The Birds/Double Take: An Alfred Hitchcock Themed Double Feature

So this is the last poster for the 2010/2011 season for the Calgary Cinematheque, and it is a double feature for "The Birds" and a film called "Double Take". Double Take is an interesting film based on an incident that happened to Mr. Hitchcock while he was filming the movie "The Birds", in which he apparently saw his doppleganger and states that if you see your double you should kill them - there's a lot more to it than that, you'll just have to read the reviews. I decided to treat each film with their own poster and then bridge them with an image of the master - plus the middle section was a good place to put all that text.  The movies play on May 19th at the Plaza in Calgary.

So with the whole "kill your double" in mind, I could think of no better image for "Double Take" than to have Hitch as the target. I played around with several different ideas, one of which was a Rorschach test that would include every murder weapon found in a Hitchcock film - but this image was one that worked the best, and it was the one I could visualize completely. For the title I wanted to pay homage to James Bond (don't ask me why, in my head it made sense) by having the title treated in a similar fashion to the movie "You Only Live Twice" (that poster has an illustration by the great Robert McGinnis). For the record I think this would also be pretty cool to print up about a hundred leaflets and spread them everywhere. I could even see a whole construction site plastered with these.

The image for "The Birds" is pretty straightforward, I wanted to play off of the classic Hitchcock silhouette for the raven image, and the black area was a perfect spot to have the frightened Tippi. I did add something that one might not notice on a web sized image -I put the scene of the bird covered playground in the raven's eye.

It's been a fun run and I have had the opportunity to watch, or in some cases re-watch, some great films. I have also had a lot of fun experimenting with some design and illustration styles that I never seem to get the opportunity to try out very often.