Homework #5

Dustin Stanton is like every other designer. He creates art, looks at it, and sees if he needs to improve upon it. We all have these moments, especially when we are making it for something big like a movie, contest, or show. Stanton has created movie posters for movies like "Magnolia", "There Will Be Blood", and "The Master". Many things we worry about in design as artists is how good the final product is. We always search for advice on how to make it better or how to get our point across to the audience. For "The Master", he wanted to connect the major elements in it, like the ocean and toxic liquids, into the teaser poster. This created the bottle poster. It shows the director's name, title, the cast, and the year all inside a bottle. It was simple, but also complex and helped the audience have an idea of what the movie was about. As designers, we always have a problem deciding what to use. Stanton created many poster designs for "Magnolia". While they were not used for the final poster, they were used for the DVD/Blu-ray covers. In other words, there will always be a use for everything we create. Scraping everything can be a big waste when it can be used later on or when we want to return to that idea. Stanton has created so many movie posters that all have different designs. If you made an action/horror poster for a love story, this may confuse the audience or even anger them. Good design comes from good communication and understanding what it is for. Another thing that Stanton states is that a teaser poster and the final poster are two different entities. "Teasers have an entirely different job to do than the final poster. When you get a wedding invite in the mail, you don't want to know what they're serving for dinner or exactly what the bride's dress looks like... you just want to know that you're invited to this great party." Posters are not meant to spoil the entire movie. Teasers are made to make you get pumped up for it and interested. The final is made to make you think about the story. That is what I have learned by reading this article.