Motion Posters - Savannah College of Art and Design Digital

Transcription

Motion Posters: A Guide to the Success of a New Medium
Andrew Serge Bernier
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Motion Media Design
at
Savannah College of Art and Design
© May 2013, Andrew Serge Bernier
The author hereby grants SCAD permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly
paper and electronic thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now
known or hereafter created.
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Committee Chair
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Becky Wible-Searles !
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Committee Member
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Molly Michel !!
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Committee Member
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Film and Digital Media
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Motion Media
Savannah College of Art and Design
By
Atlanta, GA
May 2013
Table of Contents
Table of Figures
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Thesis Abstract
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Introduction
A History of Motion Posters
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A Brief History
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Current Motion Posters
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The Vertical Poster is Not a Film
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Why Vertical Orientation Works
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Holographic and Lenticular Posters
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The Technology Behind the Motion Poster
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Motion Poster Content
Principals of the Motion Poster Design
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How it is Done
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Pixel Perfect
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Points to Pixels
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Sound in Movie Posters
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Space, Time, Image, Event
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Alternate Viewing
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Web
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Mobile Devices
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Frame-Rate
Visual Project & The Theoretical Road to Tallscreen Success
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Visual Project - ‘Skullcrusher Mountain’
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Making Tallscreen Videos Popular
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How to Get Live Venue Posters Started
Conclusion
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Bibliography
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Thesis - Spring 2013
Table of Figures
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Interactive Poster Kiosks at Retail Stores (Bernier)
Vegas Vic: 40ft Neon Cowboy (public domain)
‘Spider-Man 3’ (2007) 3D Poster (IMP)
TrailerVision™ Kiosk’s at Various Marcus Theater Locations (Bernier)
‘The Taking of Pelham 123’ (2009) Poster (IMP)
‘Amelia’ Motion Poster with Intrusive Trailer Band Across the
Center (IMP)
‘The Mechanic’ (2011) Motion Poster Still (IMP)
‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ (2011) Motion Poster Screen Shot (IMP)
Visual Comparison of Font Sizes on Different Display Sizes. (Bernier)
‘Silent House’ (2011) Poster (IMP)
‘Step Brothers’ (2008) Poster (IMP)
Original Poster Designs from Visual Project (Bernier)
Parody Posters and Their Original Counterparts Used for the Visual
Project (Bernier)
‘Portal’ Game Gun Design from hacknmod.com Along with Portal
Guitar Design from the Visual Project (Bernier)
‘Glee’ Posters Created by FOX (IMP)
‘Glee’ Parody Posters Created for Visual Project (Bernier)
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Thesis - Spring 2013
May 2013
The motion poster is a new form of digital advertising. In order to create successful work
and develop this field into a greater form of artistic expression, motion designers need
to adhere to the history and principles of print design over video.
This thesis explores the new medium of motion posters as it focuses on a brief history,
explores the principals of successful motion poster design, and theorizes a path to the
tallscreen success of motion posters. The aim of this thesis is to emphasize that Motion
Media designers need to focus on the history of print over video if they want to create
successful work that could lead to a greater form of artistic expression.
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Thesis - Spring 2013!
Introduction
I was first exposed to motion movie posters at my local movie house, South Shore
Cinema in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The staff at the theater knew very little about the
motion poster screens. A third party was responsible for all the motion poster content
and technology. A “motion poster” is a vertical public advertisement that has a 9:16
aspect ratio and has moving imagery on it. Commonly seen at movie theaters
advertising upcoming releases, these motion posters are gaining popularity in mall
kiosks and retail stores due to the price drop in flat panel displays and the ease and
speed at which content can be updated. While they are gaining popularity in retail, there
is a huge overlooked market for motion posters, specifically in the arts, and even more
specifically in the music industry. This has contributed to a lack of understanding of the
medium and the fear of trying something new with video. By examining the history of
these motion posters and approaching the medium from a print perspective over that of
Figure 1 - Interactive Poster Kiosks at Retail Stores Target (left)
and Kohl’s (right). (Bernier)
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video, one can see how the motion poster format could become the future of music
videos and spread to a sophisticated form of artistic expression.
A History of Motion Posters
A Brief History
Advertising with video is not a new format. Television has been bombarding audiences
with commercials for years. Superbowl XLVII (2013) aired with the most expensive
advertising time location in history. A CBS spokesman wrote, “it's safe to say that spots
are going for $4 million each, and in some cases more" (Smith). Motion posters’s history
does not strictly come from a history of film and video, it comes from a history of print.
Film and video have historically been a medium that people watched either indoors or in
darker environments. The audience is, for the most part, captivated and focused on the
media. Print media, on the other hand, has usually been placed in public places and has
had to compete with everything else around it. The poster had to compete for attention
and convey its message strictly through its static design and without using motion or
lights.
Outdoor advertising began to make steps toward adding motion and light in highly
populated areas like Fremont Street in Las Vegas in the 1930s. Theaters have been
known to put a stage or movie star’s ‘name in lights’ which simulates motion when the
lights turn off and on. This etymology of the phrase ‘name in lights’ started as early as
1929 according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. This seems to be the first step
towards motion posters as they are known today. This can be considered to be
simulated motion graphics in a public display. The obvious limitations of this original
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illuminated option is that each letter had their own lights. Each
sign had to be specifically made to advertise a defined purpose.
There have been many attempts to mechanically move the lights
and images. One example is the mechanical ‘Neon Cowboy’ that
was placed outside the Pioneer Club in Las Vegas (1951). The
Cowboy had a mechanical arm that invited guests into the
establishment. The mechanical option is cost prohibited. One of
the commercial aspects regarding posters is that they are
Figure 2 Vegas Vic: 40ft
Neon Cowboy (public
domain)
inexpensive to reproduce.
Current Motion Posters
The motion poster as we know it today is presented on an illuminated vertical television
screen that is specifically made for advertising. Illuminated posters are not a new idea.
The standard Movie Poster One Sheet is a 27" x 40" dual-sided sheet of paper. The
reason for printing on both sides of a movie poster has to do with illuminating the image
from behind. Most movie theaters are equipped with frames that are backed with lights
shining through Plexiglas. The final result is something like a light table. Posters that
have images printed on both sides produce brighter colors than the one-sided printed
posters. These illuminated posters emulate the look of glowing television screens, but
with a greater attention to graphic design and a new vertical format that is foreign to
most video and film.
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The Vertical Poster is Not a Film
One attempt at vertical filmmaking can be found at the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas,
Nevada in 1993. This was a three-part theme park ride called “In Search of the Obelisk”
that revolved around a story of an Egyptian Pharaoh. The second part of the ride was a
‘Vertical Screen Experience.’ Without speaking to the content of the film, the experience
was extremely uncomfortable to watch. The screen was a 9:16 proportion on a vertical
orientation and was as large as an IMAX screen that is 70 feet tall.
This discomfort might have been due to the fact that the screen was so large, but it
could be said that a big part of it had to do with the nature of the content. This was a
story that was being presented. A story that had multiple characters interacting in an
unfamiliar setting. Whenever two or more people interact, they are usually doing this on
a horizontal plane. This movie did not take that into consideration and there was no
conventional reason that the viewer was watching everything through this vertical
window. It can be argued that the lack of artistic consideration made this vertical film a
failure and undoubtedly gave other filmmakers a reason to stay away from making
vertical films.
Why Vertical Orientation Works
The vertical orientation of the poster works because of the power of the printed word. It
is true that the Roman alphabet uses words on a horizontal orientation, but only so
many words can fit on a line before a new line of text is needed. Some design manuals
suggest about 60 characters per-line but the words can be stacked into readable
paragraphs (Carter 91). It is arguably easier to have text be more readable in a vertical
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orientation than horizontally. When a line of text becomes too long, it is hard for the
viewer to visually find where the next line of text continues. Columns in newspapers are
vertical, magazines and books are usually printed in a vertical orientation, even
websites often scroll up and down more than they scroll left and right.
Holographic and Lenticular Posters
There have been posters that move in the past such
as the ‘Spider-Man 3’ (2007) poster, but the
technology used to make them move did not always
produce the best results. Lenticular hologram
technology allows for multiple images to be
displayed depending on where the viewer is in
relation to the poster. This kind of poster has been
used to simulate 3D posters such as ‘Spider-Man 3’.
As the viewer moved past the poster s/he would see
Figure 3 ‘Spider-Man 3’ (2007) 3D
Poster (IMP)
a 3D rendering of Spider-Man’s chest. Motion was
also incorporated into this poster as the Spider-Man suit changed from the standard red
and blue colors to a more menacing black version of the suit (impawards.com).
There is also a company called XYZ*RGB, that has created a plastic that can contain
12-30 seconds of video footage that can be seen when walking past the image (The
Ottawa Citizen). An example of this technology can be seen in the ‘Terminator:
Salvation’ (2009) poster.
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These two kinds of motion posters contain major limitations. First of all, the timing is not
something that the poster designer can control. It is completely dependent on where the
viewer is and how fast they are moving past the poster. In motion design, timing is a
huge part of creating a piece. Most companies that are advertising their product like to
have control over how their product is viewed and this lack of control can only be
something to be avoided. Add this to the fact that these poster types are not illuminated,
inherently make them an expensive gamble.
The Technology Behind the Motion Poster
The motion poster needed an inexpensive and effective method of deployment to really
take-off as a medium. Standard television sets had to become lighter and thinner before
they were a realistic option in the mid-2000s. Fortunately, within the last 10 years, flat
video displays have become an effective canvas for a motion poster. High Definition
displays with a video resolution of 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels (1080p) make for a crisp
image that can easily display thin text. LED technology lets the screens be bright, thin,
lightweight, and viewable from any angle, something that earlier models had problems
with. Taking these 16x9 proportioned televisions and putting them on their side makes
for a graphic interruption of the norm that demands attention.
Having televisions display the images was the first part of the problem to be solved. The
next step would have to be distribution. Allure Global Solutions Inc. is an Atlanta based
company that, "provides software solutions, ad comprehensive services and support for
its array of digital media and point of sale solutions" according to their website
(www.allureglobal.com). They are a digital signage company that provides not only the
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digital hardware, but the software as
well. They supply theaters with Digital
Movie Posters™ that they update with
content through their network. Besides
the screen, no other content is physically
delivered.
There are a number of Marcus Theaters
Figure 4 TrailerVision™ Kiosk’s at Various Marcus
Theater Locations (Bernier)
that have digital poster screens in the
lobby that are branded as
“TrailerVision™.” According to their
website, “TrailerVision™ combines elements of a static movie poster with digital
technology to stream movie trailers and advertisements in theater lobbies” (Cinema).
Their kiosk contains a 52 inch HD LCD screen, directional speakers, and Bluetooth
technology to send content to mobile devices.
TrailerVision™ is owned by Cinema Scene, a company located in Kansas City whose
core business is supplying printed promotional materials to movie theaters. When a
customer gets a tub of popcorn or a soda cup with a printed advertisement for an
upcoming movie like ‘The Avengers’ (2012) or ‘The Hunger Games’ (2012) on the
container, a company like Cinema Scene provides that material. Cinema Scene started
providing TrailerVision™ around 2007 as a free service to their client theaters. The
money they make from the product comes strictly from the advertisers on the screen
(Molly July, 2012).
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Cinema Scene works with theaters to develop playlists of the content that will be
displayed on the screen. For example, a theater can determine that advertisements for
more mature films can be played later at night, while family friendly posters are played
more during Matinees. The content is sent to the screens over the Internet and updated
automatically.
Motion Poster Content
Ignition Creative (ignitioncreative.net) is responsible
for creating a large number of print, motion graphics,
broadcast, and motion posters. They can be
considered to be responsible for most of the creative
motion posters that are currently displayed. According
to the Internet Movie Poster Awards, a website
“dedicated to collecting a digital image of every movie
poster ever made” (impawards.com), the three best
Figure 5 ‘The Taking of Pelham
123’ (2009) Poster (IMP)
Motion Posters of 2010 were all created by Ignition.
But their posters are not always successful.
It is difficult to find any ‘Motion Posters’ or ‘Living One Sheets’ before 2008. The images
from that time period do not contain a very creative use of motion. An analysis of
Ignition's motion poster for the 2009 film ‘The Taking of Pelham 123’ (2009) will now be
conducted. The Motion Poster looks exactly like the one sheet with very minimal motion.
The title rushes into the frame as if it is moving very fast, but once that happens, the
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motion ultimately stops. It appears as though there
are lights moving and blinking behind the actor's
faces, but the motion just ends.
‘Amelia’ (2009) is about the famous female pilot
Amelia Earhart. The print poster was created by Crew
Creative Advertising and it is assumed that they also
worked on the motion poster (although information is
lacking on this as Crew Creative Advertising went
bankrupt in 2010). The motion poster looks exactly
like the print poster except the image sections have
Figure 6 ‘Amelia’ (2009) motion
poster with intrusive trailer band
across the center (IMP)
been cut out and move in and out of the frame. This
is a form of paralaxing of the print images. The clouds
behind the actress, Hilary Swank, move as if it was a
photo of clouds moving rather than video.
The unsuccessful part of the design is when the actor unnaturally slides off the screen
and the widescreen trailer for the film slides on in a thin black bar right across the center
of the poster. Not only is the trailer small, but it really interferes with the sensitive
graphics that compose the balance of the poster. Unfortunately, adding to the trailer to
the center of the motion poster seems to be a regular occurrence.
South Shore Cinema, a 16 screen movie theater near Milwaukee Wisconsin, has a
motion poster display on which sliding parts of posters are interrupted by small, blocky
trailers for films. It appears that the motion poster might be too new of an idea for most
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film companies to spend money on in order to come up with a creative idea. The
companies who do come up with extremely creative ideas make for effective film
advertising.
Ignition created an aesthetically appealing series of character posters for the film, ‘For
Colored Girls’ (2010). Their concept was to show the main characters as a ‘digital
painting.’ As the actors spoke about the drama in their lives, the living paintings of them
became increasingly abstracted with a more gritty look and then back to their original
portrait. Ignition did not simply use photos of the actors, but took video of them sitting
still. The result was something very artistic and creative that had an emotional power
unlike what a standard print poster could produce.
As for the movie company wanting to show the trailer during their motion poster: Ignition
has found some creative solutions for that as well. Their poster for the film ‘The
Mechanic’ (2011) features a QR Code that moves into the middle of the screen. Once
scanned with a smartphone, the code brings you to ‘The Mechanic’ website that plays
the poster again directly on the viewer's
hand-held device. It invites them to watch
multiple versions of the trailer, and gives
them an option to download an app to their
phone. This is an interactive experience
that starts with a motion poster and keeps
an intrusive trailer from the poster screen.
Figure 7 ‘The Mechanic’ (2011) Motion Poster Still
(IMP)
In other ways, the trailer is incorporated
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into the design of the vertical poster. For the film
‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ (2011) a new trailer was cut
using graphically numbered images to distort the film
and make it feel natural on a vertical screen. The reediting of the trailer was key in how they successfully
incorporated it into the poster. It then becomes a part
of the graphic design of the poster rather that
something supplemental to the poster itself.
Alexx Henry (alexxhenry.com) is a photographer and
designer who was responsible for the add campaign
Figure 8 ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy’ (2011) motion poster screen
shot (IMP)
for the Hallmark film ‘Mrs. Washington goes to
Smith’ (2009). He has a short four-minute
documentary about the project called ‘Living Movie
Poster - Start to Finish’ (2010) where he discusses his reasons for creating, what he
calls, a ‘Living One Sheet’ (Henry). He noticed that HD advertising screens were
"popping up everywhere" but they were being filled with "repurposed motion graphics"
instead of creative ideas. Alexx saw this as a great opportunity for creativity and he set
out to make the video of the star of the movie, Cybill Shepherd, interact with the ‘poster’
in a surprising way. They wanted the poster to look like a photograph until it surprisingly
started to move (Henry).
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Alexx Henry took the posters one step further and decided to incorporate them into the
Hallmark website. This added to the immersion of the viewer into the world of the
poster.
Since 2008, the ‘motion poster’ or ‘living one sheet’ has been a very trendy option for
advertising because of its effectiveness and ease of use. With the continuing
interactivity that people are having with video screens, the idea of motion posters
becoming bigger and greater as time goes on is becoming a potentiality.
Principals of Motion Poster Design
How it is Done
There is something rigid and reductive about designers who claim, “This is how it’s
done.” One example of this is Massimo Vignelli’s idea about design in ‘The Vignelli
Canon’ (2009)(http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf). Here he states his opinion about how
design works. In his canon, he praised architects, mocks American paper sizes, and
writes in great detail about exactly what needs to be done in order to create a company
letterhead.
This is reductive because there is no possible way that Vignelli has discovered “the one
and only” way to design. How can a designer possibly claim to “know everything” about
a creative medium that holds seemingly limitless possibilities? Despite this it is easy to
misunderstand Vignelli.
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‘Vignelli’s Canon’ is not about “knowing everything” but more about, “this is all I know.”
This is a much more humble approach. Many of Vignelli’s ideas can be adopted for
design.
In the following account there will be less focus on how to design a good motion poster,
and more on some technical considerations when working in this newer medium. The
intention is not to enter into great detail about what makes for good design. Instead the
focus will be on what makes designing motion posters unique.
Vignelli writes about the importance of “white space” in his canon regarding printed
design. “The white space on the printed page is the correspondent of space in
architecture. In both situations space is what qualifies the context” (Vignelli 92). Space
in his canon is two-dimensional, referring to the space on the page. For architects, it is
three-dimensional referring to the space within a structure. Motion Designers have the
ability to use the two-dimensional space of the screen as well as the fourth-dimension of
time.
Pixel Perfect
The motion poster eliminates two ideas in design that have been around for a long time.
In film, the idea of ‘action safe’ and ‘title safe’, and in print, the idea of ‘bleed’. The
screens that motion posters will be shown on are 1080 x 1920 pixels in size. Since
everything is sent digitally to the screens, every pixel can be accounted for. This can
open up some previously sealed areas for creating visual tension as well as expanding
imaginative ways to work with the edges of an image.
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Points to Pixels
If one is used to dealing with text as points and picas, this
new medium will take away those measurements as well
as any real world measurements that exist. Displays are
going to be all different sizes when it comes to real world
units of measure. A motion poster might be seen on a 60inch screen or 40-inch screen, but as long as those
screens are both 1080p, the pixel dimensions will remain
a constant 1080 x 1920 pixels.
Figure 9 Visual Comparison of
Font Sizes on Different Display
Sizes. (Bernier)
This is difficult for designers when they take the step away
from real world measurements. There is a lot of converting
a designer must do if s/he wants to stay true to the real
world measurements that s/he is used to.
For example, a printed 72 point font is an inch tall from the top to the bottom of it’s
block. A 40-inch Poster Monitor will have a screen height of about 35 inches while a 60inch poster monitor will have a height of about 52 inches. Since it would be impossible
to know exactly how big the screen the image will be when it is being shown, it would
seem best to forget points and picas while designing for motion posters.
It might be good to note that most motion posters get displayed on the Internet with a
height of 720 pixels. It is a very good idea to try to design the motion poster so that the
elements can be understood at a much smaller size.
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Sound in Movie Posters
The idea of sound in these motion posters is a
difficult technical and aesthetic issue. A traditional
poster, by itself, needs no sound. Conversely, sound
can be easily and inexpensively combined with
video to increase the effectiveness of a motion
poster.
There will be a consideration of the motion poster
for the horror film ‘Silent House’ (2011). The visuals
Figure 10 ‘Silent House’ (2011) poster
(IMP)
depict the face of the film’s star, Elizabeth Olsen, in
a profile looking looking down, seemingly in a small
dark space. She appears to look more and more
terrified until, at the conclusion of the poster, she screams a dramatic ‘horror movie’
scream. The scream, however, is muffled by the ever increasing volume of the ambient
noise that seems to convey ‘silence’. The poster loops after a brief 10 seconds.
Sound plays a very crucial role in this poster. It attempts to convey silence with sound,
which seems to be a difficult endeavor, but manages to make it work by coincidentally
having the silence, quite metaphorically (or literally?), silence her scream.
It is noteworthy that this is an advertisement for a movie that is called ‘Silent House’. It
would not seem out of the question that the motion poster could, by all accounts, be
silent.
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Fortunately, this digital motion poster has an ‘audio off’ option that allows for a silent
experience. The same visuals are seen, but without the audio, Olsen’s twisted face with
no scream emitting from it has a much different effect. Because there is no noise, there
is an incentive to read the tagline which, incidentally, reads, “On March 9th, The Silence
Will Kill You.”
There is still visual noise within this poster as the imperfections in video quality enhance
the ‘horror’ genre that this film belongs to.
As previously mentioned, it is rare to experience more than one digital poster screen in
the same venue, so competing with other poster sounds is not yet an issue. The sounds
that one needs to compete with are ever-present in the lobby of most movie theaters.
From the sound of popping popcorn, to the music being pumped in though the ceiling
speakers, one might try to make the sound supplement the motion poster rather than be
essential to it.
Space, Time, Image, Event
Movie posters try to catch people’s attention while the viewer is in a specific space. The
posters have to compete with the other visual posters that happen to be around at the
same time. A framed image that is always visible will have the chance to demand
attention. Motion posters usually do not have to compete with other motion posters at
the exact same point in time. Movie theaters do not currently contain more than one
screen that is dedicated to the motion poster. That might be something that is coming in
the future, but for now, these moving posters seem to be a novelty. The motion posters
on these screens share a space with other motion posters at different times.
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The time element of the motion poster is responsible for a certain shift in what makes a
motion poster’s importance different from a printed poster. Printed posters have their
own space on a wall but share time with other posters that might be on the same wall or
in the same room. A motion poster shares space with other motion posters, but has a
time that is its own.
At first glance, it appears as if printed and motion posters have an equal trade off in
terms of time and space, but it could be suggested that the motion poster has an
advantage in what a viewer can remember from experiencing it.
A printed poster attempts to create an idea in the viewer’s mind with a memorable
image. The motion poster still contains a memorable image, and adds a memorable
moment along with it. Consider the motion and print
poster campaign for the film ‘Step Brothers’ (2008)
(Maneater). The posters both contain an iconic image
of the two stars, John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell, posing
for a family portrait. The motion poster (which happens
to be one of the first recorded motion posters) adds an
event that is just as memorable as the printed poster. In
this case, a viewer would remember the time that the
still poster started to move. It does not hurt that this
Figure 11 ‘Step Brothers’ (2008)
poster (IMP)
event happens to also be a funny joke.
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Alternate Viewing
Web
It is important to point out that every poster discussed so far is viewable on the Internet.
The majority of these posters have a viewing height of 720 pixels. With the example of
‘Silent House’, the credit block along the bottom of the poster is completely unreadable.
The other text (that is very similar to the Trajan typeface) is dominant and legible.
Traditional movie posters have a certain life-span. That is, they will only be used to
advertise the movie in theaters for the few months before the movie comes out and the
weeks that it stays in the theaters. Sometimes the poster art will be converted in some
way to advertise the DVD or BlueRay cover art, but they are often replaced with
different art altogether.
Motion posters seem to have a very different life-span. They advertise the movie for the
same amount of time as their printed counterpart, but there is no physical archive of
these posters once the movie has left theaters. It can be said that a digital movie poster
advertising a DVD is rare as far as the Internet goes. The posters will only be available
as long as the technology supports these video advertisements.
Mobile Devices
Mobile devices have the advantage of having the capacity to change their orientation
easily. This makes them a perfect viewing device for motion posters and any content
regardless of the proportions. The new iPhone 5, released in 2012, was made with a
screen that is exactly 16:9 in proportion, the same proportions as the screens that
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motion posters can be viewed on. Because of this orientation mobility, mobile devices
may end up playing the most important role in getting viewers used to seeing content on
vertical screens.
Frame-Rate
For quite a long time, frame-rate has been a standard. 24 fps (frames per second) for
film, 29.97 fps for broadcast in the US. It seems that an age has arrived when the
choice of a frame-rate to give a desired effect is more flexible. Since these motion
posters are not being broadcast, and are also being seen on high-end, high-definition
screens, the frame-rate can be much higher. Sixty hertz per second is common among
most LCD screens, where some can go up to 120 Hz or higher. It may not be something
that is in need of attention right away, but with the rapid change of technology, a higher
frame-rate standard is something that will most definitely be adopted. Peter Jackson’s
‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ (2012) was shot at 48 fps (Jackson) and even
James Cameron is looking at filming the ‘Avatar’ sequels at either 48 or 60 fps
(Giardina). For Poster designers, this new push in technology will make converting
frame-rates an even more important issue.
For the visual component of my thesis, I recently tried combining frame-rates (10 and 24
fps) together in one animation. This resulted in some unnatural movement among my
animated elements. Because of this unnatural nature, I tried reducing 24 fps to 10 fps.
This created an extremely undesirable effect as the motion blur that was applied started
to look jittery. Motion designers should be aware of the idea of a higher frame-rate
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Andrew Bernier!
because it has the potential to double the render times of most projects, since the
number of new exported frames will double.
Visual Project and the Theoretical Road to Tallscreen Success
Motion posters have the potential to become popular in areas that have live
entertainment, especially in live music venues. This section theorizes possible ways to
popularize the tallscreen format and realize a bigger future for motion posters by
examining my visual project and the thoughts I had during its creation.
Tallscreen, as opposed to widescreen, is a term I first found on the Vimeo website
referring to a group of users dedicated to making videos in a 9:16 format (http://
vimeo.com/groups/tallscreen). This seems to be the best term I have come across to
define the type of content that would be displayed on these vertical screens.
Figure 12 Original Poster Designs from Visual Project (Bernier)
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Andrew Bernier!
Visual Project - ‘Skullcrusher Mountain’
My visual project attempts to do a number of things. I wanted to create tallscreen
content that was more substantial than just a moving poster or a short advertisement. I
also wanted to adhere to the principals of motion poster design, mentioned earlier in this
thesis paper, in that I wanted to take inspiration from the ideas of designing for print
over video. The result was to create a music video that parodied classical print ads as
well as other famous posters and images.
I decided to create an animation for a song called ‘Skullcrusher Mountain’ (2004) from
the singer / songwriter and Internet star, Jonathan Coulton. This is a love song from a
mad scientist and evil genius to the girl he loves, whom he has captured and brought to
his home on Skullcrusher Mountain. It is a very narrative based song whose lyrics
contains fun visuals and humor that can translate effectively to a music video. There
have been no official music video interpretations made for this song so far.
My visual idea revolves around the main character of the song who is a narcissist with a
Napoleon complex. I image that a character like this would use propaganda posters to
boost his image among his followers, so I thought it would be fun to tell this story using
a series of propaganda posters. I created original posters, along with parodies of
recognizable propaganda posters such as the famous Rosie the Riveter ‘We Can Do
It!’ (1943) image and Glenn Grohe’s ‘He’s Watching You’ (1942) poster. The evil genius
also appears in some famous classic paintings as well as some contemporary pop
culture imagery. Clearly, he loves himself enough to write himself into history.
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Andrew Bernier!
Figure 13 Parody posters and their original counterparts used for the Visual Project (Bernier)
Because I was directly parodying some of these images, the designs fits to this vertical
format easily. I illustrated the images digitally using programs such as Corel Painter,
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, AutoDesk’s Sketchbook Pro and ToonBoom Studio. I
used each program based on the visual style I was trying to accomplish with my
illustrations.
Creating the illustrations digitally saved me a large amount of time when I was ready to
animate because I could illustrate with the animation in mind. For example, with the
parody of Gustav Klimpt’s ‘The Kiss’ (1907-1908) I knew what parts of the image I
wanted to animate, like the character’s eyebrows, the background and parts of the
dress. When I was illustrating this using Corel Painter, I made sure that each asset that I
wanted animated was on a different layer so it could be quickly separated in After
Effects and animation could begin.
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Andrew Bernier!
When I finished animating the first verse of the song, I noticed that the video was not as
exciting as I had hoped it would be. The design was solid, transitions between the
posters were great, and the video had a wonderful pacing. Unfortunately, each poster
seemed dead and lifeless while it was on the screen. The transitions were so dynamic
that the posters needed something to hold the viewer’s interest. This was solved by a
simple push and pull of the static assets. I could take an asset that was set in the
foreground and change its scale from 100% to 105% over 4 seconds while pulling the
background further away from the image quite literally making the subject of the poster
appear to pop-out at the viewer. This simple trick added a visual life to all of my posters
and helped to create a more dynamic experience. This might be another principal of
motion poster design that I need to explore further in the future: creating depth and
virtual 3D space.
Making Tallscreen Videos Popular
One goal of this project is to try to make
tallscreen videos popular. If they become
popular, more content will be made in the
Figure 14 ‘Portal’ game gun design from
hacknmod.com along with portal guitar
design from the Visual Project (Bernier)
format and the future of motion posters could
benefit.
Many of the choices I took in this project were made to strictly gain popularity on the
Internet. Jonathan Coulton, for example, already has a big following on the Internet and
among people who play video games. His song ‘Still Alive’ (2007) from the popular
video game ‘Portal’ helped give him notoriety amongst the tech savvy. There is even a
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Andrew Bernier!
quest in the very popular ‘World of Warcraft’ (2004) game called ‘Skullcrusher the
Mountain’ that was dedicated to Coulton.
I have hidden imagery in the video to try to appeal to his fan base. For example, the
guitar that the evil genius plays is based on the gun from the game ‘Portal’.
Most recently, Coulton made the news for being a legal victim of the hit show ‘Glee’ who
copied his arrangement of the Sir-Mix-A-Lot song ‘Baby Got Back’ (1992) without even
crediting him. The move was completely legal, but extremely unethical. Coulton fought
back by rereleasing the song on iTunes and giving the proceeds to charity, outselling
the Glee version of the song.
Figure 15 (top) ‘Glee’ posters created by FOX (IMP)
Figure 16 (bottom) ‘Glee’ parody posters created for visual project (Bernier)
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Andrew Bernier!
To play on the ‘Glee’ scandal, I parodied some of the advertisements from Glee,
featuring characters from the show with their finger and their thumb with a shape of an
“L” on their forehead. In my video, the characters are all successful, laughing fat-cats
with suitcases full of money. The lyrics for that portion of the song are “fools who live
their foolish lives” while the scene ends with those characters exploding. These were
decisions I made to play to the fans of Coulton.
These inside jokes and references might not be enough to gain popularity with such an
unusual video format. There is currently a movement against vertical videos on the
internet. ‘Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA’ (Vertical) is a parody Youtube video that has
over three million views and fifty-thousand “likes” that tries to convince people that
vertical videos should never be used. Their argument is that computer and TV screens
have always been horizontal and that it is unnatural to view things vertically (Vertical).
Historically, that has been the case, but recent evidence suggests that PC sales are on
a steep decline as people are switching to tablets and smartphones, and as I discussed
earlier, it is very easy to change the orientation of these mobile devices to view
something in tallscreen format (Magid). Mobile devices are also becoming more popular
when it comes to creating and posting videos. Twitter released a video app called ‘Vine’
in January, 2013, that quickly became the top video creation app on mobile devices
(Moore). These videos have a square format and display up to six seconds of footage.
As video creation grows among mobile device users, vertical videos could become a
standard.
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Andrew Bernier!
My own observations as a high school teacher have further lead me to notice that high
school students do not even listen to music the way I do. Where I am comfortable
buying digital music and listening to it on my iPod, all of my students listen to their music
free through YouTube. They make playlists of the music videos they want to see and
listen to and are content to stream them to their mobile devices.
If this is the future domain of music videos (because there are certainly no music videos
on MTV anymore), then orientation of screen does not matter and artists can choose
their format they same way a photographer would. It would seem that it would be
dogmatic not to adapt to vertical videos because there is nothing stopping this format
from becoming popular.
How to Get Live Venue Posters Started
The visual content was a part of the process that took the longest. I had to illustrate a
large number of images that needed to be animated. This demand of time might be a
deterrent to people trying to create content for their own motion posters, especially in
the music industry, but while I was busy illustrating I had plenty of time to think about
how one might already have content to use in the posters.
Asking musicians and other live acts to start creating animated posters and vertical
music videos for a network of digital poster frames that are not in place yet might be
difficult. Movie companies already have content to display on digital screens. Their
posters are already being created digitally and they have been making movie trailers for
years. These digital posters were just another way for them to display content that they
already had in a new and visually pleasing way.
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Andrew Bernier!
The music industry needs another push toward making content that can be displayed on
digital poster screens. I therefore propose that the push should come as animated
album covers.
Digital music is outselling physical formats and the numbers keep growing every year.
Digital album sales have been increasing over the past few years and have helped to
gain revenue in a format that was dominated by sales of single songs. In 2012, 118
million digital albums were sold leading mass merchant CD sales by eight percent
(Gundersen). Digital music bought from companies like iTunes and Amazon already
come with digital album covers and in some cases, digital booklets and liner notes.
These album covers are static images of the physical album covers, but they do not
have to be.
If a company like Apple changed the way they formatted their music and allowed
companies to add an animated image as their album cover, they could get musicians to
want to create content that can take advantage of that format. Whether it is something
as simple as an animated GIF or as complex as a movie file, new music would be
flooded with a vast amount of animated promotional content that would look attractive
on an iPod or similar device that could be displayed while the music was being played.
Album covers are usually square in format to fit the physical records or CDs inside of
them. Without physical media, album covers are free to take on a new shape. Since the
album covers are being displayed on phones and hand-held devices that have vertically
formatted screens, it would seem only logical that these animated covers would conform
to those proportions.
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Andrew Bernier!
Something as simple as animated album covers could give the music industry the
content they need to begin to display on digital poster frames with little to no additional
effort. Someone selling advertising space on a digital poster frame could ask for nothing
more than some sample music and a high quality animation of the band’s latest album
cover and a simple animated poster would be already created and ready for
consumption. If the band has a music video already made, this could easily be added to
the poster as well.
Since products like TrailerVision™ already contain the ability to send content directly to
a hand-held device by way of Bluetooth or text messaging, it would be a logical step to
sell concert tickets and even albums, music, and other digital content directly to a
concertgoer as they are viewing the poster. This would also be a great way to keep
track of how many people these digital posters are affecting.
These “simple music posters” would be very similar to the poorly designed digital movie
posters that I have discussed earlier, especially if they put a widescreen music video in
the middle of the tallscreen formatted screen. This was a necessary step for motion
movie poster design and it will probably be necessary for motion music posters as well.
The music industry will have to see first-hand how popular these screens can be before
they start dedicating time and money into making their digital posters or vertical music
videos with the quality that this medium deserves.
Conclusion
From Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha to Shepard Fairey, the poster has been a
standard of artistic expression for designers, illustrators and artists since the late 19th
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Andrew Bernier!
century. Keeping with the principals of poster design, the motion poster could become a
staple of artistic expression for motion media designers, animators and video artists well
into the 21st century.
There have already been some very effective and successful motion posters in the short
history of the medium, but so much more can be done to popularize this format. Mobile
devices and the flexibility of their orientation can help to normalize the perception of
seeing content in a vertical orientation, but quality content is going to be key in taking
the tallscreen format from ‘normal’ to ‘popular.’ Hopefully, the music industry will see that
this format has the possibility of making music videos relevant again. What better way to
advertise at a live music event than seeing and hearing an upcoming act perform their
music video in a moving poster?
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Andrew Bernier!
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<http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/james-cameron-fully-intendsmake-172916>.
Gundersen, Edna. "Digital Stores Now Leading Source for Album Sales." USA Today.
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Henry, Alexx. "Living Movie Poster - Start to Finish." Vimeo. N.p., 2010. Web. 28 May
2013. <https://vimeo.com/5004964>.
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Henry, Alexx. "Mrs. Washington Goes to Smith" Motion Posters." Alexx Henry. Alexx
Henry, 2009. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://www.alexxhenry.com/2010/08/27/ourmodel-418-4/>.
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Motion Posters - Savannah College of Art and Design Digital

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