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 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.

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.

Iron Man (the first one)

I can't believe I never uploaded this poster I did a while back. This was before the first Iron Man movie came out (which I liked better than Iron Man 2). The type is something I played with in Photoshop and the background is made up of about 5 stock images.

I was, and am, pretty happy with the end result. I wanted to show the original image I grabbed off of Allmoviephotos.com (the photo is by Jamie Bivers) so you can see I played with the colours quite a bit to make him really shiny. I have another one that features big floating heads but I'm not too happy with it so I let it sit out this dance.

Anyway, it's an oldie but a goodie.

Jungle Book

I did this poster for the 2009 Alberta Dance Theatre production of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

Fairy Tale Fiascos

I was asked to develop a poster for the 2008 production for Alberta Dance Theatre, titled Fairy Tale Fiascos. It was a series of fractured fairy tales much like "the True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" or "the Stinky Cheese Man" so there was a lot of fun to be had. The key thing was that it had to look fun and appeal to their demographic.

When I presented the first round of concepts it seemed clear to me that I was over-complicating things so while we looked at the first concepts we started to talk about the fractured fairy tales that were to inhabit the performance.

I kept going back, in my mind, to the fractured fairy tales from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and how the Fairy Godmother was crushed in the pages of the book. This led to the idea of the wicked witch from Oz being crushed under the weight of a book, with only her ruby slippers and striped stockings exposed. The client loved the idea and requested some additional elements be added to show context for the scene.

When all was said and done, though, it was apparent to me that as a poster it would work best if it was as simple as possible, so setting disappeared, as did extra characters, and the book became the only element floating in a happy sea of blue.

The finishing touch was adding a spot foil to the shoes (which doesn't translate very well here) to make them look more like the ruby slippers of the Wicked Witch. The end result is a poster I'm quite proud of.

Harry Potter

I was asked to produce a poster and program booklet, among other things, for an Alberta Dance Theatre production of Harry Potter. The only request was that it look nothing like the existing books or the movie. I think it turned out quite well. Above is the program cover.



The back of the program features the invitation letter that Harry received from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.



The final poster. It all started with an idea to make a circus poster.

Oscar Party Invitation

This was a poster invitation to an Oscar-themed fundraising party held every year by Theatre Calgary. I had suggested a full 27 x 40 poster featuring a full size Oscar statuette but, when finances were established, concessions had to be made and we decided on an 11x17 that highlighted the statuette's torso.

The poster is comprised of movie quotes (thank goodness for imdb.com). I researched all of the quotes and typeset the piece.

The quotes are not all Oscar winners, or necessarily Oscar nominated films, but they were films I wanted to use, plus a few special requests from the client. A quote from each Marx Brothers movie was a must, as was the "Take your stinking paws off me" line from Planet of the Apes. The poster was very well received.