Design a Factory Girl movie poster
The Weinstein Company is running a movie poster design contest to create a Factory Girl movie poster. This poster is for the contest only, not to design the actual Factory Girl movie poster one-sheet used in theaters. Our opinion of “Design a Movie Poster” contests is well known, so we won’t rehash that again. Well, just one rehashed point: No major film studio has ever run a contest to design a movie poster where the winning entry was used as the domestic theatrical one-sheet for a film key art ad campaign. This contest is no different. However, since the film studios seem to be inching closer and closer to this idea, we predict it will happen eventually.
Update: Reader Hargon points out that the studio used the Resident Evil movie poster contest winner as it’s domestic one-sheet. We were under the impression that Resident Evil poster was a limited run promotional poster only — but Sony wiped the movie poster design contest details from their site years ago. Apologize for the error.
What is more interesting about the Factory Girl movie poster design contest is the promotional materials included in the “production kit” for the contest. The downloadable Factory Girl movie poster contest kit (ZIP) includes “15 different images from the film, 6 different Title Treatments, and the billing block”. It also offers a Factory Girl sample (PDF) to how they “created” the film’s (pseudo silkscreen look) movie poster. This is offered as “inspiration” along with instructions on how to create a movie poster:
BEGIN TO BUILD YOUR MOVIE POSTER!
Open your photo program and begin with a 2×3 proportioned canvas (e.g. 6”x18”, 12”x18” or 24”x36”), at whatever dpi you choose. We recommend at least 72dpi at 24”x36”, or higher the smaller the canvas.In a separate window, open an image from the included selection, or scan or import your own images/drawings/sketches/renderings. Just remember, you cannot use any copyrighted artwork or images of trademarked materials or people/places without their permission.
Now the fun part! Crop, colorize, filter, distort, invert (or anything in-between) the image to make it just how you want it to look on the poster. Check out ‘Treatment Ideas’ for some cool ideas. Next, copy the image and paste it onto the ‘poster canvas’ you first created or save the image and use your program’s ‘import’ tool to bring it into the poster. Repeat this step with as many images as you choose, adding each to the canvas.
Add a tag line to the poster. Either write your own, or see the ‘Official Poster’ and use ours!
Add the film name (title treatment) to the poster. You can either choose from one of our included ones or make your own. Have as much fun as you want, but make sure people can read the name of the movie!
Lastly, add the ‘Billing Block’ file to the poster at the bottom. This makes it a legal poster (with the production people’s names and the company logos). Don’t forget to save the file as a .jpeg, .GIF or .BMP file.
If only it were that easy.
A more accurate simulation of the film poster design process might be to run a poster design contest where a winner is picked from all the entries, have that winner go through several rounds of revisions altering their design completely, with each round of changes handed down by different sets of executives at the studio, and then have Harvey Weinstein step in at the very last minute and pick a completely different contestant’s movie poster and declare that person the winner instead. Granted, this may read as an extremely glib scenario, but sadly, it is an accurate one. Snarky comments aside, the raw design materials offered by the contest could make for an interesting challenge to anyone who aspires to design movie posters.
The contest is an interesting contrast to the themes surrounding Andy Warhol and “The Factory” (which is a backdrop to the film’s story of 1960s “it girl” Edie Sedgwick) and how others produced Warhol’s pop art. Could the contest be seen as the modern equivalent of all those Warhol assistants reproducing all those Marilyn Monroe prints?
If you are curious, here is the winning Factory Girl movie poster entry created by Dimitri LaBarge.
When is the deadline?
The site says: All entries must be received by January 31st, 2007.
Well, quality of photos they provided is bad so obviously they don’t think seriously about that contest. It’s just an idea to promote this movie.
You are incorrect. The first Resident Evil had a Design The Poster contest and the winner’s poster WAS used as the Domestic Final design and shipping to theaters (I was a theater manager at the time).
Oops, forgot about the Resident Evil movie poster contest. (Sony wiped details of the poster contest from their site years ago.)
But we were under the impression that the contest winner was a limited print run promo poster and not used as a/the primary domestic one-sheet.
Regardless, apologies for any errors on our part.
I found the billing blocks unusable for Factory Girl poster contest. I recreated text but not all logos.
Only recognize MGM and The Weinstein Company. Also Dolby Sound but don’t know what is written under it. The forth one I do not know at all. Can you help me? Thanks :)
You should contact the official factory girl site about any problems with their files, logos, etc.
What’s the dealio? I thought the Factory Girl poster contest winner was being announced on the 9th. Then it got extended to today, the 12th. I see no winner announced online. No confirmation was ever given that the poster I submitted was received. Is this contest for real?
The delays and lack of info makes it seem like you are experiencing what it is like to work on a real film poster campaign — warts and all. :/
I’m in the same boat as designwhore. I felt like there was something that I was waiting for but I couldn’t remember. And then I realized it was this poster contest, but it was delayed. I had to check the official rules to see if I was just missing something.
I just thought of something else. I figured that the ones they got sucked (in their opinion) so they wanted to see if they could get any better ones. I guess that means I lost! Ah well…
Hm…missed the deadline.
I thoroughly agree about having an actual contest where you progress through different rounds and get revisions and have an actual chance to see your work when you go see to the cinema! That would be a fantastic experience, and even give aspiring designers a handsome portfolio piece!
I do have one question, as i’m brand new to your site here, is there more contests like this going on currently?
TS
PS. Great site, favorited the other day and started reading today…Definetly be stopping by more often. Take care.
Are they ever going to announce the winner? Jeez.
I got mine in by the Jan 31st deadline. Just went back and checked the site today to see if they had announced anything, but saw the extension you are all referring to. I sent them an email to see what the status was, I’ll let you know what I find out. They were pretty good about replying quickly to emails I had sent before.
So, uh…I won. ::waves.weakly::
They let me know I was in the finalists last week, e-mailed me that I was in the top two on Wednesday, and then some very nice folks called me with the good news last night. I kinda didn’t want to say anything ahead of the press release and the website update — but seeing as the poster’s already been sent to my favorite theater here in Nashville, I thought I would at least let everyone know where it stands. They had about 1100 entries to choose from.
Will be curious about your reactions once the update goes live!
Congratulations, can’t wait to see it!
For what it’s worth, my poster is now displaying at the Factory Girl website. Wheeee!
Very nice! I actually had an idea like that but I didn’t follow through and tried something else. Good job, sir.