed is a swirling swirling pattern that you can see as the inner world of the male protagonist or his nightmare, and it also refers to the rotating house. This swirl coincides with the psychedelic color of the film.
Wan Qiwen's beautiful green dress looks very jumpy in this almost monochromatic dim scene, and the Chinese and English titles are superimposed on the mattress in two colors, and the proportions of the composition are moderate.
Official poster of Shadow
Poster of the international edition of Wind Whisperer. Hand-painted poster of "Living Together in Time".
Since Huang Hai introduced ink elements into the posters of the Golden Age, ink posters have become more and more popular, including the concept poster of Zhang Yimou's "Return".
"Shadow" adopts the ink style treatment form in the visual aspect of the main film. Its poster is more suitable for ink painting, and the designer also puts "yin and yang" into it in line with the plot.
The sticks and umbrellas in the hands of the two Deng Chao, one long and one short, were freely waved in the yin and yang like compasses. In addition to yin and yang is a bamboo raft boat, which also corresponds to the scene setting in the movie, which has a traditional Chinese charm.
Both Shadow and The Last Night on Earth use a "whirlpool" or "spiral" composition as a background, which is also a common feature of poster design in the past two years.
"Thief Family" Chinese custom version poster
The "Hope Is Not Gone" theme poster of "Thief Family" uses a Japanese ukiyo-e style background to recreate the scene of this unrelated family frolicking by the sea. This is exactly the perspective of Grandma, who silently says "Thank you", which is touching.
The poster holds up an umbrella for this shot, suggesting that the family is in the house where Grandma is sheltered, and happiness is only a moment, and the family relationship after Grandma's death confirms the old saying: "The tree falls and scatters." ”
However, I still think that its picture content is too full, and it may be better if the upper and lower waves are removed.
Poster of the international edition of "Yunshui"
"Yun Shui" is a film participating in the film festival and has not yet been released. This "international version of the poster" is quite freehand, the first thing that catches the eye is the cursive font title "Yunshui", and the director's name is presented in the form of a seal drop, and the style is unified. It is rare to see a poster with the title as the main visual, and this poster is indeed eye-catching.
The only character, Yunshui Monk, is under the title, blindfolded, feeling the simplicity and tranquility of the ink world, and the composition and style are unified.
The Wandering Earth pilot poster
Although "The Wandering Earth" is a 2019 film, this "pilot poster" was launched in 2018 and was designed by Guliguo Studio. The poster is like a hollowed-out, dilapidated book, which contains an introduction to the major planets, but the earth is not seen, so where does the earth go? Wander away.
This design also carries a mood of exploring the mysteries of the universe.
The whole picture looks three-dimensional. Sharp-eyed friends can see that there is actually text in the depths of the hollowed-out part, and after enlarging, they find that it is actually a line of text from the original novel, making this poster seem to become the cover of a novel.
Totoro Chinese version poster
The Chinese version of the poster designed by Huang Hai for the re-release of "Totoro" adopts a bird's-eye view, and the two sisters are looking for something in a field of thatch, which at first glance is thatch, but it is actually the belly of totoro.
Totoro does not appear in the movie much, but it is the soul of the whole film, and this poster is quite in line with the spirit of the original film, which is really ingenious. This poster has also received considerable high praise in Japan.
Poster of the international edition of Ingles
Although "Inglis" has not yet been released, this "international version of the poster" has long attracted attention. The Zhongshan suit and the words "There is only one kind of heroism in the world" on the poster outline the atmosphere of the times and the theme of the story.
I still like the movie poster where the artist's interpretation matches the style of the film. Zhongshan costume is a common dress for male characters in the film, and the Zhongshan costume wearing a red scarf in the poster comes from the famous work "Zhongshan Suit" by sculptor Sui Jianguo, and the artist uses sculpture as a medium to complete the shaping of the Chinese spirit.
The phrase in the poster comes from Roman Rolland's Biography of Michelangelo: "There is only one true heroism in the world, and that is to love life after recognizing the truth of life." ”
Trailer poster for Passing the Future
The central axis of the poster "Passing the Future" is not messed up, it makes the tall building in the shadow form a sense of oppression on the narrow gap that shines through the dawn in the middle.
It seems that the gap is needle-shaped, and the male protagonist played by Yin Fang, the head of the drug test in the film, is in the high position of the syringe, and he poses condescending to the drug tester. As a member of the "Medicine TestEr", the heroine is at the bottom of the needle's eye, representing survival in the noisy city, such a design can be described as a sharp point.
The pilot poster of "A-Ma Is a City"
This is also a good design, because the story focuses on the emotional story of the female "stacked code boy" and the three male gamblers in the Macau casino, and this minimalist poster includes red lips, love and gambling cards, simple but not simple.