At the end of last year, out of the blue, I got an incredibly flattering email from the fine actor Julio César Cedillo, (who you may recall from The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, if you've ever seen that film), asking me to design a poster for this short film by a young Mexican director, Alonso Alvarez Barreda: El Descumbrimiento (The Finding). Julio was so genuine in his excitement for the project, and so complimentary of my work, that I just couldn't say no.
The film is about a father and son coping with the loss of their wife/mother, and they had plenty of great on-set photography to work with. My first concept was to try to suggest an absence or hole in the center of the relationship between father and son, represented very simply and graphically:
A second option was a little bit generic, but I thought the two images involved were compelling and was trying to find a way to combine them. (I'm not sure how successful I was.)
Julio and Alonso liked the concept of the first one but worried it wasn't quite coming through, so I tried a rougher version, more obviously a "hole" rather than just a circle.
And finally there was this more oblique version, which just captured the visual style of the film nicely. (By the way, they ultimately wanted to have versions in both English and Spanish, which is why I keep switching the title back and forth.) They also asked for a few minor variations to that--desaturating and resaturating the color, new title treatments:
I was pretty happy with the "hole" version, personally, but ultimately they liked that last version best, that's what they went with for the screening at the San Diego Film Festival. Looking at their Facebook page, I guess they've changed it a bit since then... Not sure who did the new version, I'm only just noticing it now, to be honest.
1 comment:
The White Circle or torn out hole one are definitely the best! Too bad they didn't go with those, I am immediately drawn to them.
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