Planning for Posters

 Planning

The idea for my documentary is a true crime documentary that focuses on the case of a cannibal and serial killer that terrorises the North County. My documentary will appeal to my target audience through the use of a classic, recognisable true crime format as well as For my billboard posters, I took inspiration from recognisable true crime posters that feature dark colour palettes, people, usually suspects or victims, as the main images and overall themes of dark crimes. For one of my posters, I want a corkboard with images of the victim on it connected by red string. This is a classic and recognisable trope in a lot of true crime media, and I want to take inspiration from it. I also want to include a prop such as crime scene evidence tape to make it recognisable and familiar to audiences watching. In the poster, I want the evidence tape to be a bright yellow while the suspect behind it is in black and white, to show the hiding of identities and the bright yellow to symbolise madness and obsession. Although yellow is often used to symbolise happiness and joy, it can also be used for a negative reason depending on the context of the scene. Another poster style I want to imitate is multi person poster. These kinds of posters can be great for establishing key characters and archetypes in documentaries. For my poster, I want 2 detective/ police type characters in the foreground while a suspect character is in the background. The suspect character would ideally be concealed by shadows or have their identity hidden in some way. I want this hidden identity to be a theme for the criminal character across all my posters, to add mystery and interest for the audience. My audience should be able to pick up on these themes of mystery and a hidden identity due to its prevalence throughout my posters.  

Unused Ideas 

Some ideas that I had while coming up with my documentary that I didn’t end up using where having a female killer, I ended up changing this as I wanted to appeal more to traditional true crime, knowing that an audience would be more familiar and therefore more drawn to it. Another idea that I wanted to use but ended up scrapping was using multiple suspects. I dropped this idea because I thought it would be too complicated to accurately portray in only 4 posters and I didn’t want to confuse my audience and possibly push them away from watching my documentary all together. 

Rough mock up Posters 

These are rough poster ideas I made before creating the actual posters, I had all of my ideas planned out and knew what I wanted to do with them so I decided to create these to get a visual idea as well. 

Used and Unused Photos 

This is a collection of photos I took for my posters, including ones I used in the posters and some I did not use. The main reason for not using some of these photos is often due to lighting, me not liking the position of the camera or because my model couldn't keep a straight face and stay professional. I admit it was difficult for her and I admire her composure through most of it.