Reel Film Buff Festival
This personal prospective project is based on my love for film and the strange and wonderful world of conspiracy theories. The Mandela effect is something I have been aware of for sometime and I wanted to explore its direct correlation to movie quotes.
The Mandela Effect is when a significant number of people share a collective false memory. The phenomena was dubbed "the Mandela effect" by self-described "paranormal consultant" Fiona Broome, in reference to her false memory of the death of South African anti-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in prison in the 1980s (he actually died in 2013)
How does this relate to film? Well, many famous movie lines are mis-quoted, for example in the 1975 film "Jaws” the line supposedly delivered by Sheriff Brody when he catches sight of the giant shark is “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” but most people get the quote wrong. In reality it's “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”
The Reel Film Buff Festival invites you to revisit your favourite films as you never remembered them.
The festival requires poster designs to be used as A3 advertisement pieces for the prospective festival. Each has added copy which includes the tagline for the event and a little info about the film itself and the Mandela Effect. Also created were postcards, ticket designs and mock ups for merchandise such as tote bags.
The main challenge was to see how I could creatively alter the quote on the design and symbolise the movies core themes and imagery.
The Reel Film Buff Festival invites you to revisit your favourite films as you never remembered them.
I wanted to create a name that would play to the theme of the Film Festival. ‘Reel’ could be used in place of ‘real’ as it directly relates to cinema as well as the concept of showing the ‘real’ movie line. I also enjoyed the words ‘Film Buff’ and envisioned the word ‘buff’ in a more literal term of buffing out something that is there in error or needs to removed.
For the final concept I settled on using film reel imagery to create a simple logo mark. I thought this image/logo mark can be ‘unrolled’ and expanded upon throughout the promotional material and branding of the project, ie. I can ‘unravel’ it or use its shape in different forms to highlight or separate different information, words, phrases and imagery as well as use it to physically frame and contain element, just like a movie screen or camera lens.
Casablanca, 1942
People seem to clearly remember Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick saying, “Play it again, Sam” from Hollywood classic Casablanca. The truth is that this line was never spoken. However, Ingrid Bergman’s character Elsa does says, “Play it, Sam. Play, As Time Goes By”
For my poster design I kept coming back to the strong image of piano keys. This imagery directly references the film, the music and a memory of a time and place perfectly.
Jaws, 1975
For Jaws, I looked at some rather gruesome tearing, sinking and bite mark effects to change the quote. I wanted it to really evoke the feeling of the word being ripped apart by an animal. The goal was to make this poster design fill the viewer with dread and unease.
I purposefully chose to leave out any shark imagery as I think this echoes the movie perfectly, in that you do not see the shark until the very end, yet you can still instantly recognise the film.
Dirty Harry, 1971
In Clint Eastwood's 1971 movie Dirty Harry, he points his gun at a criminal and asks "Do you feel lucky, punk?"...or does he? In fact the line is “Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”
In the film when the famous quote is uttered out loud we get an ominous pan of Harry moving towards the criminal with his gun reflected on the concrete pavement. It’s very effective and creates suspense in the moment.
For my concept I re-created this moment using the shadow of a toy gun against the typography. (not the perfect match to the movie, but close enough) the shadow of the gun against the type works really well at creating the right atmosphere and again has that connotation with the theme and main character of the movie.
The cut out, organic looking orange type contrasts against the other words to highlight that they have been added into the quote to ‘correct’ it
Many of these concepts I drew inspiration from one of my favourite graphic design heroes, Saul Bass and his fantastic movie titles sequences and poster designs.
Star Wars, 1980
Probably one of the most famous scenes in all of cinema occurs in 1980’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader gives a very memorable and startling confession stating “Luke, I am your Father”. However, in reality he says, “No, I am your father.”
For this concept I considered light sabers but in the end settled on the Darth Vader mask as the core imagery as it creates a little ominous energy to the poster and evokes the theme of the quote perfectly.
I wanted to make sure that colour (specifically red) was a focal point for this design, to create a feeling of alert, evil, danger and also to correlate to Darth Vader’s lightsaber. I had two core designs that I was torn between, but in my final design I made colour the clear focus and contrasted the red by having ‘Luke’ appear in green to mimic his good side and his light saber. (which I was unsure if was green or blue, turns out he had both colours but acquires the green after losing his original in his battle with Darth Vader
Ticket Stubs
By incorporating elements of the brand mark into the merchandise and tickets, extending the brand mark to highlight information. I used imagery I had created for the posters to add some consistency to the overall feel of the designs and of the festival. I decided to use a simplified version of the posters, instead focusing on the colours to symbolise each movie in order to ensure information was clear and legible for its purpose.
I also wanted this physical ticket to work digitally and so there is a QR code stub that the customer can keep to reach the website or app/digital ticket for each film.
I imagined that this would be a long foldable ticket and that it would give the customer a mini print or peel-able sticker for them to keep with the movie quote on it.
