The Passenger

This poster marks the last one I will be doing for the Calgary Cinematheque. I've been doing them for two seasons now and I think I need to let someone else have a turn. It's been fun and the movies have been interesting. A lot of them I had seen before and some I never would have thought to watch.


The Passenger is a fascinating film in which a man wants to escape the frustrations of his own life and he is given the opportunity to do so. A real "be careful what you wish for" kind of film.

The best part, it was an opportunity for me to illustrate a Jack Nicholson film.

L. O. L. A.

My latest poster for the upcoming Cinematheque presentation of Lola. I was immediately struck by the vivid color in the film and I tried to capture that feeling within the poster.

This is NOT a Film

I have not seen this (not a) film yet but the synopsis of it sounds fascinating. The director Jafar Panahi, at one time, made a film that his government deemed offensive propaganda against the Islamic Republic and he has been banned, for 20 years, from making films because of it. So This Is Not A Film is about his plans for another film.

I wanted to showcase the fact that his mind is free and although trapped in the confines of his own home politics won't stop him from creating.

I'm happy with the end result. I've been drawing on designers, illustrators and painters who have had an influence on me and this is my tip of the hat to René Magritte. I suppose the title helped to lead me in that direction ( his Treachery of Images painting has always made me smile) but I like to think I would have gotten there of my own accord.

Belle De Jour

The Calgary Cinematheque is presenting Belle De Jour on the 4th of February (and later on the 9th). I decided to try and channel the great Robert McGinnis on this one (with his slight elongation of the female form), since I was dealing with the stunning Catherine Denuve I thought this approach would be a good direction. I think I did alright. I only hope I did the film justice.

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.

Solaris

My latest poster design for the Calgary Cinematheque is for the movie Solaris, by Andrei Tarkovsky. A fascinating film that starts off a little slow but it does hook you. I've linked to the IMDB page so I won't bore you with the plot details, but I will say it uses science fiction to full effect, much like  2001: A Space Odyssey did before it, making it worth seeing and talking about.

I had been tempted to watch it for a number of years (the local library has several copies of the Criterion Collection version) but until I worked on the poster I didn't see it – I think it was the Russian subtitles that may have given me pause, but that's probably just an excuse. I had watched the George Clooney version, directed by Steven Soderbergh (I've been a fan of his since Kafka), and found it to be an outstanding movie. It doesn't have the trappings of a lot of contemporary science fiction, but I liked it anyway. It's a thought provoking film that will have you talking about it long after you've finished watching it.

I wanted the poster to have a sense of zero gravity, and a feeling of "things aren't as they seem".

Cruel Story of Youth Part Deux

Well, I got censored. I totally understand why, the whole depiction of violence against women. I get it. The thing is the whole movie is about male domination/control over women. There is probably some political subtext that has flown high enough over my head to have achieved orbit, but I think my first poster is a more accurate representation of the explosive and violent nature of the film.

Anyway, enough with the sour grapes - here is the final version of the poster for Cruel Story of Youth for the Calgary Cinematheque. Like I said, I understand the hesitation so I, begrudgingly, changed the image to be a contrast of the main characters before and after, a kind of "that was then, this is now" approach. Click here for the original, I still think it's the stronger one.

I guess my next poster featuring four mop top lads with doll parts and raw meat will get censored too.

Oh well.

Cruel Story of Youth

A new addition to the posters I've been working on for the Calgary Cinematheque. This is for Cruel Story of Youth, a 1960 film directed by Nagisa Oshima (who also directed the movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with David Bowie).

I like to watch the movie before designing the poster to see if there is anything that will inspire me, or if there is an underlying theme that I feel I should expand upon, and this was an interesting movie to watch because the film is done in such a frank way – it's an extreme version of Rebel Without A Cause (a movie that was made 5 years earlier) – misunderstood youth trying to figure out their place in this world sort of stuff.

I won't go into the details of the movie, I have provided a link to the imdb site for that, but needless to say I was struck by the energy of the film and I tried to convey that in the poster.

Seven Samurai

The next presentation for the Calgary Cinematheque will be Seven Samurai. This is one of the first foreign films I had ever watched and it is outstanding. I wanted to give the overall poster an expressive feel to tie in with the action of the film, plus I prefer posters that have a more illustrative quality, that's something that I find is missing in poster design these days. So the first thing I tried doing was a Drew Struzan approach, with the gessoed board and the pencil crayons, but it wasn't working for me -I'll keep at it though because, after all, it just takes time and patience, and the Drew Struzan "how to" dvd that I've watched more than a few times already (Thank goodness for ebay, because otherwise it's a pretty pricey flick).

So with press time fast approaching I decided to use the technique I used for the Expo Volunteer poster I had just finished. I took photos of paint strokes and created a variety of masks out of them and then layered pieces of the larger image over top of each other to give it a layered, painterly look and applying color in select areas to give it more of an expressive feeling.

I'm really happy with the end result. I can't wait to see it out in the world.

Tokyo Story

The Calgary Cinematheque will be presenting the film Tokyo Story, by Yasujiro Ozu, on February 1st and 5th, and here's the poster I designed for the presentation.

It's a movie that will stick with you after viewing.

I have to admit that when I saw it I didn't think too much of it. I can't say it's a film everyone will like, Hell, I don't think I really like it, but I am glad I saw it, and as I watched it I could see things in it that I could relate to, things like how, no matter what, families do grow apart in varying degrees. You try to keep the family ties, you want to keep the family ties, but sometimes, they just come untied. We all grow into our own lives, and it's up to us to make the best of the time we have. At least that's what I got from the film.

Like Joni says: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".

Ugetsu

The Calgary Cinematheque is presenting a wonderful film by Kenji Mizuguchi from 1953, titled Ugestu. It's a film that deals with greed, ambition, love and loss. Until I was asked to create this poster I had never seen this film before and I really enjoyed it.

I have to say that I am thrilled to be able to work with the Cinematheque on their posters. I feel the same way now as I did when I was in art college. Back then I would talk to friends and they would recommend films that I had never heard of. Often times I would be pleasantly surprised, sometimes I would be amazed and sometimes I would wonder what the hell they were on, but I digress. So the Cinematheque is like a friend asking me if I have ever seen (insert movie name here)? Sometimes, with a smile, I can say yes and I know exactly how I want to represent it. Sometimes, with I smile, I say no…and that's the challenge.

Through the Olive Trees

A recent poster design for the Calgary Cinematheque presentation of Through the Olive Trees. It's the story of a director attempting to make a film about two people who marry shortly after a devastating  earthquake destroys most of their village. As it turns out, the male lead actor that the director has hired is in love with, and wants to marry, the lead actress.

I came away from it feeling that the director was somewhat like a god figure in the film, manipulating both the movie he is making, and his actors. Which is how I came about the image I created.

While I did enjoy some of the performances, and I appreciated the ambiguous ending, I have to be truthful here and say that it's not really my cup of tea. That's just my opinion though.

The Wizard of Oz

The Calgary Cinematheque is showing the Wizard of Oz on the big screen on December 18th, and I wanted to represent the movie in a way I hadn't seen before. I had already created a poster with the Wicked Witch of the East under something not long ago with my Fairy Tale Fiascos poster for the Alberta Dance Theatre, so my wife suggested I do a travel poster and I really liked that idea. All Roads Lead to the Emerald City was the approach I decided to take. A second version was suggested, again by my wife, to remove the characters and the cliffs – I have to say that I like that one the most right now.

After I had presented the poster with the Dorothy and the gang, I was asked to make the text at the bottom more prominent, which made sense because they want people to bring food donations to the Food Bank, so I decided to ditch the "All Roads…" and the "See the one, the only…" lines to accommodate other information that would allow me to bump up the bottom text a bit more. I don't think it has the same travel poster feel, I'm still happy with it, but I kind of like these better.

Here is the final one by the way.

METROPOLIS

Last night was the Alberta premiere of Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis. It was presented by the Calgary Cinematheque, with live musical accompaniment by the world renowned Alloy Orchestra.

All I can say is WOW!

This was the first film I have ever seen with live music and, I'm not sure but, I think I'm converted.

To see the film (I have always been a fan of this movie and the image of the robot, in particular, has stuck with me over the years), now as close to Lang's vision as possible, was amazing- there were only a few minutes worth of intertitles explaining some missing scenes - but to see it with the Alloy Orchestra made for an incredible experience, you could not just hear the music you could feel it. Here is a quote from their website: "An unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable. Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic synthesizers, the group generates beautiful music in a spectacular variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution."

Before the performance began I got to meet the Orchestra and they signed a copy of the poster I designed (see above), which was very cool, so you can guess what will be going on my office wall as soon as I get it framed.

The orchestra has been to Calgary before but it took a film like Metropolis to draw my attention to these very talented performers. All I can say is that the next time they come here I will be in the front row of whatever film they are accompanying.

I also hope to check out a few more films with live music in the future since there is a theater in town that does this every once in a while around January, so I will be on the lookout for that.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Metropolis

Okay, when I first got the call from the Calgary Cinematheque that they would like me to help out, I was given a brief list over the phone of the upcoming movies. The third film on the list was Metropolis - complete and uncut, and as the rest of the list was being read all I could think about was the line from Jerry Maguire when Renée Zellweger says "you had me at hello".

A tough movie to do a poster for, in my opinion, because there have already been some amazing, iconic posters created. I wanted to do right by this film. I worked on a few graphic treatments that looked a little design-ee and then I thought that what I would really like to see is something like what Ludwig Hohlwein might have done. I also wanted to homage to the original poster with the rays of light behind the false Maria. So there you have it. I really need to bust out my paints and practice.

The film is being shown on November 18th at the Uptown in Calgary. It will have live musical accompaniment  by the world famous Alloy Orchestra, and it has been fully restored with scenes that have long been thought lost. 

Below are some of the early poster drafts I did too.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Ikiru

This was a movie I had never seen before. I picked up the Criterion Collection dvd to watch so that I would get a sense of what it was about. All I can say is WOW. Crushing bureaucracy and beneath it all a little hope. On top of getting to design posters I am being exposed to films I have either not seen or, not seen in a while.

Here is Roger Ebert's review of the film.

By the way, if you have ever worked for government, there is a scene at the beginning that made me laugh out loud (I don't know if that was the intent, probably not, but I thought it was funny anyway) in which a group of women are trying to get a park built and they get told, and I am paraphrasing here, "not my department. That scene is as true today as it was in 1952.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Easy Rider

Up next for the Cinematheque was Easy Rider.

I wanted to create a different look for this poster than what had been created in the past. Usually the artwork focused on the road, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda or Jack Nicholson. I wanted to focus on the symbol of their freedom, the bike, and in particular, Captain America's bike. It has such an iconic shape to it that I thought those who know and appreciate the film would hone in on it. And aside from the black and gray bits I wanted to keep the overall look very red, white and blue.

The Calgary Cinematheque - Rashomon

This year, on top of volunteering for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo,  I decided to volunteer for the Calgary Cinematheque. I have always wanted to design film posters and the Cinematheque runs classic films at local theatres. So when I contacted them they were willing to give me a shot.

My hope is to create a poster that I, or someone like me, would rip off of a construction site wall and put in a place of honor in my own office.

First up: Rashomon. I'm very happy with how it turned out. I think what I need to do though is grab my paints and practice illustrating again because I'm too used to trying to create things in the computer and I really wanted this to look like an old 50's era painted poster. I think that compositionally I captured that feel but I need to work on it.

The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo continued

Here's the ad I mentioned in my previous post. I never claimed to be a copy writer but I kind of liked the headline and sub head that I came up with. Simple and directed at a specific group. We wanted to make Malcolm McDowell the focus on this ad because Leonard Nimoy had been getting most of the attention for the show and we just wanted Alex DeLarge to have his turn.