This past week, we were ordered to create a masterpiece movie poster for a hypothetical movie called “The Student.” Although the stated goal was to inspire creativity into our projects, I think Twitchell’s real goal was to get free graphic design for his upcoming blockbuster of the same name.

Anyway, about my poster… the design process consisted of every other design project I have ever done: creating a canvas with the correct dimensions (18×24 @ 300dpi). After that, I went to look for inspiration at some of the links provided. I saw this tutorial for a “Trendy Typographic Poster Design“. After seeing this, I started creating text around the canvas with the word “STUDENT” many times, at 45° angles, in different sizes. After creating that, I took an old image and placed it behind the 45 text layers and did 3 gaussian blurs with a 255px radius. Then I cloned out most of the overly bright areas of the blur, then blurred it again. After that, I desaturated the image to create this:

At the time, I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to create a documentary, or a horror movie. I kinda decided to go with an ominous-documentary. I added a texture, a free one found on Flickr, of concrete to give it a more distressed look. I also changed the blend mode of the text group to soft light, this made it so that the text fit in with the background.

The next part that I added was text at the bottom. First, I added a semi-transparent black rectangle at the bottom half of the canvas. From there, I added the title, and other text relating to the movie. On the main title, I duplicated the text layer, rasterized it, and added a mild motion blur to give effect to the text, and make it stand out. I then turned down the opacity of the blur to make it less prominent. The credits, which use the font “SF Movie Poster“, at the bottom read:

SCOTT STURGES PICTURES, IN ASSOCIATION WITH STURGES PHOTOGRAPHY, PRESENTS THE FILM “THE STUDENT” FEATURING STEPHEN STURGES AND BRANDON DESIMONE. WITH CASTING BY BRUCE TWITCHELL. DIRECTED BY SCOTT STURGES VISIT WWW.STURGESPHOTO.COM FOR DETAILS.

I also added a MPAA rating. I found this vector image on Wikipedia, and it is under the GPL license. I converted the SVG to a raster format with Inkscape, and imported it into the poster. Lastly, I signed my image with my fancy new Wacom tablet.

The last part of the design was to shoot the photo to go in the main portion of the poster. I knew that I wanted to have an image of a student with books scattered around them, doing something relating to the subject of the photo.

I went downtown with Stephen, went to a narrow alley way, in a slightly shady area of town, with many of my school books and strobes. Stephen had some coffee with him, so I felt that it defined his character. I scattered my books around him, and behind him. I placed a flash in front of him, as I was shooting into the sun, and wanted to make sure that his face was visible.

I took several images from behind, however, after looking at them, I decided that I like the ones from this angle better. So I fired off quite a few, and settled on this one. When I saw it on camera, I knew that this would be the best.

The process for processing this image involved processing the RAW image, doing a little sharpening, and finally working it into the image. I intentionally oversaturated and sharpened the image, as I feel that when it is printed, it would look best with green grass and blue skies. I really like how this image turned out, and Stephen actually wants it for his Facebook.

My inspiration for this poster came from a number of sources, as well as pure creativity from myself. I have already posted one link to the site where I got the idea to use diagonal text for the background, but I also a tutorial called “Create an Intense Movie Poster“. Although the connection is not necessarily there, this tutorial really got me rolling on the project. I do not think, however, that it has any actual influence on any of my current poster though. Finally, I have some obvious inspiration from every movie poster that I have seen in the last few years, as I don’t think I could have had a good idea of what a movie poster should look like without seeing some.

Below are the contact sheets for the images used for this poster, if you blow them up, you can see the different angles that I took photos from to try and get the final image.

Contact Sheet

Technical Information

• Camera: Canon 50D
• Lens: Canon 28-135mm (Just received back from Canon repair center!)
• Lighting: Canon 430EX triggered with Cybersync
• Shot in RAW, processed with Photoshop CS4

Last year, I was conned by Mike Mattson into helping present a speech regarding a Promotional Bulletin Board at SkillsUSA State. Our team happened to get second place. We were slightly disappointed that we were unable to go to Nationals. But when we got back to school we had an email telling us that first had dropped out and we were being allowed to go to Nationals in their place to represent Idaho. We didn’t so so well, but I decided that the next year, we would do great… so this year, my brother, Stephen Sturges, and I were on a team to design a new one, and with the knowledge of last year, we created a masterpiece bulletin board and wrote a great speech that gave us First place at state, and qualified us to go to Nationals in Kansas City, Missouri.

If you have read my blog at all, you may have seen that I have been posting brief paragraphs saying that I have been working on this bulletin board… those were to simply let my teacher know that I have been working on the project, so that I could get a grade in the class. Well, now I am going to post the full process of designing the bulletin board.

The SkillsUSA theme for this year was “Connecting the Opportunities,” so we decided to design the board around that.

Planning

The first stage of development, we started sketching ideas in Photoshop to try and get an idea for the board. Below are some of the images to help give an idea of what some of these looked like.

Our first ideas included a road leading/connecting you to city, with a car representing SkillsUSA doing the connection… but we felt that this would be difficult to understand, so we scrapped that idea.

We had a few more ideas, but eventually settled on puzzle pieces that have been broken apart with each piece representing an opportunity that SkillsUSA has connected for the individual.

Design

After we decided on the puzzle, we worked on the design phase. First, I worked on making a background. I wanted to give the board a 3D look, as those seemed to win at nationals. After I did the background, I used Illustrator to create a vector map of Idaho, that way it could be resized unlimitedly.

I decided to use an American Flag in the background of each piece, as the colors of the flag also represent SkillsUSA…

Red and White: Represent the Individual States and Chapters

Blue: Represents the connection between the states and the chapters

Gold: Represents the individual – the most important part.

Then I worked on adding a header, and then integrating the state onto the board. I decided to add some “opportunity words” to the background, as I felt that those represented that SkillsUSA helps people, even when they don’t realize that they are (the Watermark was not included in the final, it is just there to protect my work).

Production

The final stage of making the board was to transfer it to foam core. First we printed 3 20×30 color prints of the board – One with the background, one with the black border, and one with the state.

We then proceeded to glue it to black foam core… this involved spraying the board with spray-on adhesive, then laying the photo on top.

After that, I began to cut out the individual pieces. The border was the easiest, as I just had to cut off white strips where the printer didn’t print. The background was slightly harder, as it has rounded corners. The state was insanely hard though. I used a surgical scalpel to cut around each puzzle piece and glue it with hot glue to the board in the right place. This took around 5 hours.

However, it was worth the work when I was done because it turned out great.

Binder and Speech

SkillsUSA Binder, ©SkillsUSA

The last parts of the project involved putting together a presentation binder, and a 3-5 minute speech.

The binder, shown to the left, included photos of the production, résumés from both chapter members (my brother and I), short essays about the value to the school of the board, and documented proof that we did the work. The proof included signatures of both members, the advisor (Mr. Twitchell), and an administration member (Mr. Nelson).

The speech had to be 3-5 minutes and describe the process of how the board was created, as well as the educational value and representation of each part. One person was allowed to give the speech. After the speech, there was a question and answer session, where they judged you based on your ability to answer questions regarding the board.

Back in Lewiston, it was the speech that caused me to lose (in my opinion). I literally blanked when I went to give it, and totally bombed it. However, I prepared a lot more for the Boise competition, and I wrote out the speech on paper to practice it (The original speech ended up being 8 minutes long until I shortened it).

When I gave the speech at the competition, I knew that I aced it, as I remembered everything that I wanted to say, and the judges looked impressed. I was right also, as I took first place.

Anyway, that is the story (and photos) behind my Bulletin Board. I hope that you enjoyed reading it.

–Scott

This first photo of Jared is probably my favorite of all of them. He is rather serious in the photo; he is showing a different side of him that we don’t normally see.

Above: Sadii Link, Brandon DeSimone, Stephen Sturges, Chris Shoup.

In the above photos, I feel that I captured a different side of the subjects, with the exception of Brandon: he is acting crazy as usual. The photos seem more serious that normal, but I think that these turned out way better than my first attempt at the Avedon style photos.

Over the week, I shot hundreds of photos, and ended up editing many of them. As a result, I spend many many hours on this project, probably the most of any other project in the past. Below are some the rest of the photos.

There were a few photos of Michael Camarino in the mix above, he came into the class to deliver something, so I grabbed him and show a few photos. They would most likely be considered posed, so I didn’t feel that they were the best.

All of the photos above seem to be more fun, but there were a few serious ones mixed in. I feel it provides for a good balance between seriousness and humor.

Finally, I felt that this project wouldn’t be complete without some self portraiture. So I went home and shot a few of myself with my borrowed lights. The setup was simple- but effective. Basically I set up a white sheet over my closet door, and set a strobe on full power behind it. Then I set up two more strobes on quarter and half power (respectively left to right). Finally, I set my camera on self timer for 10 seconds and waited. I actually (to my surprise) got some good shots. I posted them below.

Technical details:

Although the camera settings varied by a lot, there were a few common attributes: 100 ISO, f/8.0 Aperture, and a shutter speed ranging from 100^th sec. to 160^th sec. All photos were shot with my Canon 50D. The lens was mostly my Canon 50mm f/1.8, but the photos of Jared were with my Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-4.5 as my prime was not available at the time of shooting.

The lighting setup was pretty much the same for all of the portraits though: I had two strobes in front of the subject, with a 1:2 ratio of power, and a nearly full power strobe set up behind a white backdrop so that it would be totally white and washed out.

Finally, in editing, I opened the RAW file, bumped up the black slider, contrast, exposure, and recovery. Then I ran my “Avedon” action which consisted of a desaturate, levels, unsharp mask, and a mild high-pass filter on softlight. Then I added the Hasselblad border, resized to 700px, and saved.

Yes I know that this was posted a little late… but I spent nearly my whole weekend processing the photos (all of my free time friday, saturday, and part of sunday – I had to split it with my senior paper). There were many photos that I processed that I didn’t post. My computer was running nearly all day running photoshop actions, etc. Apparently it takes a lot of computing power to do this Avedon style. Please forgive me for the tardiness, but it was seemingly unavoidable as I couldn’t make my computer run any faster.

Other images from the project (contact sheet), and a sample of the unedited images (before and after):

Portrait of brother, Stephen. Over exposed and sharpened for different look.