Northmen

Original Idea

I spoke with two of my housemates who are also studying Media Production and specialising in single camera in their third year. They have started working on their short film for semester A entitled 'Northmen'. The film tells the story of five vikings that are stranded in Britain during the viking invasion of Britain. After discovering that the viking forces have left the beaches and retreated back to their homelands the vikings must find shelter and food to survive. Stumbling upon a saxon house they have an altercation with a saxon soldier preparing to fight for his country and his wife, and the results are disastrous. Due to the professional standard that 'Northmen' has been produced we agreed that a collaboration seemed appropriate and I was asked to produce promotional material for the short films release.

Aims & Objective

The main objective for the project was to create 4 posters that would be printed on a large scale (AO & A1) and presented all over the university campuses as well as then further used for DVD duplication and online promotion.

The above images were examples of existing posters I found that were good examples of the low-key basically lit portraits that I wanted to achieve, especially for the two main posters that presented the Viking leader and Saxon soldier.

This was my main consideration during shooting.

Shooting

I decided to gain material from two separate shoots. I wanted to obtain head shots of the main characters within the film. I booked the studio and using the Leaf digital back on a Hasselblad I was able to capture a variety of head shots of the actors in costume.

(click to enlarge)

Using low key lighting and the digital back allowed me to obtain high quality and atmospheric photographs. The quality produced by the Leaf digital backs allowed for further editing possibilities and was important when considering the size that I wanted to print the posters.

For the second shoot I accompanied the production team to their filming location situated in a privately owned section of woodland in Lincolnshire. With a digital SLR I was able to capture a range of shots of the open woodland and also textures that could be used for the posters. I also visited the authentic Saxon house just outside of Lincoln that was the main location in 'Northmen'. Again I took a variety of shots that would be used for the poster designs, DVD sleeves and as production stills for the group.

Editing

I wanted to maintain a professional working practice during the editing process of producing the posters and wanted as much feedback from the group as possible. I produced draft copies of the posters and showed these to members of the crew and asked their opinions. They were pleased with each draft that I produced and I adhered to their specifications, making alterations during the editing process. For example, in choosing the typography for the poster I produced a sheet with several examples of fonts that I then presented to the production group and asked their opinion.

After several edits and drafts I was able to compose the final designs, the crew and I were immensely pleased with the finished posters (presented below, click for enlargement)

Distribution

We arranged to have 14x A1 prints and 6x A0 through a printers based in Birmingham, after collecting the prints they were placed around University to promote an on-campus screening. However, the production team were able to secure a screening at the Odeon in Lincoln, the posters were used to further promote this invite-only screening. The posters were then adapted and made into the DVD sleeve for distribution to film festivals worldwide. Amongst the numerous film festivals entered 'Northmen' has been nominated for Best International Short Film at this years Polar Film Festival (www.polarfilmfestival.org) in Turku, Finland.

You can check out the trailer for Northmen here and production company Urban Apache's future prospects here. Although the films success is entirely down to the production crew that made it, I am proud to have been a major promoter of the film and hope that the posters and promotional material I have produced will continue to serve them well.