Leilani Holmes, film maker and friend, was one of the most vocal supporters of ‘Gone Fishing’.
And so when I heard she was making a film, ‘Clowning Around’, and running an IndieGoGo campaign, I was one of the first to contribute.
Lielani and her team ran a stellar campaign and raised $8,900 in total.
One of the very clever things they did was to create a poster competition. The team took a bunch of photos of their actors and released them for designers and film makers to use and create their own posters. And they got over 100 entries (you can see all 100 here on their Facebook page).
I was honoured to be asked to be a judge and so today, I make my selection from the top 11.
Having been to may festivals I have seen walls plastered with posters and for me, the posters that win out are the ones that…
- …work at a distance, you don’t need to get up close and personal to ‘get it’.
- …hit you hard with a single kicker image that is bold and simple.
- …tell you what the movie is immediately, telling you about genre, feel, tone and cast.
- …please the eye and mind with aesthetics, colour and balance.
So what is so smart about this competition is that it engages creative people now, before the film is made. It also solves the problem of designing a great poster before the film goes into production. This is a great example of effective Crowd Sourcing. It’s fun, it’s about being part of something and it’s got a competitive edge.
On this post are the 11 finalists. Which do you think are the best ones? My personal favourite is number 6, the one with the big face and red nose. For it just works.
The official Clowning Around site is here http://clowningaroundfilm.com/
And if you want to enter one of our competitions currently running, you can check them out on the London Screenwriters’ Festival homepage here… we just had Paul Greengrass confirm as a judge!
Well done Team ‘Clowning Around’, I look forward to hearing how pre production is going.
If you want to know more about crowdfunding, I did a podcast with IndieGoGo a while back – you can hear it here…
Onwards and upwards
Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspiritgroup.com
www.ProductionOffice.org
e: mail@livingspirit.com
Ed Burns recently did a similar thing for his feature film Newlyweds and followed it up with a song contest, mainly through twitter. http://www.edwardburns.net/
“On this post are the 11 finalists. Which do you think are the best ones? My personal favourite is number 6, the one with the big face and red nose. For it just works”.
Very cool! But I only see 10 posters featured on this post, not 11…where’s the one with the “big face and red nose”???? That’s my favourite poster too!
Doh! Yep, corrected that now. Thanks for the heads up.
CJ
I see we share the same ideas on your what an effective movie poster should be. Thank you Chris for choosing my poster as your favorite from the top 11.