Wind In The Willows: My Front Cover

Post 7 - Wind in the Willows Front Cover

For my front cover I wanted to try to get across as much information about my film as I could. I opted to go for my background of a small path winding down into the forest. I think it shows the idea of taking a path but not knowing where it will lead. I used some of the different effects in Photoshop to alter the appearance of my background, to make the forest appear thicker, but also changing the lighting to really try and set the scene. I used a darken effect to take away some of the original brightness, but then used a colour dodge to give a more vivid white light. I also added in a gentle fog across the front cover, which is only very subtle, because I didn’t want to hide too much of the image, as I decided to use the face of a badger blended into the forest scene. I decided to go with a badger for the front cover as the badger is one of the main characters from the original Wind in the Willows and I wanted to try to stick with that theme as much as possible. I didn’t just want to place a badger there for the sake of it though, and felt I had a good opportunity here to try to, again, get across the horror genre of my film. I used the colour replacement tool to change the appearance of the eyes of the badger, giving them a fire like appearance, and the appearance that the badger is possessed or suffering from a blood lust. I used blood splatters I found on the badger’s face to also carry on this theme, and it comes together well as the badger looks like a very dangerous animal who has just killed in the middle of the forest. I have included my title, which is actually a piece I made in Illustrator, which I think gives, again, a real impression of what to expect from the film. The font I created is a very creepy, eerie kind of font which you may associates with a danger animal clawing at the title, and/or blood dripping from the title.

On the back of the cover, I originally started with an image of a hedge just to set the scene, but I knew with how the back cover was going to be set up, that there wouldn’t be much of it on display. It was just important to have an image of something associated with a deep, thick forest. I blended in the image of a tiger to my back cover background, and I think it blends in well with my background image. Now, this does cut away from the original Wind in the Willows, of course, but I thought the way those images went together was just a really good way of highlighting the danger to expect from the film. I took a picture of a seemingly derelict little cottage, and changed the skyline to appear darker. I then added the flames onto this and was very happy with the resulting picture. I had to make some delicate touch ups to the cottage, the foreground and the background but all in all it came out very well. I tried to include all logos and necessary legislation information required, and included a logo I created, in illustrator, for the production company.