50B: How to Design a Movie Poster

I just completed a new illustration project for the film Finding Mr. Reich. It's a Jewish romantic comedy by the brilliant Brandon Bacall. 

I thought I'd share a bit of the process work below for those fellow art and design nerds hungry for this stuff. You'll see- it's all a process...

1. The Film

The Director found my work through the Criterion Collection projects I've worked on with Art Director Eric Skillman. If you haven’t seen the process work for Diamond of the Night, you can find more here. I ended up working on two projects for Brandon Bacall at the same time.

1. Finding Mr. Reich

2. A Marriage On the Rocks (I’ll share more on this in a later post)
    

2. The Brief

Brandon and I shared a number of conversations over the life of the project. As a new director, he hadn't commissioned illustration for poster art before and I did my best to communicate the process to him, while he communicated what he was looking for from me. 
Finding Mr. Reich is a romantic comedy with a dark spin with a touch of JoJo Rabbit. 
It is revealed by a psychic that the protagonist who is going to meet his Jewish girlfriend's parents was Adolph Hitler in a past life. 
 

3. Research

The film was already shot and edited and I received it prior to post-production on video and sound. I watched the film through multiple time, capturing screen shots and drawings of moments that interested me and that seemed important to the overall story. Of note, it's always easier to work from something than nothing. The creative process for films that have already been shot is completely different than the blue sky ideation that happens when a film is still in script stage. 

4. Ideation: Ideas through unseen connections 

A number of ideas came to the forefront. What was clear was the need to bring in multiple figures, the protagonist, his girlfriend and the psychic. Also of interest were the crystal ball, German propaganda posters, color, palm reading, Hitler's mustache and the German SS lightning bolts.

In this stage, you are often trying to find unseen connections between elements referenced in the storytelling.