Screwdriver – A Closer Look at Creating the Poster
Birch+Wolf specializes in branding and creating unique identities for small businesses and startups that stand out in the crowd. When we were approached by The Primal Group to create a poster for a short film (or “one sheet” as they call it in the biz), our obvious response was…YES! We have worked with them in the past by creating their logo. The Primal Group coming back to us says a lot about their trust in our abilities. In addition to creating identities we strive to build long lasting relationships with our clients.
Research is always the place where we start our process. Watching the short film first seemed obvious. The film “Screwdriver” is directed by Michael Bachochin. Michael has an incredible ability to pair drama and cinematography. In short without giving anything away, “a brother and sister get more than they bargained for when a petty breaking and entering job goes horribly wrong”. The poster needed to embrace that synopsis with the focus being on the sister (played by Bailee MyKell Cowperthwaite) who gives an incredibly intense performance. On an interesting side note, Bailee manages to find herself in a threesome with Johnny Depp in Marilyn Manson’s “Kill4Me” music video.
Before diving into the imagery we put together the font. The title font for any film should abstractly tell story. After watching the film, you should be able to look at the font and feel the connection to the story. Screwdriver starts out organized then becomes chaotic and the merged font reflects that.
Locating the image to use for the poster proved to be a little more difficult. First we needed to find a still shot from the short film. That’s not always an easy task with movement and screenshots do not provide the same quality as a photograph. After narrowing down to several shots we kept coming back to a specific profile shot of Bailee. She has an intense expression on her face and the perfect tear starting to roll down. The problem with the image was how dark the shot was. It works and looks perfect in the film but not so much for a poster that you want to stand out from across the room.
After some editing magic we were able to pull enough information to make the photo look good. We were also able to create a strong contrast making for a powerful black and white image. Michael suggested the repetitive text for the tagline of the film, “accidents will happen, but family is forever”. This gives off the sense of saying something over and over with the idea of making it true. Finally, we mixed all of the elements together to create a bold “one sheet” for the short film Screwdriver.
