There was a certain charm to the errand boy’s routine — posters tucked under his armpit, applying glue to the walls and then smoothing out one from the stack to announce the due date of a new movie. Things have changed now. Social media has created the need for movie makers to go for teasers, trailers, first look posters and mini videos. However, the importance of posters has remained the same, or to some extent been enhanced. This is the era of short attention span, demanding the need for a continuous stream of promotional material, which is why poster designers sometimes give moviemakers hundreds of possible creatives for the ‘virtual wall’.
Dual perspectives
Anil-Bhanu, a pair well known for designing posters in Telugu film industry for over a decade and a half, their recent impressive posters being the ones they designed for Awe , opine that technology can be both a boon and a bane. New software is available. Photoshop is ultra-potent. Stock photos are easily available online. Inspiration is everywhere. At the same time, it could be challenging to pull off something akin to the kind of filters available on mobile apps, on high-resolution posters, they feel. The pair whose biggest USP is the dual-perspective they have, compared to most poster-makers who work on their own, feel creativity in a poster is a reflection of the creativity in the movie. That’s definitely on the rise after a prolonged lull.
Things are churning in an industry that is metamorphosing gradually to include innovative elements. Part of the reason why the world of posters in this industry hasn’t seen enough experimentation is because of an overpowering commercial element. That is changing gradually, feels Tharun Bhascker, the articulate director of the National Award-winning Pellichoopulu . He rues the lack of enough Telugu fonts, a project he wants to adopt at some point. Tharun, who started out as a poster-maker himself, confesses his love for colours like yellow, orange, and black, which universally are the colours for indie films, not to mention teal. The minimalism enthusiast, currently busy with his next venture Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi , feels it always comes down to the pitch a poster-maker can pull off in front of the director and producer, especially for out-of-the-box creatives.
Good posters get shared more on social media, giving movie-makers an incentive to invest more thought in them. There is plenty that makes a poster stand out — pop-culture references, colour palette and fonts. But, what probably matters most, according to Deepak Bhojraj, the man behind the poster of Manam and 24 , is whether the poster in itself is narrating a story.
Charismatic treatment
The creative designer and filmmaker who operates his firm, Rising Apple, based in Ooty, feels a poster needs the right frame. Often, hundreds of location shots might be available and yet, poster makers need to go for separate photoshoots if they don’t get what they have conceptualised, given every director’s thought has a different charm and hence, needs a characteristic treatment. Deepak, currently working on the creatives for Naa... Nuvve , feels the time has come for poster-making to take off in Telugu industry, given our penchant for larger-than-life cinema.
The offbeat quotient has also gone up in Telugu cinema with new kids on the block shaking up things, driven by their need to do something different every single time. While the old warhorses like Mani Ratnam continue to set trends — Ok Kanmani (OK Bangaram in Telugu) and Kaatru Veliyidai (Cheliya) have an almost ethereal quality about them — newer directors are pushing barriers as well.
Chandamama Kathalu’s split frame design, Bhaagamathie’s Anushka shot and Shamantakamani’s indie look all portend changing times. Dhani Aelay, an industry veteran who designed the Arjun Reddy poster, is bullish about marketing shifting to the digital world from the predominance of outdoor advertising, given internet has penetrated even to villages. The poster-maker for movies like Ami Thumi and Jaisimha credits the change in thinking to the inundation of information online for those who want to learn or read up about making good designs. That advantage showed up in the posters of two recent blockbusters — Mahanati and Rangasthalam — which garnered plenty of attention for retaining the charm of a period drama and yet, carrying the technological edge in palette, shade, and highlighting.
Let’s hope the talented poster boys, literally speaking, only multiply.
