Quickie one-sheet movie poster?

September 30, 2009 1:35 PM

A film festival accepted my little short, and now I need to come up with a one-sheet movie poster really, really fast. But I don't know what this involves.

Just wondering, is this something I can whip on Photoshop and then have printed at Kinkos? Are there any short-cuts if I do so? I don't have time to send away to an Internet service for one. Any help much appreciated.

posted by Kirklander to media & arts (14 comments total)

Are they asking for a submission on paper, or just digital? I have never heard of a festival asking for people to mail them a paper poster, but stranger things have happened...
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:45 PM on September 30

How many are being printed? Are you the one responsible for having them printed? Do you have any other graphics programs other than Photoshop? InDesign is ideal but Illustrator would also work. If you don't know design, layout, and production, you might have a very sad pixelated poster. Did they send you the requirements?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 1:51 PM on September 30

Really, drjimmy? I worked for a film festival for five seasons, and we always seemed to solicit the filmmakers to provide posters (and other promotional material), either to be posted at the screening rooms or in the press office. Granted, this was a few years ago, before talkies, but still...
posted by Admiral Haddock at 1:55 PM on September 30

Congratulations! Don't worry about making it perfect, make it eye-catching & an honest representation of the film. A high-quality still from a memorable portion of the movie is a quick and effective way to go, and slap down the title in large, inoffensive type that contrasts with the background, and put your name & other relevant information at the bottom, tastefully. FedEx/Kinkos will usually do an adequate, if not good, job on most types of printing -- try not to use too much color, is my recommendation.
posted by Damn That Television at 2:13 PM on September 30

What Optimus Chyme said. Do you know what the specs are, when it's to be delivered and how it's to be delivered?

Short answer, yes, it's something you can whip up Photoshop pretty quickly, but you need to know how the file is going to be used, whether it'll be printed and at what size and by who.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:15 PM on September 30

I dunno, I could be wrong, but I was used to being asked to send "press materials" digitally. But, the festival's website will know this. And if not, email someone there and ask them what they suggest maybe?
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:22 PM on September 30

Awesome stuff. Just to ask, which country is the film festival taking place in? Poster sizes have standardised differently in different places.

Since you said one-sheet, and this is MeFi, I'm assuming it's a standard US one-sheet, which is 27"x40", which Kinkos bizarrely won't print. Your profile says you're in San Fran - I'd imagine you'd be able to find a surplus of excellent independent print shops around there. This one seems to have excellent feedback on Yelp.

Ideally, you'll be using higher-quality imagery than a film still. Do you happen any production stills from an on-set photographer? They'll typically be of a much higher resolution, which will translate into a higher-quality one-sheet.

Ideally, any photographs will be at a resolution of 300dpi for the printed size in order to come out looking awesome. It's entirely possible that you won't be able to manage that, especially if it was a low-budget short shot on a consumer camera, and you don't have any high-quality stills. In that case, the best you can do is to carefully enlarge what you do have. If you don't have any of the relevant software, you could probably get by in something like Paint.NET, though it's a bit fiddly.

If you don't want to deal with that, just ask some local print shops if they can whip something up
to your spec. It's not uncommon to have in-house graphic designers.

If you really can't get anywhere, mefi-mail me, and I'll see what I can do to help lay it out.
posted by Magnakai at 2:50 PM on September 30

Hey, thanks for all the great answers, which I very much appreciate. I'll have to check about the digital / printed issue. They asked for

# Three one-sheet movie posters (for display at the Launch Party)
# 300dpi electronic graphic files

But it's sort of ambiguous about whether those are the same thing and seems as if it's not.
posted by Kirklander at 3:18 PM on September 30

a 300 dpi raster poster designed in photoshop is overkill for a 27" x 40" poster (besides being unmanageable on a normal computer). Something around 150 makes *lots* more sense to me, with 1/4 of the data. Seconding finding a local print shop that can assist you.
posted by _dario at 3:53 PM on September 30

Say, Optimus: I know design but not production. Is there something I should know to make sure my 150 dpi poster doesn't come out looking bad?
posted by Kirklander at 5:46 PM on September 30

Hi Optimus, just noticed your other caution. If I use a high enough DPI on Photoshop, will it still come out pixely and sad? I don't know how to use Illustrator :(
posted by Kirklander at 6:04 PM on September 30

I mean, 150 dpi is okay, but it's just not going to be as crisp or sharp as if you were combining raster data (film stills, photographs) with vector data (text, shapes, etc). That's why dedicated layout programs exist. I use InDesign, but Scribus is open source and free. Illustrator will work as well, although it doesn't handle text as well or as elegantly.

I really, really think you should avoid doing the whole thing in Photoshop. Lynda.com has excellent tutorials on Illustrator and InDesign. The first few tutorials are free for most products; if you work with software of any kind for a living, a month of access is thirty bucks - it's the best thirty bucks you can spend. Huge, huge return on investment. You can learn enough to fake it in three hours, and I really think you'll be better off for it.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 12:41 AM on October 1

Thanks, O.C. I have Scribus and will see if I can't combine my existing Photoshop design with vector fonts. I assume it is sort of like the ancient Pagemaker/Quark software that I used to use in the 1990s.
posted by Kirklander at 3:07 PM on October 1

Awesome idea, I forgot about Scribus. If you knew how to wrangle Quark, then you should be able to get a grip on things. Good luck!
posted by Magnakai at 6:16 PM on October 1